Loudspeaker announcements are now a thing of the past at WHS. Blue Devil Television (BDTV) aired the first episode of its morning show on Oct. 18 and will continue to do so daily for the remainder of the school year. 

The original idea for these announcements was developed through a collaborative effort between TV Production Teacher Jason Ruggiero and Media Coordinator Kristine Kowalczuk. Part of the inspiration behind the morning show was Kowalczuk’s past experience with television production. 

“I had a morning show in high school and I thought it was so much fun, so I wanted to make sure that we brought that here,” she said. 

The TV Production classes at WHS build up to the morning show. Students in TV 1 and TV 2 classes learn the mechanics of TV production so that students in the TV 3 class can become official BDTV team members.  

Producing daily announcements is not an easy task. According to Kowalczuk, “[TV 3] is a lot more work than a normal TV 1 or TV 2 because [students] are managing the studio and making sure that [they] stay on top of everything.” 

The TV 3 class is made up of 16 junior and senior students. They are in charge of producing the morning show, which means that they’re tasked with writing scripts, managing the teleprompter and creating graphic design content, among other things. 

The pandemic put a delay on the production of BDTV because the current TV 3 students weren’t able to use the TV studio during remote learning last year. The morning show was originally set to debut in September, but was pushed to mid-October. “Hopefully, [future] TV 1 and TV 2 students will get to learn studio production, so by the time that they take TV 3 they know the equipment, and what they need to do. Then we can really focus on producing a show, instead of the technical aspects, because that will [already] be second nature,” said Kowalczuk. 

Other than this slight delay, BDTV has gone off without a hitch. As it is a new program, Ruggiero and Kowalczuk have quite a few goals for the future of BDTV. In the short term, they hope that the morning show will bring some entertainment to the start of each school day. 

Ruggiero said, “I just hope it brings the school together and I want people to look forward to watching [the show] every day.”

BDTV has accomplished that goal as students seem to be enjoying the shows so far. 

Senior Emily Cheng said, “I think that the new morning announcements have definitely gotten my attention much better than the original ones. I find it an entertaining break during homeroom that I didn’t get before with the loudspeaker.”

In the long run, Ruggiero and Kowalczuk look forward to expanding TV Production to WHS students who haven’t had a chance to really understand what the class is about.

“We hope that [the morning show] grows our program and that people watching it every day will want to do [TV Production] and then come through our program,” said Ruggiero.