Student broadcast takes to the tube

Wearing suit jackets and seated under bright television lights, Crescenta Valley High School students Odalis Suarez and Talar Alexanian waited patiently Wednesday night for the cameras to start rolling.

Odalis, a senior, and Talar, a sophomore, were the night’s anchors on a new student-produced television news show about La Crescenta that is being shown on cable Channel 15, Glendale’s educational channel. The program is produced by the members of the CVTV Broadcasting Club, an after-school student group that was formed this fall.

Sophomore Matthew Anderson, 14, proposed the club to the school after he wasn’t chosen to participate in the school’s advanced cinematography class that creates a daily television news program about Crescenta Valley High. When Matthew was encouraged to gain more broadcast experience and then join the advanced class another year, he decided to create his own opportunity to gather that experience. He approached Diana Brown, who teaches the school’s cinematography classes, and the school district, which airs programming on Channel 15.

It was Brown’s idea to approach the Crescenta Valley Sun to see whether the students could rewrite some of the newspaper’s articles as part of their news show. When the newspaper agreed, the club was born.

Matthew, who is also the president of the club, said it has been time-consuming to get the club up and running and get the program on the air. But it’s also been a good time, Matthew said.

“If something’s fun, you don’t think of it as work, you think of it as fun,” he said.

In contrast to the class that produces news about the high school, the broadcasting club has more freedom when it comes to the topics their show will cover, said Brown, the club’s advisor. Brown initially wondered where the students would go with that freedom, but she said she has been happy with what the club has opted to cover in its first three episodes.

“They have really stuck to a very professional demeanor,” Brown said.

At 3 p.m. Wednesday, about 20 club members gathered at the school’s television studio to assign their responsibilities for the day and prepare for filming. Club members rotate positions each week, so students raised their hands to volunteer to be anchors, producers and camera operators for Wednesday’s episode.

Haley Gore, a 10th-grader, had written the script earlier in the week and was ready to go. After some switching of roles, 11th-grader Emily Anderson ended up manning the makeshift teleprompter, which was a computer connected to a large television monitor. Other students took positions in the studio’s control room and editing suite.

At a few minutes before 5 p.m., the crew was ready for the final take. Odalis and Talar introduced the stories, which were interspersed with video footage students had taken of local events. The show featured segments on the Oct. 4 Blessing of the Animals at Holy Redeemer Catholic School, and Paul Rabinov and his “La Crescenta Clean and Green” initiative to pick up trash in the city.

After the cameras stopped recording, the students burst into applause.

The show airs at 6 p.m. Thursday nights on Charter Cable Channel 15.