Brown earns third place in state broadcasting contest, Walker earns John King Award
Huntington North High School junior Blaine Brown placed third in the Show Open category at the 2022 Indiana Association of School Broadcasters (IASB) contest held Monday at campus of the University of Indianapolis.
Brown’s entry, created for the school’s weekly video announcements show HNHS Today, was a customized recreation of the open for the popular NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (also known as Parks and Rec) and included footage of HNHS classmates with similar graphics, camera movements and music to those of the network show.
“It was challenging to get the graphic movements closely in sync with the original opener,” Brown said of the production. “I was surprised to hear that I’d placed, because I didn’t even know that my teacher had submitted it to the contest.”
HNHS radio and television teacher Nick Altman submitted Brown’s video along with two other audio and video clips to the competition, which includes both television and radio categories. The other HNHS entries did not place.
“I know Blaine worked hard on his intro to the show, and there was a lot of detailed work on the technical side,” Altman said of Brown’s entry. “I’m happy that judges recognized the challenges that I think a lot of viewers take for granted.”
IASB is an organization consisting of and supporting Indiana high schools and colleges to promote professional excellence and student recognition in the area of media education. IASB membership consists of secondary schools and post-secondary schools that offer academic, career technical education or extra-curricular programs related to electronic media.
Students in the HNHS TV Productions course have produced regular video announcements show since 1995. Today, students produce videos and film events for other schools within HCCSC as well as community groups. The program also provides live video streams of HNHS regular-season home football and basketball games.
Additionally, former HNHS radio teacher Bill Walker was named as the John King Award for Distinguished Service to Educational Broadcasting recipient at the event.
Walker served in the radio teacher role for a number of years and had many students—Altman included—go on to successful careers within the industry, both in their own media professions and teaching in the classroom.