Morning broadcasts make debut on Choudrant High YouTube channel

The next generation of broadcast journalists just may emerge from Choudrant High School.

The school has launched a YouTube channel that is broadcasted throughout the school daily, with news and information about schoolrelated activities. Move over CNN and Fox News, the Aggie News Network is live.

It’s a normal Friday morning at Choudrant High School, except for Amarion Simonton and Owen Watson are reading a news segment to enlighten their fellow students about book drives, lunches, school parking spots and movie night in the gymnasium.

So it’s not exactly a crisis in Ohio or politics in Washington, but the emergence of the network is something that has sparked excitement in school.

“We have really big plans and there’s so much more we can do with this,” said Dana Talley, Chief Academic Officer for Lincoln Parish schools, and the interim principal at CHS. “This all started with an idea when Tony (Antley, long-time principal at CHS) noticed they were doing this at other high schools around the state.

“Before he retired, he mentioned the idea when we were discussing school announcements,” Talley added. “It just took off from there.”

Talley said they held a meeting with juniors and seniors who don’t have a first-period class, but who attend school during that time period anyway.

"These students have a study period in the library first period,” she said.

Finding out who was interested was the first step, but launching the network didn’t take very long.

Once the students were brought up to speed, Talley said they began laying out the plan and formula for what would work best.

Enter student Hayden Chreene. You can call him the technical advisor, if you will.

“We asked Hayden for a list of what he needed to get this going,” Talley said. “We’re setup in the corner of the library and we’re having fun with it.”

Chreene began exercising his expertise in filming and producing the broadcasts so that the school could film first hour and then upload the broadcast onto its YouTube channel — @ChoudrantAggies, which was already hosting footage from sporting events and other school activities.

“Everything is going great so far,” Chreene said. “Right now, we’re filming live first period and I’m adding graphics and utilizing the cameras so there is as little post-processing as possible so we can upload by 8:48 a.m.”

When February rolled around, the Aggie News Network broadcasts were added to the menu on the “ live” portion of the channel.

With a handful of broadcasts behind them, anchors such as Simonton and Watson are honing their skills. Others are sharpening their skills behind the camera.

The broadcasts consists of school, sports and club news at the moment, but Talley said there are plans to continue to enhance the network. She mentioned interest in adding a weather segment in addition to other topics from around school such as agriculture and health.

“We also anticipate that schools clubs will do public service announcements at some point,” she added.

“We would also like to get to the point when we go live on the channel and experience the thrill of a live news broadcast,” Chreene said. “We would also like to infuse interview footage from sporting events and use more graphics.”

The early success of the Aggie News Network has also sparked an addition to the school curriculum. Talley said that there are plans to add a broadcasting class at the end of the day for the 2023-24 school year so that students can continue to train and polish the broadcasts.

Early reviews at Choudrant High School have been a ratings bonanza.