On July 16 of 2018, the Coyote Nation TV (CNTV) staff met in the hot and humid room of A123 to discuss changes for this new year at Heritage.

Eyes were wide and filled with excitement as broadcasters bounced back and forth from idea to idea about stories and structure. Suddenly, Broadcast Advisor Candace Bagwell brought up the idea to change the daily show to a weekly one. After much discussion, the broadcast team agreed to the change because the staff has become smaller and this would allow them to produce more content to the show.

“We all agree that we want more content,” Social Media Manager Maya Aridi said. “[Producing the show] once a week gives us more time to cover more topics.”

From now on, the Public Address announcements (P.A.) will take care of the everyday news, but the CNTV weekly show will tell stories of students in our school and consist of entertainment pieces.

“The entertainment segments get the [students] more excited and they pay more attention to those,” Content Editor Ashton Eades said. “ But [we] also want to tell people’s stories and say what’s going on in the school.”

Not only will the content of the show change, but the structure of staff will as well. This year, they have leadership rules and “newsroom norms,” a set of guidelines that the staffers live by throughout the year. These were added because a lot of problems occurred last year that needed to be fix. A big part of these “norms” is communication.

“This year we’re being more communicative,” reporter Amrita Sundaresan said. “We’re telling each other what we want, writing it down and working together to make [our] show.”

Another addition is that everyone is treated with the same respect.

“We want to make everyone feel equal and not make anyone feel left out or lesser than anyone else,” Content Producer Gabriella Carden said. “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, we’re all working on our show.”

With the staff sizing down to eight people this year, the broadcasters believe that having a smaller staff will help them be more involved in the show and put in more of a team effort.

“The challenge [with a bigger staff] is dedication,” Social Service Chair Brianna Flores said. “A lot of people weren’t exactly motivated to get stuff done so we had to push them. Having less people makes us feel more like a family.”

Waiting for the first show of the year to start on Oct. 18, staffers are producing content, writing stories and learning from one another.

“We breathe and live broadcast,” Flores said. “Even when we’re not doing a show, we’re making content and scripts.”

“I hope we can feed off of each other and make things a little easier,” reporter Sai Hallie said. “Generally it makes everything a lot easier because the process is very tedious, long, and boring, but it shouldn’t be like that because we’re all here to have fun.”

Now with their eye on the show, the staffers have more pride in what they’re doing.

“This year we’re really going to press each other to get our stuff done,” Hallie said. “And to provide for heritage. For a lot of the people here, Heritage is their home.”