Once a week, the SHSTV broadcast replaces the usual PA announcements on Thursday or Friday. Perhaps because of its short duration, most students don’t recognize the amount of work put in to create a broadcast, from hunting down stories or to editing the final video.

Since the addition of SHSTV as a class nine years ago, it has been a student-run program with one adviser in charge (first Tony Palma and then Joel Tarbox for the past five years). But this year, the SHSTV program has undergone major changes by partnering with the KMVT TV 15 professionals in Mountain View. This partnership has brought Bobby Chastain and Daniel Negrete over to lend a hand to the SHSTV staff as guest instructors. Tarbox is the teacher in charge, but they’re doing much of the day-to-day work guiding the eighteen students in the class forward.

The goal of the partnership is to help students with their work — writing stories or helping the staff with edits — and to also bring students some insights into the professional industry of broadcasting.

“One thing the teachers bring is an incredible industry experience,” Tarbox said. “These guys are doing it, they do broadcast, and they have a lot of technical expertise that exceeds what I know. So bringing in people who have current broadcast experience is really refreshing for a class like this.”

Tarbox pointed to their strong technical skills as being especially helpful.

Along with the expertise the guest instructors provide, students also benefit from just watching them work, Tarbox said. Be it picking up new tricks around the complicated broadcasting equipment or learning new methods for completing a task, students have greatly increased their technical knowledge and skills.

“Mr. Chastain and Mr. Negrete are both really helpful,” sophomore Christian Li said. “They show us stuff we didn’t know and help us around the technical things, too. They also help us a lot when we need to finalize our stories.”.

This opinion was also shared by other crews personnel, returnees and new members alike.

“They bring a whole new level of technical expertise when it comes to any equipment we use,” said senior Connor Oaklander, the producer for the show.

With the additional help of the two new guest instructors, the quality of the SHSTV broadcasts are expected to greatly improve in the next few months. Many aspects of the broadcast are currently undergoing changes, ranging from the technical side to more general things like how the class is being run.

“In the coming months we will be making changes to how we run,” Oaklander said. “I’m pretty excited to see where we can take this and where their expertise from the industry can bring us.”