Each week, The KUGR Broadcast is released and shown to most classes within Central Kitsap High School. These broadcasts are produced by students of the Broadcasting class and are edited and supervised by Jeff Schmitt, the adviser of the class. The class focuses on video production education and etiquette. 

Before a broadcast can be released to the CKHS community, it must be planned and created by the students involved. Students work together to decide what clips of the show each person will do, and then split up to get footage. Each segment is run through with Schmitt, then planned by students. From there, students write scripts with help from Schmitt and record segments to be edited later, all to be done within a strict deadline.

“Producers and directors are the ones that come up with the ideas and usually film their own ideas, so we have camera men,” Schmitt said. “We have the editors that edit everything together. We have the organizers, the ones that hold the schedule that says this is what we’re going to do.”

Early throughout the beginning of the year, most editing and script writing was done by Schmitt to help ease students of the harsh deadlines. However, as of late, many students have begun writing scripts and editing the final product themselves. Even with an added layer of responsibilities on students, Schmitt continues to review the final broadcasts and takes full responsibility for any errors that may be made.

“[Schmitt’s] fun, he engages in jokes with us and sets deadlines and says, ‘Hey guys I’m changing this thing to hopefully improve the quality,’ but he’s pretty chill about it,” Aiden Bruce said.

Each KUGR broadcast is scheduled to release weekly on either Thursday or Friday, leaving students with a quick turnaround time to create the next one. To keep news fresh, the “News Desk” segment is often filmed soon before its release, which allows for the most recent and up to date news. 

“[The biggest challenge is] we only get like a week to make stuff, and some projects are bigger than others and take longer to produce, so I think it’s time,” KUGR Broadcast student Katelyn Roth said.

Writing scripts is a large part of the “News Desk,” as the scripts have to be up to date with current news. To help write scripts quickly, some of the KUGR Broadcast team uses artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to clean up scripts. When using AI, Schmitt gives ChatGPT a bulletin of points to include, and then has it create a script by structuring words in between with the facts needed. When in charge of script writing, Schmitt also uses ChatGPT to refine the writing.

“With script writing we get a generic bulletin which is all different, and the ways they’re written is all different, it’s all over the place,” Schmitt said. “So I, especially when I’m the one that’s doing the script, I don’t have a problem using ChatGPT to clean it up.”

Schmitt’s job as the adviser is to supervise the flow of production. Oftentimes this means editing scripts and helping students change video designs. Schmitt has described challenges like keeping the KUGR Broadcast “fresh” as being difficult to complete with hasty deadlines. Thanks to deadlines, there is little time on building themes, so larger ideas have been put on hold.

“I would like to be way more creative and do a themed broadcast where the whole broadcast has a certain idea,” Schmitt said. “We thought about doing one where it’s all like the 50s, real black and white. Maybe we’ll get to that, but that’s a challenge.”