Caelin Bragg
Lantern Staff
Butler’s radio and television program (RTV) went to Kansas State University for the annual student broadcast awards hosted by the Kansas Association of Broadcasters (KAB).
The event is held for students of various broadcasting fields to mingle with other attendees, attend sessions hosted by people from the industry, have roundtable discussions and critiques of material and accept their awards in categories for high school, undergraduate, graduate and intern audio and video. Members of Butler RTV took home a total of 14 awards Tuesday, April 3, placing fourth for total number of awards and the most out of two-year institutions.
“Categories [students are competing in] include everything from promotions, which would be commercials and public service announcements and station promotions,” Keith West, adviser for RTV students, said. “They include news, which would be things such as public affairs, hard news, features, enterprise stories, which are longer [and] documentaries. They include sports, which would be things such as sportscasts, play-by-play color as well as features. They include entertainment. They also include research papers as well as promotional projects and online web pages.”
The 14 awards Butler’s RTV program took home consisted of four first places, five second places and five honorable mentions (third places).
“It feels great, honestly,” sophomore Jordan Griffitt, first place winner alongside sophomore Austin McNorton in sports feature, said to winning an award. “We couldn’t have done it without Austin because he got the interview for DeMarcus Lawrence [Butler alumni and subject of the sports feature] because he emailed the PR guy for the Dallas Cowboys to get DeMarcus, and, at that time, DeMarcus was just lighting the league up.”
One sentiment that was shared by many of the attendees from Butler was a sense of pride from beating larger, four-year institutions in certain categories as they feel two-year colleges are typically looked down upon at these events.
“It just felt nice to know that someone younger, who has been at college for a shorter amount of time, beat out somebody who has been working at this for a long time,” sophomore Emily Jardon, second place winner in news anchor performance, said. “And I know, if I was at the other end, I’d be really discouraged, but it was really cool. It was kind of like an underdog situation where you’re like ‘I didn’t think I was [going to] win this but I did, and I beat out some of these other people.’”
First and second place winners at the event received plaques for their performances, while honorable mention winners received certificates for their placements. Additional copies of these awards, paid for by Butler, were also handed to West and are hanging inside the radio station, room 110, in the 100 building of the El Dorado campus.
“One of our pride and joys is being able to take people into the magazine room [room 104 in the 100 building] and show off all of our print awards covering all the walls, and then in our little area being able to show the sports media and news stuff,” West said. “And then when they come into the radio station seeing two walls just covered with plaques.”