When picturing competitions, most people probably think of athletes competing for victory, fine arts showcases and debate tournaments. Not many people picture pitching ideas, filming interviews and editing footage. But as KDGN, Carroll’s broadcasting show, prepared for competition, the Dragon Media room boomed with behind-the-scenes preparations.
“ILPC is the state conference that we submit to every year, and it has a variety of categories for different types of broadcast work that we submit, the main one being the full show,” KDGN executive producer Dylan Spiegelman said. “So that’s always a big project that we take around two months of preparation for just because we want to make sure it’s as polished as possible.”
The Interscholastic League Press Conference (ILPC) convention at the University of Texas in Austin has an annual conference and awards ceremony at the end of April, where students can get feedback from leaders in the broadcasting industry.
“We submit for a critique, and when we do that, UIL lines of professionals that are in the industry, whether they might be teachers, professors, or they actually work for a news syndication, somebody that is in the industry as a professional gets their hands on our link to our show and then they will evaluate it,” KDGN adviser Mrs. Lindsey Jacobson said.
KDGN won their first Bronze Star from ILPC in eight years in 2024.
“We were one of 11 schools in the state of Texas that were awarded a Star,” Jacobson said. “There are three levels: gold, silver, and bronze, and so those that evaluate our broadcast are the ones that determine if it is star-worthy, and then what level of Star they would give the broadcast.”
They featured a variety of segments in last year’s show.
“Last year one of the segments that we did was about the special olympics program which was probably my favorite of the ones that we did,” Speigelman said. “Just because of being able to see the tangible impact of it, and what it did for the kids and also for the advisors for a program that wasn’t recognized enough.”
After seeing the impact of last year’s segments, the KDGN team decided on a more concrete theme of community service for this year’s show.
“I think after that we all kind of wanted to do something that was kind of community oriented and service oriented,” Spiegelman said. “And so for this year, our entire show is all based around community service, so we’ve got a segment about Dragons Give Back, which is the organization that does the crazy events at the pep rallies.”
Sticking with the theme, they decided to do a segment on another crucial part of the Southlake community: blood donations.
“Our last segment is a walk through of the blood donation process to try and show people that it’s not as daunting as they may think and hopefully get some people to go out and donate,” Spiegelman said.
Since the show is broadcast to the whole school, the KDGN team wanted to use it as a chance to spotlight some of the lesser-known aspects of the Southlake community.
“It’s really easy to just talk about sports all the time, but, you know, we kind of have some responsibility, and there’s some good that can be done just from the fact that its seen by so many people, so we wanna do the best we can with that,” Spiegelman said.
Submitting for competition means higher stakes, meaning the team focused more on not just the content, but every aspect of the editing process.
“Normally, we wouldn’t put too much time into a very small graphic and normal show because we’re not submitting it anywhere, so no one watching is going to notice a difference,” sophomore technical director Kathir Dev said. “But for ILPC, they look at all parts of it.”
The KDGN team took much editing inspiration from past ILPC winners.
“I just look at what other schools and actual businesses have been doing, see what worked for them, and try to find something that’s similar but not the same,” Dev said.
But in terms of filming, KDGN faced the challenge of not having the same advantages of other schools.
“A lot of times we’re competing against other schools that not only have a larger staff, but that have the ability to go live every day,” Jacobson said. “They have the equipment and the technology to actually do a live broadcast all day, every day, and we’re kind of up against a lot of barriers because we don’t have the ability to do that.”
Despite this, the team continues to push.
“It was even mentioned in our critique that they were blown away that we were able to create what we created and not have the tools and the technology that some of these other programs have,” Jacobson said. “So I’m very proud of what our kids are able to accomplish.”
