Written by Sara J Kyle
A group of Harding students involved in the National Broadcasting Society received national recognition for their work in the television and radio broadcast industries.
The National Broadcasting Society (NBS) traveled to New York City the weekend of March 27 to formally accept the awards at the annual NBS National Convention.
Students used productions made through Harding’s TV 16 and KVHU as submissions for the convention.
NBS president Rachel Gardner and member Kyle Dismuke won the national award in the Live Performance category after submitting the finale of last year’s Spring Sing show, a task NBS performs each year.
Dismuke and additional members April McCall and Josh Morgan won the national award for Industrial, Instructional and Promotional video after recording and composing a video for Searcy’s Habitat for Humanity.
McCall was also finalist for Radio Documentary. NBS member Jack Porter was a finalist for Dramatic Script.
Awards aside, Gardner says the convention is beneficial because it allows students to see the workforce they will enter after graduation, and decided exactly which field of broadcast they would like to pursue and the sacrifices they are willing to make.
“The broadcast industry is rough. It’s a lot of sacrifices. You sacrifice a lot of your time…in another degree, sacrificing your social life, which can lead to sacrificing relationships with a boyfriend or girlfriend and having kids. So every year I learn more of what I’m not willing to give up. It’s really helped me,” Gardner said.
Porter said the group was able to see the reality of the professional world after experiencing the environment in New York City, specifically a struggling filmmaker who tried to sell the students a video he had made for $1 on the Subway.
“You always assume, ‘If you want to be a filmmaker, go to New York or go to L.A. and it’s going to happen.’ But to see people who are there and trying to do it, and they’re struggling, it really makes your re-think whether or not this is a good choice,” Porter said.
Gardner and Porter said they could see a substantial difference between the NBS group from Harding and those from other schools. While other NBS members spent most of their free time in the bars or at “partying it up,” Gardner said the group chose to spend their time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Modern Museum of Art, and Broadway.
Gardner also noted a difference in morals taught at Harding and those taught at the convention, specifically a women who told her students to be prepared to do whatever they needed to do to get ahead in the professional world, even up to sleeping with a station manager.
“I think it’s great [to be exposed to that] because we are going to be walking in to a world after we graduate where people sleep with the station manager to get a job, and you have to know that that may be an expectation for you, and how you’re going to handle that world dilemma,” Gardner said.
The National Broadcasting Society meets every other Thursday.
