During December 2009, the Arlington Career Center (Arlington, VA) accepted its first place victory prize for winning the 2009 SkillsUSA National Broadcast News competition.

Instructor Tom O’Day and his students won an EZNews Newscast Production System which was donated by Automated Data Systems. The EZNews prized included both the software installation onto existing computers already in place at the school and a complete on-site user training session for all teachers and students at the Arlington Career Center.

As the Arlington Career Center’s 2010 SkillsUSA team prepares to defend its national title this spring, EZNews will be used in the studio/control room for a variety of live television/video productions including a newscast. EZNews will also be used as an in class instructional tool for script writing, production cues, complete show building/planning, director training, teleprompter operation and much more.

The Arlington Career Center’s Television & Multimedia program has won numerous regional and national student and teacher awards thanks to a strong competency base curriculum and teaching team of Tom O’Day, John Woodhead, David Welsh and Elise Krueger. Upon completion of the EZNews training session, Arlington Career Center’s Principal Jerry Caputo writes, “…We are very, very proud of our TV Program and look forward to a continued partnership with EZNews.”

Your school’s newscast production is an exciting event that requires coordinated planning, preparation and execution. If you plan to have a great school newscast, a number of excellent high school broadcast programs around the country are using the EZNews Newsroom System for their newscasts and other shows.

With current demands placed on broadcast instructors and the limited time available for you to prepare your students, the best way to ensure that a well established news gathering and news production process is followed by everyone on your news team is the implementation of, the established standard for newscast production, a Newsroom Computer System (NCS). In fact, a NCS is the only choice of serious and competitive broadcast programs because these productions require a uniquely efficient, effective and structured workflow that cannot be well performed by unconnected tools.

For educators, your NCS must be both easy to learn and easy to use for the average student because, in a relatively small amount of time, all members of your news team and production crew must be ready to fulfill their rolls and cooperate to produce a well executed and informative program. Your NCS must be able to run on standard and readily available “off the shelf” computers, which in most cases, are already available and in place at your school. Finally, you NCS must be flexible enough for use in both studio production and in-class instruction.

For productions, your NCS must properly facilitate all of the basic integrated newscast planning and production functions including story assignments, script writing/approval/printing, rundown building, show and segment timing, producing, directing, teleprompting and complete show archiving as well as optional interfaces with common production devices such as broadcast quality character generator (CG) solutions.

In the classroom, your NCS must allows instructors to teach and students to practice specific broadcast news skills such as news writing, show building and other required production skills in an open environment.

To inquire about EZNews for your newscasts and other show productions, we encourage you to visit the EZNews website: www.eznews.com, call them toll free at (888) 326-1415 or visit with an EZNews representative in person at any number of upcoming educational trade shows this year. They can answer your questions, provide you with an EZNews Quote specific to your school’s requirements or even schedule an individual EZNews demonstration for you at your school.