This past weekend, the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) announced its list of Fall 2021 Best of Show winners. KCBY-TV topped the list, taking first place in its category.

“I was actually at lunch with [The Sidekick adviser Chase Wofford] and some others when I found out,” KCBY adviser Irma Lazos-Kennedy said. “[Wofford] came in and told me, ‘Congratulations!’. I thought he was talking about [KCBY being named as an NSPA] Pacemaker finalist, but then he told me that we [KCBY] won Best of Show Broadcast.”

The win was for KCBY’s Show Three of the 2021-22 season, broadcasted on Oct. 7. According to Lazos-Kennedy, this is the first time a staff has won Best of Show for a fall semester broadcast.

“We typically win in the spring semester, after [the staff] has had time to get used to working together,” Lazos-Kennedy said. “That [they won in the fall semester] makes this staff really special and shows that they have potential for great success in their future endeavors.”

The winning show was CHS senior program director Conner Escobar’s first show producing as a KCBY program director.

“We’ve been at it for nine shows already, so people were starting to get drained, but Ms. K [Lazos-Kennedy] just gave us this super happy announcement, and it energized us,” Escobar said. “[And] the Best of Show award really exemplifies the hard work we put into that show. That show means a lot to me because it was our breast cancer awareness show, and I know a lot of people who have had breast cancer.”

KCBY was accompanied on the Best of Show winner list by Coppell Student Media, which placed eighth in NSPA Website (large school) Best of Show.

In addition to their Best of Show win and Pacemaker finalist status, several former KCBY staffers and members of the CHS class of 2020 are up for three categories of individual awards in the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Emmy (NATAS) competition.

Individual nominees include producers Daphne Pham, Riley Wall and Amrin Haque for Honoring Preston Point, and current broadcast engineer Robert Bizacky for Best Director and Sandesh Bharthur for Best Editor for Coppell Rewind.

“It [the Best of Show award] creates good momentum to keep on going [for the rest of the season],” CHS senior KCBY special projects director Jay Vanam said. “It was for show three, so it’s a good starting point for the year, and for more awards to come.”

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