By Paul Westmoore
Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS —
April M. Wheaton and Vincent L. Perricelli may be obsessed with television, but they never could be considered couch potatoes.
The two Niagara Falls High School seniors are just too busy.
Both 17, Wheaton and Perricelli work anywhere from 25 to 30 hours a week running the school’s cable television station — Our Schools Channel, OSC 21 — making sure a wide range of news, sports and other shows are created, produced and on the air seven days a week.
“It’s like a job. A really fun job that I don’t get paid for with money. I get paid with knowledge,” said Wheaton. “I mean, how many kids can say they know how to run a TV station?”
Media Education Director Richard M. Meranto, the teacher responsible for OSC-21, said Wheaton and Perricelli are two of the best interns he has ever appointed to run the station since the Niagara Falls School District took it over in 2004.
“They are better and more experienced,” and know almost everything that’s needed to run a television station both on the air and behind the scenes, he said.
Both students said they started out as freshmen doing little jobs, worked hard and gradually learned how to do almost everything through their junior year of high school including how to use almost all the station’s hi-tech equipment such as high-definition cameras and all the other digital computer equipment. They even run auditions, select and train the station’s student on-air talent, set up schedules, and assign other students to do the various jobs needed to make the OSC-21 work.
They also complement each other because Perricelli gravitated towards sports programming and coverage while Wheaton takes care of news — two major areas of station programming — while both help out with different aspects of programming and a lot of other work that isn’t necessarily used on the air.
For example, Perricelli said he’s in the studio about four hours a day carrying out various duties such as taping new shows like “People and Possibilities” which he produces and directs for the Niagara Falls Housing Authority. That show involves authority officials providing information about what’s going on at NFHA projects and the discussion of other issues. He also produces and is on camera for the Monday night sports talk show “Students Speaking Sports Live,” which focuses on the national sports scene. He does the play-by-play for OSC-21 coverage of various school varsity sports games such as Wolverine basketball.
“It may not look like it, but it’s actually a lot of work,” Perricelli said of the shows he produces and stars on. “The toughest part of doing the sports talk show and calling the games is the preparation. ... You have to know what you’re talking about. You can’t just come out there and wing it.”
Wheaton said her story is much the same.
“One of the first things I did (as a freshman) was the titles — the printed words that appear on the TV screen for the morning news show, ‘High School Live’ — on the computer,” Wheaton said. “It seems like a really unimportant job but I guess you have to start somewhere and I know it’s important because every little thing you see on the broadcast makes a show better if it’s done right.”
After that, she got into working on writing the morning show’s script and gradually branched off into doing videos as her workload increased over the years.
“Now I can run almost everything including most of the equipment and I’m much more involved in anchoring,” she said. “I’m head anchor on ‘High School Live’ and as an intern I audition, evaluate, pick and train the anchors to do the show. I also make the schedules.”
In addition to doing a lot behind the scenes, Wheaton produces and stars on two of her own shows — “High School Report,” a half-hour show which discusses everything that’s going on around school, and “High School Health Update” with an area nurse that discusses health issues which interest students.
“We’ve done shows on tanning, alcohol and drugs, and swine flu,” she said. “The show doesn’t preach. It just gives the facts about the impact these things have on your body.”
She said working at the OSC is a great experience.
“When I walk out the studio door, I always think I’m glad I have this in high school,” Wheaton said. “I want to come to school everyday just for this. I like my other subjects, but I’d much rather do this.”
While she doesn’t know exactly what she’ll be doing after college, Wheaton said she imagines it will involve television, either in “news production or television production.” She expects to major in media production next year at either Buffalo State College or Fredonia State College.
Perricelli said he also intends to pursue a broadcasting career and will take that next step at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, where he is going on a baseball scholarship. Like Wheaton, Perricelli said going to Niagara Falls High School has been fun.
“It’s so much different than any other school around here because it provides you with a chance to do something that not many people get to do,” he said. “How many kids can say they ran a real television show at school today?”
