Hawk Talk is the daily morning announcements broadcast at River Hill High School. It has had a long and storied history, but it was not always the same show you see today.
When River Hill first opened in 1996, the daily announcements were done over the public address system, and the televised broadcast, titled The River Hill Report, was a monthly affair lasting anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes during the advisory period. This earlier show was a series of pre-produced feature segments such as dance footage, event highlights, or in-depth interviews. The anchors were merely narrators for the transitions between these taped features, and for the first couple of years, their parts were also recorded ahead of time.
Then in 1998, anchors Stephanie Waters and Larisa Stahl went live for the first time. The following year, correspondents were added and soon included a feature correspondent, an arts correspondent, and two sports correspondents. The show quickly became popular enough to inspire teacher Terry Burks to come up with her own man-on-the-street interview segment called Hawk Talk, featuring two students she recruited for the job, Erica Plaxen and Tiffany Underwood. The name was catchy, and thus the "Hawk Talk" correspondent became a permanent position. At its height, The River Hill Report included an annual April Fools episode, in which all features were fake, a team of reporters and editors producing segments, and an enthusiastic student audience.
Unfortunately, increased demand on the advisory schedule each year began to decrease the number of broadcasts. While The River Hill Report aired ten times in 1998-99, it only aired six times in 2002-03. In 2003-04, the airwaves went dark. The Broadcasting Club, a student club attempting to start a radio broadcast, took over the morning announcements by doing a dynamic daily show over the PA, but their tenure was short-lived as their sponsor and a key student leader left River Hill in June of 2004.
Principal Bill Ryan arrived in July of that year and asked media specialist, Michael Ahr, to do a live daily televised broadcast, something no other Howard County high school had done or does to this day. Because the seven minute broadcast format was so different from The River Hill Report, especially in that only "talking head" announcements were read and few pre-produced segments were aired, the catchy name Hawk Talk was resurrected instead. Two anchors were recruited, and the television production class, then taught by Tina Boyle, ran the equipment as crew.
In 2005-06, the TV class continued to run crew and two additional anchors were added on an alternating schedule. The following year, crew members were recruited from the general student populace and alternate anchors came on the scene to help with the demanding daily schedule. But it wasn't until 2008-09 that Hawk Talk finally found its identity. A combination of luck and savvy recruiting brought some of the best anchors in years along with a crew of young, enthusiastic eager beavers who brought back the professionalism of a fully-featured show. An opening credits sequence (something not seen since The River Hill Report) and 9/11 tribute raised eyebrows, and a new advice feature, "Ask Jack," opened the door for others to produce pre-recorded segments. Hawk Talk continues to grow and plans to reach a wider audience here on the web and perhaps even in advisory classes where it hopes to create a foothold for longer news features, perhaps even reviving the name of its sister show, The River Hill Report.
