RailsTV Receives Special Donation to Keep Program Alive

The program has been broadcasting games for the Rails for the past three years.

PROCTOR, Minn. – RailsTV has been broadcasting games for Proctor High school for the past three years. They do over 30 games each season from football to basketball.

“We’ve had god–parents from Washington. We’ve had service members that are stationed overseas get to watch their kids do band, theater, choir or sports and it’s just been really awesome,” head instructor Ted Kiefat said.

Kiefat and his entirely student–run program has evolved from a small club to a full course at the school.

“I came in to learn some things about editing, but turns out it was just ten times more awesome thing that had exposure for students. I found out that parents can watch from at home,” junior Scott Bodell said.

“Trying to get them to understand from the very beginning of grabbing that concept and how they’re going to develop it. Putting their storyboard together, planning how their going to do it and getting it out in front and then produce it and edit it. We’re going from A to Z in 86 days,” said Kiefat.

The AV Broadcasting class at Proctor High School not only gives students a chance to work behind the camera, but in front of it as well.

“They’re learning every aspect. And they rotate positions at every broadcast so they get that real-world feel of what it is,” said Kiefat.

But the program recently hit a snag. Their Tri-Caster, a centralized device essential to the broadcast, broke down, threatening the future of RailsTV. After finding a new one, something amazing happened.

“One of our student’s grandparents contacted us and talked to me at a basketball game. They live in the cities and they love watching their granddaughter play. And they said they’d like to make a donation to the program. They said, “We want to pay to buy that machine fully outright for you.” There were no words,” Kiefat said.

“It’s something new and it makes our broadcast even better because we have more that we can do with them, like with scoreboards, that we couldn’t do as easily with the Tri-Caster. This machine is really great,” said junior Ben Nylund.

The donors were Rob and Barb Challer, the grandparents of Rails standout athlete Sam Pogatchnik, as they were honored last week before the Oroctor girls basketball game.

“To know that they are willing to invest into that and what you’re doing means that much to them, it’s just an amazing feeling to know that you are a part of that,” Bodell said.

“So what we’ve done is we’re going to be naming our studio “The Rob and Barb Schaller Studio” here at the school just to show them how important their donation really was,” said Kiefat.

Now that RailsTV is back up and running. The future is looking bright for the program which hopes to increase in size which will only help improve the quality of the live broadcasts.