By MARGA LINCLON - Independent Record - 04/04/08

TOWNSEND — The Bulldog radio station, KDGZ, proved top dog in Montana, fetching a prestigious AARP education award and a $10,000 cash prize.

Townsend Schools beat out 17 other competitors, when AARP selected the school’s radio program as the outstanding innovative educational program in Montana this year.

The AARP Ethel Percy Andrus Legacy Award for Innovation will be presented Tuesday at an all-school assembly and at a school board meeting that evening.

The award recognizes one outstanding educational program in each state.

KDGZ (K-Dogs), which started Oct. 6, 2005, is a low-power, 100-watt FM radio station operated by Broadwater High School.

Del Lonnquist, a member of the AARP selection committee, said committee members all gave high ratings to the Townsend program.

“This application was especially good,” he said. They liked that the students worked on the radio programming and provided “a real valuable service to the whole Townsend School District.”

“It’s a pretty neat program,” he said, referring to the radio station’s creation.

KDGZ, a collaboration between the school district and local disaster and emergency services, also provides emergency announcements.

Its creation grew out of discussions following the 2000 wildfires. At that time county emergency personnel realized they had no quick and effective means to communicate with the county’s 4,300 residents.

This fall, the school offered its first radio class. And it just whetted the students’ creative appetites.

They learned to use a radio software program, GoldWave, researched and recorded Today in History news briefs and announced school menus and school and community calendar events. They also wrote and recorded sponsor ads.

Much of the station’s programming is classic country and western that is fed to the station’s receiver from another radio station.

However, students have ideas for expanding the music options as well as community programming.

They’d like to broadcast school board meetings, play new music, and do talk show interviews.

“We had ideas,” said Stephanie Hansen. “We wanted to do our own kind of game show.”

Some ideas ran into copyright problems, others require more sophisticated software and equipment.

The class “was just an experiment,” said teacher Kimberly Leslie. “I think the opportunities for this are infinite.

“We’re trying to provide a community service and thinking of things the community would be interested in hearing.”

“One of the things they learned was a lot of local history ... and what you actually sound like,” said Leslie.

They also learned better speaking, communication and editing skills and “gained a better understanding of broadcasting and how it can be beneficial to the community,” Leslie said.

“We use it for communicating with the school and with the community,” said Mia Whitfield, the school-to-work coordinator.

“It’s the school’s way of letting people know what’s going on.”

One English class recorded their original poems that they aired on the radio.

KDGZ also offers live broadcasts of Bulldog boys and girls away basketball games by community member Kelly Flynn.

And when blizzard conditions closed U.S. Highway 12/287 in January, KDGZ warned drivers to stay home.

“Now that we have some money, we could get more equipment,” said Whitfield. “We had very limited software and equipment.”

Some grant money could also go to training both the teacher and students and pay for field trips to radio stations.

“We’d like to keep expanding what we’re doing,” she said. “It (the award) will help make the radio station better.”

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/04/04/weekly_features/neighbors/top/100ne_080404_radio.txt