With a new semester comes a new cast of PTV and a fresh selection of skits. This year, the revival of PTV has many students looking forward to watching the weekly announcements. This is in large part due to the creativity and humor of seniors Nick Coan, Lukas McClory, and Toby Williams, who are in charge of the counselor announcements. With their various contests, challenges, and interviews that play out as they give the week’s announcements, these three have turned a seemingly dry and redundant laundry list of reminders for already stressed-out students into a highly anticipated highlight of many students’ Wednesdays. 

The creativity of these videos has many students wondering where McClory, Coan, and Williams get their ideas. The “PTV Boys,” as they call themselves, explained that they get lots of inspiration from Youtube channels including the Nelk Boys channel ─ a channel known mainly for their prank videos, which are similar to the mic’d up versions where the Youtubers pull pranks while hooked up to microphones so you can hear the conversation. They also made sure to clarify that all of their videos are original and planned entirely by them, they simply get inspiration from these channels. 

When asked about the creative process behind these videos, the PTV Boys explained that once they think of a skit, they sit down and plan it all out first. Coan and McClory are usually the ones in front of the camera, while Williams handles the filming and editing. “Since most of our skits are done off-campus, we usually have to meet up after school to film them. Then I take the footage home and edit it,” Williams explained. Once it is edited, the team meets up again during class to review and make some final changes. They also explained that they are structuring their videos around certain themes. “The first two were eating challenges and then these next two are “mic’d up” and then we have some more ideas for the upcoming weeks,” Williams mentioned. 

The PTV Boys discussed that one of their biggest struggles is keeping their videos within the one minute time limit. “We’re only allowed to have one minute per week, which really limits our artistic capabilities,” said McClory. He went on to discuss that each week they extend the duration of the video by a few seconds, as there is too much content to just fit in one minute. Additionally, they’ve run into a few problems regarding their content. The PTV episode that aired on Wednesday, September 25th contained a counselor announcement segment that seemed all too much like the previous years ─ the PTV members sitting in front of a green screen listing off the week’s announcements. This was because the original video they had planned to air that week was cut. “It was a chill hot tub sesh with the boys with some spikeball but it got cut because our shirts were off. Apparently, we gotta keep the tarps on for PTV,” Coan explained. In all of their videos, the PTV Boys have to walk a fine line between making videos that they think will be a hit and making sure they are completely school appropriate. 

The boys were hesitant to share any of their future ideas for videos, due to the need to keep them secretive and original, but they did promise to share sneak peeks, bloopers and behind the scenes videos on their Instagram page: @ptvboyz. Thanks to the creativity and humor of these seniors, PTV is making a strong comeback.