Any school could choose to send out their announcements over the loudspeaker. But we’ve never been conventional.

CAHS’s weekly bulletin, Caiman TV, is a staple of the Caiman experience. The charismatic hosts offer their familiar introduction of “Welcome back to Caiman TV!” with smiles on their faces.

One of the most well-recognized members of the team is senior Nick Lux, who has been contributing to the class since he arrived at CAHS two years ago.

His reasons for joining? Pure coincidence.

“I had to take Study Hall for the first week of school and [the Caiman TV room] was right next to study hall,” Lux said. “And I saw my buddies Alex Redd and [senior] Chris Casey just having a blast in the class. So I … asked if I could sit in … I saw what they were doing and the type of class it was, and I just got interested.”

If anything got Lux hooked on the class, it was the appeal of being in front of the camera. “I am an actor, so I do a lot of theater and I do a lot of commercial and TV acting. So seeing that’s what Caiman TV was [got me interested],” he said. “And I’m getting to do it with my good old buddies.” 

“It’s a great melting pot. You get the work world, and you get the buddy world, and you put ‘em in like salt and pepper in a nice stew and then all [you’ve] got is just water, salt and pepper, but, for some reason, it tastes great,” he said.

According to Lux, creating content is easy when everyone involved in the process gets along well together. “I think [that with] my collaboration … an extra creative mind was added and we got to go to a level which students seemed to enjoy,” he said. “We were able to create videos that were strong and had points that we all knew we would agree on because we all think so alike. [It was] just a strong collaboration.”

Since “Caiman TV” aired its first episode in 2014, the announcements have shifted to include countless jokes, bits and short comedy sketches, even airing the occasional “SNL-themed” episode.  

Lux says that writing these is one of his favorite parts of the class. “I personally enjoy making skits out of announcements, because I do host the show a lot and read off of a little teleprompter …  but it’s just very straightforward … It’s a lot more fun to write and execute skits that are based off [things] that aren’t funny,” he said.

What will Nick Lux miss the most about Caiman TV? Well, something he likes to call “the cohort suspense.”

“[I’ll] miss wondering whether the week’s episode is going to be a complete disappointment, or ‘Wow, that was something we didn’t expect’ … sitting in cohort and waiting for the reaction.”

As with any creative pursuit, Lux acknowledges that there are flops.📰 However, he says that won’t stop them from producing a great episode the next week. “You just move on,” he said. “You recognize that [the mistake is] there and you say “OK, let’s not do that this time.”

The creative contributions of the seniors have not gone unnoticed by the other members of the Caiman TV production team.

Junior Timothy Chang, another member of the creative team and one of the weekly hosts, feels that the seniors add a certain unique style that elevates the show to a higher level. “They know how it’s done,” he said. “And they work really well together, which allows the show to be much more entertaining.”

“We’ve also gotten to see a lot of a lot of seniors with really good artistic eyes,” he added. “For example, the cyberbullying package and the Woodshop [packages] were all filmed by one of our seniors, CJ [Orndoff], and he has this … artistic eye for shots and really good technology to go with it.”

With the seniors leaving next year and new faces taking their place, Nick Lux bids a warm adieu to the remaining team. “Throughout the years, there’s been more seniors than there have been underclassmen in [the class]. When the final week comes, where it’s the seniors’ last week, and then they go away, the class is just dead because we finished the [final] episode … and it’s always very cold in there, and you just hear the air conditioning rolling because … the seniors are gone. I had to go through that for the last two years, and I am excited that you underclassmen get to experience that at my expense.”