During senior Jadyn Beeny’s junior year, Beeny wanted to be on the morning announcements. 

“[The announcements] were honestly such a big goal of mine because I love to make people laugh,” Beeny said.

Senior Keldon Holland wanted to bring something more to the morning announcements. 

“I felt that the Broadcasting class was being underutilized — often it seemed like students used it as an opportunity to slack off rather than to create meaningful content,” Holland said. “I decided I wanted to do something bigger — something that would set a new standard for MLTV. Having already spent years nurturing a YouTube channel, I wanted to channel that passion into the morning announcements, something I felt could reach more people.” 

The duo began working together on “Breaking Band” at the beginning of the 2024 – 2025 school year. 

“Keldon came to me at the beginning of this school year with the skit idea and he already had a few of the episodes planned out,” Beeny said. “It was an immediate yes from me.” 

A majority of the episodes were scripted ahead of time; however, there has been improvisation within production. 

“I remember we were scripting, brainstorming and putting all of our effort into the series,” Holland said. “We went to record, read over the script once and just winged it. Unfortunately, that just made us make an episode nowhere near the script. Thankfully we re-recorded, which was a great decision.” 

Although Beeny and Holland were the ones to develop “Breaking Band,” they weren’t the only ones involved in the production of it. Senior Issac Hiles was a co-star on the show but recently decided to go cyber. 

“I didn’t really have reasons [to go cyber],” Hiles said. “I think it might have been the stress that missing a couple days of school has caused me, and I was behind on assignments. I felt like cyber would’ve been a fresh start from that.”

Although Hiles chose to go cyber, it wasn’t a decision he made hastily. 

“I kind of let it be in the air for a couple of days and I decided on it when I found the answer that felt right,” Hiles said. “I texted everybody before and told them I felt it was better for me to go cyber. I apologized that I negatively impacted ‘Breaking Band’.”

While Hiles decision has impacted production, Beeny believes it hasn’t left a ‘negative impact.’ 

“It’s a tad bit disappointing as you would probably figure,” Beeny said. “We had an episode completely dedicated to him, and we had to change it, along with the other episodes we planned out. He [Holland] has actually already created a completely new episode idea whilst also tweaking our future episodes that were scripted.” 

Holland, although of differing views, feels that the changes made will ‘add spice to the show.’ 

“The loss of a cast member really hurt the show’s potential, as he would’ve been a key character in Jadyn’s character progression, especially in the second season,” Holland said. 

Both Beeny and Holland recognize what Hiles brought to the show. 

“The thing with Issac is he’s one of a kind, you can’t replace someone that represents a role,” Holland said. “I want Issac to still be shown in the show by going to his house and recording him. Originally we wanted to replace him, but slowly I realized how hard it would be.” 

“Honestly there is no replacing Issac, he was an important role and he is just such a good friend,” Beeny said.

During the production of “Breaking Band,” each member of the team feels they have learned valuable lessons. 

“People see your effort, and you’re not alone,” Beeny said. “When our first set of episodes aired, every morning when I stepped out of homeroom or I was walking down the hallway, people were genuinely asking me when the new episode was or if there were going to be any more episodes. People were even quoting me when they walked past me in the hallway. The support is really motivating to hear. Participating in this series is honestly one of the best things I’ve done.”

“Have fun,” Holland said. “If you don’t love what you do, are you really doing what you want to do? This is high school, not a serious production that will make or break rent.” 

“I enjoyed being part of a video project and being in a main role,” Hiles said. “I was thinking about staying in person to keep recording this. I didn’t want it to end so soon.” 

Production may look different, but Beeny believes the future holds good things in store for “Breaking Band.” 

“A legacy, even if perhaps short-lived,” Beeny said. “We plan to space out our episodes more and air till the end of the year. Momentarily, we even wrote a script for our very last episode to really brainstorm. We’ve even changed course with our original script. This series is almost a telling of our struggles throughout our high school career.