DNN has returned with its third season premiere on September 16th, 2022. It introduced audiences to new cast members and segments replacing some fan favorites.

One of the biggest changes was the teacher behind DNN. The creator of it, former choral director and music teacher, Mr. West, left Defiance, so beloved Spanish teacher Ms. Gibson took over. Gibson teaches Spanish 1, 3, and drama. She is better known as Profe Gibson. 

In regards to some of the new segments that have been added to DNN, Gibson has said that, “everything really comes from the kids. They have all kinds of crazy ideas, I might tweak one here or there, if they have an idea that needs a little bit of development … But most, most everything that we are bringing in this year is from the students, they’ve thought about it, they’ve developed it, they worked with each other to develop it.” 

Some of these new segments include Real Wheels with senior Zac Ritchie, and Trust Fall with sophomore Baylee Ingle, which is actually a transition between segments.

Real Wheels follows Ritchie as he informs the audience about things related to cars, which can be very helpful as there are a lot of student drivers who may not know some basic information regarding their cars. In this particular episode he shows the audiences how to check their oil. 

Trust Fall follows sophomore Baylee Ingle, the sister of co-anchor Ethan Ingle. Ingle goes around the school falling in groups of people to see if anyone catches them. 

However, some things do remain the same from last year. The news segment is still anchored by senior Lydia Hernandez and senior Ethan Ingle.  

Quite a few of the cast members of DNN have now graduated from DHS, and as a result some new ones have been brought in. Senior Carter Cambell, now co-anchors the Sports segment alongside senior Peyton Coressel after Mark Jordan, the previous co-anchor, graduated. A new field reporter, senior Santiago Valdez, interviewed the Spanish teachers here at DHS about Spanish Heritage month coming up, as well as Independence Day for Mexico and Day of the Dead. 

In the end, the premiere episode was shorter than an average episode of DNN; however. that didn’t make it any less difficult for its creation. In fact it was more difficult than an average episode. Gibson had said that the first episode “was just hectic.”

They had some problems with doing sound, and running the teleprompters due to the students who had handled it in years past graduated and no one else had been taught how to do it. “Everybody was stressed out … There was a lot of tension that day everybody was just kind of frustrated that it seemed like something very simple. And it was a simple fix, but nobody knew how to do it.”

For now they have solved that problem, and in order to prevent any further problems like this in the future Gibson is making sure that “everybody is trained up and ready so that we can keep it going.” 

As had been mentioned in the start, there have been quite a lot of new members to DNN as well as a new teacher, so the students who have been with DNN for more than one year have really been stepping up. Gibson has commended the team at DNN, saying that “We have an incredible group of kids and they are super responsible and they are really proud of what they do with this. And that is really evident in the work that they put in each week.” 

The passion of these students is very much evident in DNN; it is impressive to see what students at this very high school are capable of doing. It makes the students excited to see the future of DNN this year. Gibson herself is extremely excited to “sneak the musical reveal into an episode that’s going to come on the 14th of October.” Let’s see how Gibson’s reveal of this year’s school musical will compare to West’s reveal of it last year.

Gibson has also mentioned how they still have some “cool segments that you guys haven’t seen yet. And those will be coming out over the next few episodes.” It’s probably safe to say that all the students here at DHS are excited to see what comes next.