Southeastern student named state's top student broadcaster
Thursday, June 15, 2023
by: Tonya Lowentritt 
STATE'S BEST STUDENT BROADCASTER- Southeastern Louisiana University student Taylor Nettle of Lacombe was named 2023 Student Broadcaster of the Year in Television by the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters recently. A former sports reporter, anchor, sideline reporter, and studio director for the Southeastern Channel’s national award-winning ESPN game broadcasts and weekly sportscasts, Nettle is the seventh Southeastern Channel student to win the award in the 10 years it has been given by the LAB.
HAMMOND – For the seventh time in the past 10 years, a Southeastern Louisiana
University student has been named the state’s top student broadcaster.
Taylor Nettle, a student sports reporter from Lacombe, has been named 2023 Louisiana
Student Broadcaster of the Year in Television by the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters.
“I’m blessed and so grateful for what the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters
has seen in me, what they see in my potential, and what I can become,” Nettle said.
“It means a lot to know that I was selected for this honorable award for the whole
state of Louisiana, and I am excited to see what the future holds.”
Nettle was selected from all college television students throughout the state
by the LAB, made up of all television and radio professionals and stations in Louisiana.
She was honored at the LAB’s annual Prestige Awards luncheon in Baton Rouge recently.
“The LAB is one of the most prestigious organizations, and it’s really the best
of the best,” Nettle said. “Going to an event like that, where it’s all major radio
stations and TV stations and professionals in the industry, when you walk into the
room you are surrounded by people who’ve been in this industry, some for maybe 50
years.”
A Southeastern Channel student has won the award in all but three years since
the award was established in 2014.
“It’s a great honor that once again the Southeastern Channel has produced the
top student broadcaster in Louisiana,” said Rick Settoon, Southeastern Channel general
manager. “We’re especially thrilled for Taylor and so proud of her. She’s probably
the most multi-skilled and talented student that we’ve ever had at the Southeastern
Channel, which is saying a lot. She’s done it all- sports, news, entertainment shows,
films, commercials- and she’s done it in every position as a reporter, anchor, writer,
producer, remote and live director, actress, videographer, editor, and animator- all
at an outstanding level.”
Nettle, who graduated this May as a communication major in television/multimedia
journalism, has already been hired as a sports reporter for KTAL-TV Ch. 6 (NBC) in
Shreveport, La., the top-rated sports station in the Shreveport area market. She will
begin in June reporting on sports in the tri-state region for almost one million viewers
daily in the Nielsen-rated market size of 89, or almost 400,000 homes.
“I am so excited for this opportunity because I’m going to be covering three
different states- Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana- three D-1 universities, and a ton of
high school sports, along with the Cowboys and the Saints,” Nettle said. “I really
couldn’t ask for better sports to cover.”
“And on top of that, I feel so prepared for this,” she continued. “Of course,
there is the nervousness of starting out in a new place and a new job and just overall
being in the real world. But the amount of experience that I’ve had throughout my
time in college and the ways that I’ve grown and been exposed to real-world situations
and real-life situations, I feel way more prepared than I could have ever imagined
to pursue this career and start my job at a station in a large market in Louisiana.”
The Southeastern Channel has won over 500 national, international, regional and
state awards in the past 20 years, including 23 awards from the Emmys. The channel
can be seen on Spectrum 199 in Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, Livingston and St. Helena
parishes and at mthermonwebTV.com in Washington Parish. The channel’s live 24/7 webcast
can be seen on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, the Spectrum App, and thesoutheasternchannel.com
which includes video on demand. The Southeastern Channel can also be accessed on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
