Revolutionizing Bomber Gameday Experience: A Look into Tait Meyer and the Atomic TV Team - By Colson Mackey

After the pandemic hit in 2020, the idea of online broadcasting services has grown rapidly in sports on every level because the fans weren’t allowed to come to the games.  However, at the high school level, nobody broadcasts better than Tait Meyer and the Atomic TV team at Richland High School. From football to basketball to baseball and any other sport they can, Atomic TV does a great job setting up and filming a game; it is something like you would see on ESPN. There are live broadcasters, pictures of the players, and up to 6 high-quality cameras filming from different angles across the field or court. Even with instant replays of key moments during the game, this is something special to the already amazing Richland High culture. Each game averages around 400-500 viewers at one time, and close to 1800 people tuned in at one point during the game. But the mastermind behind it all is Richland alum Tait Meyer.  

Tait Meyer graduated from Richland High School in 2011; he is the definition of Bomber pride. He teaches TV broadcasting to kids, and he has a passion for producing segments at RHS for our school news, which is also on Atomic TV.  When he was a student at Richland, Meyer was the statistician for the famous Richland basketball team under Earl Streufert for 4 years. He also kept the scorebook for the Richland Baseball team for 3 years, winning the state championship in 2009. Although he coaches the Bomber football team, this doesn't stop him from setting up every game on Atomic TV before he needs to get ready to coach the Bombers. Tait Meyer has always had a passion for this kind of thing, and luckily, he could take the reins of Atomic TV a couple of years ago and turn the program into exactly what he imagined it to become.  

I asked Meyer a few questions about his passion for Atomic TV and some of his goals moving forward. I asked him how he first came to want to start broadcasting at Richland High School? Meyer told me about how he would watch the beginnings of Atomic TV back when Shawn Murphy started the channel when Meyer was still in college, keeping up with the basketball and football teams. Meyer brought sports broadcasting over to Hanford before he eventually got his gig at the school where he knew he belonged. Meyer was offered a job teaching broadcasting at Richland as a class, and then, as Murphy started to take a step back, he stepped into the role of covering the sporting events at Richland while teaching all the broadcasting classes at the high school. I then asked him about some goals he has for the channel, and he explained to me that he hopes to expand the program to around 12-15 kids to help broadcast the games rather than the normal 6 people. He also hopes to have a broadcast center with producers and broadcasters running the program from there. He told me he hopes to cover the state football championships in the upcoming years as well.  

I also interviewed a new member of the team, senior Rylan Hubbard, and asked him a few questions about his thoughts so far into the year being a part of Atomic TV. He told me that he loves the environment, he loves everyone he works with, and he enjoys what he does for the school. I asked Rylan about what he hopes to do for Atomic TV, and he explained to me that he is excited to announce the state basketball games in Tacoma once March rolls around. 

The team consists of Tait, his brother Jared, and a group of eight students every year. These kids will set up the cameras and microphones all around wherever the game will be played. Something special that the team does also is allow high school kids to explore commentating on the games. Former member of Atomic TV Max Schuster was the first commentator for Richland sporting events on Atomic TV, and he was a key factor in the boosted success of the channel and its popularity. Since he graduated, we now have Rylan Hubbard and Michael Revell announcing the home games for Richland Football. Behind the scenes, there are also key members of the team, like Grady Weld and Weston Freeze, who oversee setting up the broadcast before and after every game that is broadcast as the channel grows on Atomic TV. They run the cameras during the event as well and make sure everything runs smoothly. 

The Atomic TV team has been very successful in their efforts to produce a show. They have gained such recognition that they have been recruited by the WIAA to broadcast the last two 3A/4A state basketball tournaments in the Tacoma Dome and the 3A/4A state baseball tournaments at Gesa stadium in Pasco. But this is just the beginning for Atomic TV, as the channel grows Tait Meyer hopes to inspire more and more kids to come join the team as they book bigger sporting events in front of bigger audiences around Washington State high school athletics.