It is conference hour and classrooms are dark, projectors bright with the tagline: “Perry Prime Time: Not the news you want, the news you need.” After years of being strictly a student-news show, the premise has changed from CNN’s “Situation Room” to one more comparable to “SNL’s Weekend Update, complete with Will Farrell parodies.

Now viewers are left wondering: what is news and what is a joke?

TV Productions class, led by teacher Brian Bernier, has six returning members this year, including seniors Caleb Ragatz, Jordan Howard, Max Mills, Austin Roccia, Parker Corey and Gavin Witt. Senior Jackson Spilsbury is in his first year in the class and has already earned an anchor position.

“Perry Prime Time” debuted soon after the school opened in 2007 with the purpose of producing news for PHS students. Talking about their current goals, Howard said, “We want to bring something that the students would enjoy.”

The majority of the crew has been in TV productions class for three or more years. While his peers call him “the rookie,” senior Jackson Spilsbury has earned his spot at “Prime Time” based on his abilities in a workshop.

“I build a lot of our video equipment,” Spilsbury said. “I built the anchor desk, part of the set …a camera crane, (and) a car mount.”

Those tools, according to Howard – who has been in the class since his freshman year – really have improved the quality of the video.

“He had the ability to create what we wanted for the show,” Howard said. “We’ve done videos with Jackson before; he is definitely a good addition.”

This is not the first time Howard and Spilsbury have created videos together.

“It started with my English class where we always made videos,” Spilsbury said.

With that history of making videos for fun, coupled with the skills they’ve learned in class, the group felt like this year was time to make a change.

Bernier said, “we always wanted to do something that’s news entertainment.”  Therefore, the show nmake the shift to a parody news show.

“The fact that there’s not a whole lot of news left anymore is the reason why I let them do what they’re doing,” Bernier said. When the first episode aired in August, a lot of people were confused – they were not expecting a comedy.

Despite the confusion, they have over 1,500 views on their Aug. 19 edition and over 1,100 on their Sept. 3 episode, and the response has been very positive.

“it has a new dimension this year that is more of what people like,” senior Caitlin Shiete said. “I like the parodies [better than the old news.]”

Part of the revamped “Prime Time” is their new Twitter page, which, as of press time, had 539 followers.

The group uses their twitter page to report campus news and tell a joke or two.

However, some of “Prime Time’s” tweets have confused people – they are often funny, like when they claimed that “Hollywood makeup artists to help” freshmen look “old enough to be in high school.”

To most people, that was clearly a joke. However, when they blend the funny tweets with real news such as their football scores and criticisms of StuGo, people can get confused.

While Bernier gives students the same freedom to tweet jokes as a way to mock the media, he noted that his students are always learning, saying: “We’ve talked about some of the stuff that they are putting on there.”

While he said, “[The students] know from past experience that they have to mellow out what they put out there,” he is placing that responsibility entirely on the students, who all have access to the account.

Never the less, nobody can dispute that the show is more popular than ever before.

“Our (show) is probably one of the better ones around,” principal Dan Serrano said.

StuGo vice president Lester Nnagbo agrees. ”It’s definitely the best thing that’s hit our school in a long time.”

The final episode of the quarter is slated to air during the final week of September on their Vimeo web site.