Baker University’s student radio and television stations, KNBU-FM and KNBU-TV, won five awards from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters.

After winning seven awards last year, Baker brought home another handful of second-place finishes.

The Kansas Association of Broadcasters does not differentiate its categories by institution sizes, meaning Baker competed against the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and other larger schools.

“Those schools have a lot more money than we do, they have the equipment and they have a lot more numbers than we do,” Brad Barnes, KNBU-TV and KNBU-FM station manger, said. “This shows that we can compete with them and can compete with the top talent in the state.”

Assistant Station Manager Xiomara Nunez attributes KNBU’s success against larger institutions to the experience staff members earn early in their college careers.

“Every one starts off from freshman year, they get hands-on experience, learn all the editing skills and put together their stories,” Nunez said. “So once they get into more of the practice, they have these great pieces put together when people at larger schools don’t have as much time.”

The KNBU-TV staff was recognized for its taped newscast and KNBU-FM placed second in the promotional event category for its work on the Baldwin City Breakdown II.

The event provided free music for students and community members and raised 130 items for the Baldwin City Food Pantry.

“That was an event that took a lot of planning,” Barnes said. “We were really stressed about it. We had about 15 people in the class and everybody had different jobs. I thought it went pretty well, but we had to change that event in the middle of the afternoon because it was raining outside … and we found a way to make it happen.”

In addition to the staff recognition, Barnes also won a pair of individual awards in the sportscast and hard news package categories. In the news piece, he reported on the plumbing and water problems in Gessner Hall<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36DkBI-FSJI">water problems in Gessner Hall</a> during the spring of 2012. during the spring of 2012. water problems in Gessner Hall during the spring of 2012.

Alumni Patrick Mirch and Alix Schiraldi also won for their work on a 30-second commercial for the Baker Orange student newspaper.

The commercial highlighted the newspaper’s online first philosophy and used a traditional street corner paperboy as its backdrop.

“It was just one of those things that we had been talking about it and we were trying to figure out a good plan and then it just kind of hit both of us ‘oh this is what we should do,'” Mirch said.