Channel 01 · Statewide · Two-way
Dakar Live broadcasts instruction into counselor-led classrooms across California — and the classroom broadcasts back. Programming, competitive challenges, merit scholarships, and a direct line from a lesson to a creative tech career.
What’s expected — apprentices cut a sizzle reel like this one.
As seen in Los Angeles Times · Second Opinion
00 — The unmet need
Young Americans are losing faith in AI — and the reason is the job they were going to start with. They are entering the labour market at the exact moment employers began automating the junior roles that have always turned a graduate into a professional. The bottom rung is being pulled up before they can reach it, and they know it.
Pew Research Center, “Young adults in the U.S. are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs”, 18 August 2026 — survey of 3,488 US adults, 22–28 June 2026. Further reading: Brookings · Bloomberg · Axios. Pew also finds under-30s largely expect AI to make connection and creativity harder to come by.
That is the problem the Dakar Foundation exists to answer, and the answer is not reassurance — it is a rung they can actually stand on. Los Angeles is not short of curriculum, and it is not short of young people who want the work. What almost nobody operates is the line between them — the connective tissue that carries a particular student from a particular lesson into a particular hire. That line is the biggest unmet need in the region, and it is the one Dakar Live is built to run end to end.
Dakar sizzle reel — Red Cinema Camera Showcase @ Hartbeat Studio.
An apprenticeship answers the fear directly. Hours are logged, not promised. The credit is real, the deadline is real, and the skill belongs to the person who earned it whatever the tools do next. That is where inspiration, ambition and discipline come from for a homegrown workforce — not from being told the technology is safe, but from being handed work that counts.
Broadcast and media-engineering courseware mapped to the roles the 2028 Games actually staff — RF, spectrum coordination, fibre and transmission, network operations, media asset management. Aimed at degree and adjacent certificate pathways alike, across the feeder institutions in the LA28 geography.
Pre-production on location — Pre-Production, with Hector, Sunny, Malindu and Patrick.
The reasoning layer runs on NVIDIA’s Nemotron models, reading the region’s education and workforce data to source applicants inside the LA28 geography — surfacing people who are already close to a role, instead of waiting for them to find the posting themselves.
Filmed by Dakar at NVIDIA’s SIGGRAPH booth, 21 July — Allen Bourgoyne, Director of Product Marketing, NVIDIA. Not an endorsement, sponsorship or partnership; NVIDIA is named here as the technology in the stack.
Placement into the broadcast operations the Games bring to Los Angeles. Two campuses, two different jobs. The International Broadcast Center (IBC) sits at Warner Bros. Studios’ The Ranch Lot in the Burbank Zone — the global headquarters for the rights holders who distribute Games coverage worldwide.
Illustrative — the International Broadcast Centre for Milano Cortina 2026, not LA28. Video by IOC Media / Olympic Broadcasting Services. Dakar Live holds no agreement, access or official role with the IOC, OBS or LA28.
Our lead designer for training is Louis Libin, Sinclair’s VP of spectrum policy and engineering and the FCC’s designated special frequency coordinator for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — three decades coordinating spectrum for presidential inaugurations, political conventions and major sporting events. His own standing, not a Dakar affiliation with Sinclair, the FCC or FIFA. Above: Libin on spectrum allocation and ATSC 3.0.
The Main Press Center (MPC) sits at Hollywood Park Studios in the Inglewood Zone — the base for accredited press and live broadcast stand-ups. And into the permanent industry that outlasts them.
Where placement actually happens — Ted Milner of Executive Temps, a Hollywood placement specialist and an advisor to Dakar.
Target feeder institutions — LA28 geography
Universities & research
LARC 19 colleges — degree and adjacent certificate pathways
Secondary
The pipeline starts before college — San Pedro High School sits in it alongside the universities. And four of these colleges are LARC 19 members, which makes the whole arc a single line: an adjacent certificate at the college → that college’s own channel on the network → a placement in the broadcast operations the Games bring to Los Angeles. The same colleges that supply the talent get the station ID. See the station IDs →
A Dakar Foundation network
Dakar Live is the broadcast arm of the Dakar Foundation — the Los Angeles nonprofit, founded by Kevin Clark, that trains young people for real media and broadcast-engineering careers. The Foundation is managing partner of the network: it holds the federal registered-apprenticeship standing the hours are logged against, and it runs the classroom-to-career pathway the programming feeds.
Calendar
Where the two-way signal goes next — and where it has already been. Every entry is a real date with a real room behind it.
Featuring X. EyeeChief executive, Malo Santo
Thu 17 – Sat 19 September 2026 · Los Angeles Southwest College
Info session Thu 17 Sept · 1:00–2:00 pm · SOCTE 127 (MPR)
Our pilot project — a three-day run at the Business and AI Career Summit, where the two-way format meets the room it was built for: students exploring careers, industry professionals in front of them, and AI treated as the thing changing the job rather than the thing replacing it.
Supporting media — X. Eyee on CNBC’s Power Lunch, “Malo Santo CEO on the risks and rewards of AI.” Video by CNBC Television, whose broadcast it is. Dakar Live is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by CNBC.
Fri 8 May 2026 · Oracle’s Santa Monica campus
Behind the scenes — ORACLE DTD BTS, from the day itself.
The apprenticeship team produced and streamed an eight-hour master class, “Unlocking AI Essentials for Beginners” — staged with Los Angeles County’s Internal Services Department, its Delete The Divide initiative, Learn Basic Tech and KTLA’s Rich DeMuro. Apprentices ran the signal chain on RED Komodo and RED Scarlett cinema cameras and carried the broadcast live over 5G, and the footage is being cut into a mini-documentary. The day closed with a laptop giveaway.
01 — Programming
Every strand is built to be watched in a room with a counselor in it, not alone on a phone. Series run to a term, each episode ends in something the class does together, and the schedule is published so a college can timetable against it.
Studio A · Strand 01
Broadcast into a scheduled class with a counselor present, so the room can stop the tape and ask.
Every broadcast is archived to the strand so a student who missed the room isn't behind the cohort.
Employers appear live and say what they actually screen for, to the people about to apply.
Challenge 04 · Production02 — Challenges
Challenges are set on air and answered by cohorts. The work is real — a spot, a package, a build — judged by people who hire, and the strongest entries become the next term's teaching material. A portfolio comes out the other end whether or not you place.
03 — Scholarship
Scholarship is awarded against work done on air, not against an essay about potential. Judges see the same output an employer would. Awards are published with the criteria that produced them, so the next cohort knows exactly what the bar is.
Merit award
Engineering bay · Apprentice crew04 — Workforce
Dakar Live is a working television operation, so the apprentices are the crew. The same hours that put a broadcast on air are logged against a registered apprenticeship — real signal chains, real deadlines, real credits. That is the difference between a graduate who has read about a signal chain and one who has run one while a clock counted down.
The 2028 Games put an International Broadcast Center in Burbank and a Main Press Center in Inglewood, and the technical roles behind them — RF, spectrum coordination, fibre and transmission, network operations — hire from a pool that barely exists yet. The window is the reason to move now; the credential outlasts it.
RF technician · broadcast engineering assistant · NOC technician · fibre & transmission · media asset management · production systems operator.
Hours captured to Department of Labor audit standard against Dakar’s federal registered-apprenticeship standing.
How people actually get hired into Olympic sport — the roles, and the way in. From Farrell Sports, whose video this is. Tap to watch.
When the world’s cameras reach Los Angeles in 2028, the story that matters is the neighbourhoods. A man-on-the-street and human-interest vignette series for the Games window, told by the people who build this city — Cinema Basel West with Dakar Interactive.
Open the pitch →The frontier after the LA28 pipeline. The target is a programme in place for World Quantum Day, 14 April 2027 — and the partners who would power it: NVIDIA, for sponsorship and GPU capacity behind the same reasoning engine that sources the talent pipeline, and SIGGRAPH, as the route to its community of educators.
Forward-looking roadmap item. No partnership, sponsorship or commitment with NVIDIA or SIGGRAPH exists or is implied.
Conference as Curriculum is Dakar’s own format — students placed inside the industry’s conferences rather than told about them. Dakar lists CES, Mobile World Congress and SIGGRAPH among the conferences already run this way.
At SIGGRAPH 2026 the apprenticeship team covered the floor themselves — Linna’s SIGGRAPH 2026 vlog is that coverage, shot on the last day and already pointing at Anaheim.
Kristy Pron, Chair of SIGGRAPH 2027, interviewed by Dakar on 20 July 2026 as the road to Anaheim began.
Next on the target list — CES Las Vegas 2027, NAB 2027 and SIGGRAPH 2027, at the Anaheim Convention Center, 8–12 August 2027.
Forward-looking. Press accreditation for CES, NAB and SIGGRAPH 2027 is a goal Dakar is working toward, not a credential already granted. No affiliation with, endorsement by or accreditation from CES, NAB or SIGGRAPH exists or is implied.
Partners
Managing partner
Community partner
University affiliation
Workforce partner
Lou LibinWorkforce partner
Employer partners
04b — The channel
TVThe startup TV front end — LA28 Olympic spotlight, film & TV programs, fast streaming events, the AI film festival for California community colleges, My 711 Los Angeles County connected app and Red Cinema programming. Built to carry on Roku, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV and Firestick.
Open Dakar Live TV full screen →
04c — Station IDs
Every college in the Los Angeles Regional Consortium — the LARC 19 — carries its own identity on the network, in the shape Kevin set: KPAS for Pasadena City College, KSMC for Santa Monica College. Those two are the originals; the other seventeen are drafted to the same pattern, each built from the name the college is known by.
Proposed station IDs for the LARC 19, and a route to make them real. Broad Comm — the network’s workforce partner — provisions the spectrum allocation and carries each identifier through the licensing process.
Reserved designations today — not yet FCC-licensed call signs. Some of these letter combinations are currently licensed to unrelated broadcasters, which is part of what the licensing process resolves.
Membership per LARC’s own roster, “Meet the 19” — 19 colleges across 11 districts. Nine are Los Angeles Community College District campuses; the remaining ten are single-college districts.
05 — On air
Dakar Live as it goes out — the network on YouTube and X.
Brand Universe — the kind of full studio-brand universe Dakar can build for LARC and its member colleges. Tap to watch.
A sample of the content creator network — Olympic gold medalist Mitch Richmond and the Planet Roc universe.
A second sample of the content creator network — Melanie Halfkenny, performing live.
The system-wide studio brand as it posts — from the California Community Colleges account. Swap the link to feature a different post.
Dakar's Microsoft and artistic work, cut as a reel.
Apprentice-produced sizzle for Victory by Valor — the crew is the cohort.
Kevin Clark on the students the pandemic pushed off the cliff — L.A. Times Studios, March 2021.
Placeholder for Linna: an interactive tour of the Obsidian + Claude + Supabase second brain that powers her — added to augment Linna's engine. Open the tour →
06 — Career board
These exams don’t pass or fail you — they rank you. The higher you score, the higher you sit on the eligible list, and departments hire from the top. So the work isn’t getting over a line, it’s getting high enough to be reachable. The board carries live openings, the exam that gates each one, and where a candidate needs to land. Interview preparation follows once they are reachable.
