Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: My First Shift On College Radio!

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Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 04-03-2008, 10:04 AM:

Wow! I did my first ever air shift last night on 91.7 FM WMWM Salem, "Salem State College Radio". I got there an hour and fifteen minutes early so that I could be well prepared and organized. I wanted to pull all the music for the show in advance and have all the paperwork fiilled out and ready to go. I guess the show before me did not come in last night because when I got there at 7:45 the door was locked and all the lights were off. Being so new I haven't been issued a key card to open the door. I ran around (with a laptop, headphones, and cd's) in my hands trying to find someone to let me in. Finally I was able to get in touch with one of the Dj's that had trained me and thankfully he was on campus and able to let me in at 8:45 for my 9:00 shift. Needless to say I was running around like crazy all night between breaks pulling CD's and carts and trying to figure out what I wanted to play, and keep my paperwork filled out. At least it gave me something to talk about during a break, I thought it was a good story for a first night on the air ever. I was able to figure out the board and everything pretty well. I was able to assign all the inputs and outputs on the busses properly so that I could record a phone call to the computer without it going over the air, and then play it back. I was able to keep with the schedule and my "live reads" of PSA's and Promos for other shows and legal station ID's on time. I did screw up a couple times, I had trouble at first keeping track of which CD player was playing and which one I wanted to start because some of the "on" and "off" lights on the board are burned out. I did end up getting the hang of it and think I did well for the first time. I was able to talk it up and hit the "post" with songs I was familiar with. I think it will be even better when my "probationary" period is over and I can play whatever I want and line up bands to come in to have thier demo's played and be interviewed. I definately got the bug now and I Can't wait until next week!

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 04-03-2008, 12:16 PM:

I did a year at WPRB when I was at Princeton, but that was back in the "all vinyl" days, except for commercial carts. I did two shows at the worst times--6-8 am news and music and a Broadway album based show from 6-7 pm. The morning deal was a bummer because in addition to getting up so early, you had to be there half an hour ahead to warm up the transmitter, and I always missed dinner on the Broadway show. Still, it was fun--just the idea that people could hear you from NY to Philadephia was kinda neat.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 04-03-2008, 12:31 PM:

Wow! Congratulations....you take me back! 1966-1970 saw me on air/engineering at WBKY (now WUOL, Lexington) helping wire WSTM, now WRKA, on air at WKRX (now WVEZ), at WMPI, Scottsburg, IN and building the carrier current network at the University of Louisville. That call is WLCV and is now better heard on the internet.

I am thrilled for you. Real people on real radio. Louisville has no "live" radio anymore. Louis

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 04-03-2008, 03:03 PM:

Yeah well in Boston we are starting to get the Frank FM, Mike FM, Dave FM automated garbage, as well as a lot of syndicated shows. We are lucky enough to have a great afternoon drive show on the world famous WBCN Boston (they syndicate opie and anthony from new york during morning drive) The Toucher and Rich show. This is the first radio show I have heard since I first heard Howard Stern, or when Opie and Anthony started thier careers her in Boston on WAAF that does something different. It is not all hacky canned bits. How many shows have a "Looney Tunes Tuesday" [Roll Eyes]

or other hacky bits they got from "Morning Show Bootcamp" [puke]

You know it is kind of like the movie theatre industry, ruined by the bean counters. If you run a good theatre with good movies people will come. If you do good, creative radio people will listen.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-03-2008, 10:09 PM:

Congratulations, Sean! Way to go! Pulling music, talking up the post, forgetting which pot is live on the air... we're living this vicariously through you, so keep us up to date.

Did you do an aircheck? It's good to compare yourself a few months, or even weeks, down the road and hear how much you improve.

Oh, and take some pictures of the place!

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Louisville has no "live" radio anymore.

Louis... what about Terry Meiners? And WBKY is now WUOL (Univ. of Louisville?!)? How'd that happen? Does U of L have a Lexington campus now? What happened to WUKY?

Posted by Jeff Stricker (Member # 224) on 04-04-2008, 06:24 AM:

I did 3 years part-time at a 250 watt AM station in Michigan to earn money for school. This was in the mid-60's with two turntables, and records (yes, records!). The station was too poor to afford tape cartridges, and were were stuck reading most of the commercials live or messing around with the bigest, oldest, crankiest ampex deck I've ever laid eyes on. All this, plus answereing the phone, reading AP news off the old oily teletype machine,etc, etc..those were the days...an actual live person at the local radio station! [thumbsup]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 04-04-2008, 07:58 AM:

Jeff; I can almost see the Wolfman sitting beside his 500Kw transmitter (running on generators!). Louis

Tim: misspoke on WUKY. Meiners is only occasionally live; segments and bits repeat. Louis

Posted by Jim Bedford (Member # 4) on 04-04-2008, 08:38 AM:

I've been part of the on-air talent on KOTO Telluride, 91.7, for over 30 years, doing a 6-9 AM slot every other Monday morning for the last 20 or so. You can listen to my show next Monday on KOTO.org if you want, the BF Deal Show. (And you can listen to the Lovely Luci today [Friday] from 10 AM-Noon, but you'd better like Disco and Dance!)

When you listen to my show you first get an hour of contemporary, folk and pop from the 60's, and music I like followed by an hour of NPR's Morning Edition. The last hour is "Music From Before You Were Born," vocalists from 1900-1950. (There are now thousands of CD's available from this era now, wonderful stuff that wasn't even available on LPs. I got my love for this music from my parents who danced almost nightly in the kitchen after dinner. The first music I ever remember was Benny Goodman's 1938 Jazz Concert in Carnegie Hall.)

KOTO is the voice of Telluride. It has five paid staff and about 100 volunteer DJs who play everything imaginable. Sometimes it sucks but most of the time it's pretty amazing.

Scheduled during my slot is not only NPR, but depending on the season, I also record the replay the Avalanche Report CAIC, read the Ride Board, Job Line and ski report, and give various other info and handle dozens of questions ("Is school open today?," "How are the roads into town?," "Are there any Roberta Flack tickets left?," "Will KOTO broadcast the Bluegrass Festival live?," etc.)

In short, KOTO is the soundtrack of our lives in Telluride and is one of the glues that keeps our community together. We have a permanent population of about 3500 and KOTO doesn't have commercials, raising its $350,000 budget mostly thru events and direct donations from supporters from all over. Community Radio Forever!

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 04-04-2008, 10:04 AM:

Jim we are both on the same frequency! Maybe someday the atmosphere will go nuts and our signals will skip and my listeners in Mass will hear you, and your listeners in colorado will hear me ! [Big Grin]

unlikely of course. One of the slogans at my station is "broadcasting at 130 Watts. more power than two 60 watt light bulbs 91.7 FM WMWM Salem"

Tim,

Yes, I recorded my whole show onto my laptop with Audacity a great FREE open source sudio recording and editing software. For a FREE program it is very good, it is sophisticated and you can do pretty much everything with it. Multitracks, effects, editing, and you can save your projects in MP3, Wav, etc... I took the three hours and edited it down to 00:31:20. It has all my breaks in and out of the music, and all of my "board work" ie: coming out of 1 song dropping in an ID CART and the into the 2nd song. I took out most of all the songs except for the very beggining and end.

I was able to talk up the songs I was familiar with and even hit the post a couple of times. My friend is coming down to watch me do my show this upcoming Wednesday and he is going to bring his camersa so I will post pics then.

This station was kind of running on auto pilot for the last 5 years with no leadership, no direction, no budget, and no listeners. The college finally put someone in charge who cares about the station and wants to improve it, our relationship with the college and community, and our listenership. The college actually gave the station a budget this year, and the college bookstore council donated money to the station for some new equipment. We are also lucky to have one of our DJ's volunteering as our engineer. He has done a lot to clean the place up, order our new equipment, and install equipment.

We are going to do a live remote of a ribbon cutting ceremony of the new baseball field at the college and then broadcast the first baseball game. We are going to piggy-back on a WIFI attena the college TV department uses to send the video signal back to the campus network. They are going to pick up our audio feed as well. We are also providing the PA for the event. During the innings we will turn off the monitors but inbetween innings and before and after the people in the stands will be able to hear our broadcast. We are hoping to get some attention out of it and hopefully new listeners. I am going to be assisting our engineer with the tech end. He is nice enough to use all his own equipment for this event. His mics (wireless and wired), his mixer, his laptops, CD players, Monitor Speakers and amp, etc... It should be interesting as thier is no power to the field yet everything is going to run off of generators!

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-04-2008, 06:31 PM:

Congrats Sean! Good for you! I hope you will enjoy your tour there.

For 4+ years I too did the radio DJ gig while in college to earn some bucks... a commercial 1 kW AM and later a 214 kW ERP FM station. Got kicked off the air and fired at both! HA! The owners had NO sense of humor!

Again, good luck to YA! [beer]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-04-2008, 06:38 PM:

Congratulations, Sean, keep up the great work. Be sure to link us up here if the station has a "listen online" feature.

"Talking up to the post" - does that mean talking right up until the singer starts to sing?

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-04-2008, 08:23 PM:

Mike, yes, that's correct. I never was very good at that, btw, I stank to high heaven.

Phil... I'd purely LOVE to hear some of your airchecks! [Big Grin]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-04-2008, 09:08 PM:

Ya know Tim, back then there was no such thing as "air checks".

We all just did "our thing" HA!

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 04-05-2008, 10:24 AM:

We currently are not streaming on-line yet, but it is something we would like to do especially considering we are only 130 Watts. We do have a website though with some great history and info on our station WMWM SSC Radio As well as my shows Myspace page The Rock N Roll Radio Program Thanks for all the support!

Posted by Rachel Craven (Member # 1016) on 04-05-2008, 01:52 PM:

I remember talking about you doing this YEARS ago... I'm glad you finally decided to do it! Gratz!

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 04-09-2008, 05:58 AM:

Going on the air with my second show tonight and I am sick of course! I am all congested and stuffed up so I guess there will be a LOT of music and almost no talk!

Posted by Rachel Craven (Member # 1016) on 04-09-2008, 09:42 PM:

Was just listening, you sound fine!

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 04-12-2008, 10:02 AM:

Thank you, Rachel. We also did the first live remote broadcast that WMWM has done in a long long time on Thursday. The college built a brand new baseball field, so we broadcasted the ribbon cutting ceremony, and the first college baseball game on the new field. We also provided the PA for the college with 4 JBL EON speakers we set up so that the people in the stands could hear our pre and post game program (we had to kill the PA during the actual game) We had 3 Host who also did the play by play and color for the game, We had wireless mic's for the ribbon cutting, and the National Anthem/Player Introductions. We had pre-recorded interviews with players and coaches on CD. We had music on a laptop, and all of our PSA's, Promos, and ID's and Imaging on a second laptop. We used a third laptop to digitize the signal so we could send in over the internet. The college had the game on thier closed circuit TV network. They had one camera and no commentators or anything. They got the camera signal back to the campus using a huge directional WIFI antenna pointed back towards the campus. We piggy-backed onto thier antenna to send our audio signal back to the radio station to be transmitted. We also provided the TV people with an output so they could plug our sound into thier modulator and send our audio over thier closed circuit TV system along with thier picture. Everything went extremely well. A lot of people heard it on the radio and even more on the TVs. People who were never exposed to WMWM before were suprised and happy we were there and our commentators really did a great job they put a lot of work into researching stats for the teams and the player, and producing interviews. Our Engineer Brian provided all of his own equipment for this production and engineered the whole thing, It was fantastic and went perfectly!