Week 2 of Ellen Dodor's Blog

There’s something to be said about working in the radio industry. We joke around at the station that DJ’s are lazy and all we do is hit buttons to play your favorite songs. But I’ve honestly learned a new form of communication that I never thought would have been necessary for me.

We hear all the time that employers are looking for good communicators, especially when you’re in the media industry, that’s practically all you do! Where it becomes crucial to be good at communication is when you change audiences. It’s pretty obvious that the way you speak to your boss is different than just a general co-worker.  In radio, I have to communicate completely without non-verbal gestures, and it gets difficult when you’re taking phone calls for song requests, to lining people up to win the next prize.

Communication is definitely a science, and honestly I don’t think we will ever be able to figure out a universal way of communication. We can blame that on culture and what we perceive as meaning. But back to radio, I’ve learned to be a great communicator over the phone and on air.

It was awkward at first because I didn’t recognize that people didn’t want to chat, and as a morning show we couldn’t afford to hear every single person’s story. We had to get the most excited people with a good story on air. Another problem I had when I first started was also communicating what was happening on the show. In the studio we are 10 seconds ahead of what everyone else is hearing on their radio. So we’ll have people call in not knowing what’s going on because they dialed in too soon, or because their kids just told them to call in and then they don’t know what to do.

My job is to get the most information out of them and to then decide whether they are “radio worthy” and put them through to be on air. I’ve learned at my time with the station that it’s easy to greet them and automatically ask for their name. It cuts down on time and it also cuts the caller off from telling me their long winded story. I only want the caller to recite their story once. I don’t try to be rude, but it’s in the business that we need to move quickly.

Communication is key in any career field, but in mine I need to communicate to my boss who to take on air, what they have to say, and I need to communicate to the listener that they are important and that as a show we want to talk to them. It’s tough being the middle man in the morning but it’s something that I’ve grown to enjoy. It’s frustrating at times but you need to brush off the caller and accept that mistakes are made and to recover quickly for the next segment.

I’m learning to communicate every time I’m on air, every time I pick up the phone. Communication is something that is constantly practiced and can be perfected. Through my internship I am improving on my communication skills every day.