Week 2 of Meghan Reistad's Blog

When I first toured my internship location, I never thought I’d have the opportunity to have my voice heard across the radio. I figured I would be helping with events, doing lots of shadowing and maybe, if I was lucky, get to write a few stories for the news department. Let me tell you, I was wrong.

My first experience with radio involved shadowing the morning show with the local country music radio station at my internship. I walked in at 6 a.m. on Valentine’s Day and the radio dj’s told me to put on a pair of headphones and pull up my chair to the microphone. My eyes widened when they told me they were going to put me on-air. I was nervous at first but, to my surprise, it went very well for my first show. I often had to remind myself listeners were paying attention to what we were saying; it was easy to forget we were on-air because of the relaxed environment in the studio.

One of the highlights to shadowing the morning show was meeting the whole crew. Two main hosts, a news segment, sports recap and Hollywood gossip make up the morning show. I loved learning how all of their different personalities intertwined into one cohesive unit for the show.

Another highlight to my morning was helping out with callers and prizes. Various times throughout the show, callers would give their input on a topic or answer a question with the hopes of winning a prize. I had the opportunity to choose the winner for a few prizes and then call to notify them they had won! I loved hearing their reactions to winning, even the smallest prizes made the callers excited.

Next, I shadowed a morning show for the variety music station at my internship. I found out right away the show was geared towards women. I enjoyed learning how they selected content and basically catered to a female audience. Most of the topics discussed dealt with the media, current trends and family life.

My final radio experience for the week involved helping co-host the afternoon news show. My previous experiences were awesome, but this was the real deal. Considering there were only two of us hosting, I had a lot more to say over the course of the show. I became progressively more and more confident as the show went on, but have to admit I made a few rookie mistakes. 

Prior to three days shadowing radio stations, my broadcast experiences have all involved television. Radio broadcasting and television broadcasting are extremely different. I am comfortable on TV because I have a script in front of me the whole time while I’m broadcasting. Radio is much different. Most of the content is thought up on the spot and not rehearsed.

So what’s next? I am very excited to begin a short video project working with the country radio station’s talent. My task is to put together a video about their daily experiences for the station’s website. I’ll write, film and edit all of the content and be sure to have more information on the whole process in my next blog post!