Week One: January 30, 2017-February 3, 2017 (16/16 hrs.)

               

        My first week was really exciting because I was starting somewhere new and also because we already had our first big event this week. The first two days were laidback as we eased into my responsibilities and Mr. Scott and Mr. Wilson introduced me to everything. I focused on getting the feeling of the show and their personalities as well as figuring out the daily routine of the show. I was able to ask a lot of questions about iHeartMedia in particular, reading advertisements, special events, and giveaways. Most importantly, I quickly recognized during these first two shows how to prepare and work together behind the scenes in order to produce smooth and successful segments. The last two days were dedicated to the St. Jude Radiothon. It was a completely different atmosphere those two days as normally Mr. Scott, Mr. Wilson, and I are the only three people in the station by 6:00AM. There were so many wonderful people that I got to network with and work beside which created such a lively environment. It was busy, and of course sad because of the topic, but still so very enjoyable and a unique experience that I probably would never have gotten elsewhere. I’m grateful I was invited to participate and I was proud that Froggy 99.9 beat their record from last year of over $66,000 with their new record of over $70,000.

 

Tasks completed for the week:

• Logged into the social media accounts for the first time and made posts

• Participated in show segments

• Updated an excel sheet of all 2016 contest winners and the prizes won

• Worked in the phone bank to help listeners become donors or Partners in Hope for St. Jude.

 

Things I learned this week:

• iHeartMedia has locations all over the United States therefore, not every single radio personnel on our stations is in house. For example, on our station Kiss, Elvis Duran runs a morning show from a completely different location while our show from Salisbury airs in the afternoon.

• On-air I saw Mr. Scott and Mr. Wilson read an advertisement for the first time. They explained to me the requirements for doing so in order to get their customers satisfaction. They are given a script or any information sheet and they must verbally include some of it. On the other hand, when they endorse certain products, they must really use it and like it, in order to talk about it on air. An example of this is Sleep Number Beds. Mr. Scott and Mr. Wilson were both given sleep number beds that they use every night and can then check their sleep statistics from the night before on an app on their phone such as: amount of time restfully sleeping, how many times they woke up, etc. This creates a sleep number to rate their overall sleep for the night. Therefore, when they go to talk about this product in an endorsement they are able to talk about their personal experience with it, and every single night they use real statistics from this application.

• I learned about the expectations and goals for the social media accounts. The goal is to post on every single account every day and keep them up to date. This purpose of this is to show listeners and or viewers that we are staying current and it also creates more traffic to the pages and our content by posting often. Consistency is important to keeping and gaining interest.

• I saw a live contest giveaway for the first time, and the behind the scenes of it is cool to see compared to what you hear on-air. There is also a special way to present the winner on-air after the contest ends. The begin the contest, we announce the game, the question, or the number caller we are looking for and explain the details. We go off-air and turn on the system to record before answering the incoming call, that way we have their footage to play on-air afterwards. Once we get their contact information and we hang up, Mr. Wilson quickly edits the audio footage to make sure it sounds perfect but cutting out any awkward pauses or something of that nature. Before airing, we listen to the full clip one last time and discuss together what we will say to introduce the clip on-air and who will say it. This help us avoid repeating what is already stated in the clip and helps it run smoothly. An example situation of what we are trying to avoid is, in the audio clip from the caller she is saying “Hi, this is Emily” and then we go on air and say “Okay, we have Emily on the line.” What we are trying to go for would be something like “We’re going to the hotline now. Hi, who is this?” and then the audio clip begins and you hear “Hi, this is Emily.”

• When preparing segments, it is pretty similar to the preparation for introducing audio clips from contests. There is a lot of communication between us off-air in order to us to talk fluidly. We don’t prepare a script so what you hear on air is really live natural conversation, but we do decide things ahead of time such as: who will speak first, what we will talk about first, if we have multiple stories in one segment the order of who will introduce and speak about those, etc. even during the live on-air segments we use non-verbal communication to let the other know if we have something to say so we can take turns without talking over one another, if we are running out of time before the next song starts, etc.

• I learned how to work with the St. Jude employees and volunteers in the phone bank. I learned how to operate their donation website and how to successfully communicate with listeners over the phone in order to help them complete their donation. I also learned that a St. Jude Partner in Hope is a person who donates $20 to the hospital for a full year.