You might be thinking to yourself, “I really want to see what it’s like to be on the radio” and even though it may seem like a challenging thing to attempt, I’m here to tell you it’s not that tough!
The image to the right is me as I wrapped up my last show of the semester on 90.1 WIUP-FM. I’ve been told for years that with my personality and ability to just talk mixed with my love for music, I should be on a radio station. Plus the occasional, “yeah, and you’ve got a face for radio!” just to motivate me a little more. So after finishing community college, and moving on to IUP I decided it was time to embark on the radio journey. So then, what if you’re like me? what if you’re thinking about joining a station and don’t exactly know where to begin. Well luckily you found this post, and I’m going to give you some pointers on how to get in the booth!
Not only will this post help you get into a radio station, but it could also be tips on how to jump into almost anything new and help you make some new friends along the way.
Now like I said before, you could be hearing the same things from people about yourself or feel that you are the right person to be on the mic. One of the many cool parts about radio is that it doesn’t exactly matter who you are. As long as you know what you’re doing, you could be of any gender, any ethnicity, or just plain anybody and slinging music or words for an audience to hear. Where I’m at on a college level, being on the radio is an extra activity I take part in outside of classes. However, there are obviously full-time radio/DJ jobs out there in the real world, and people love making their careers out of it.
When I first became a student at IUP, one of my professors who is in charge of the radio station told us that there was an upcoming radio meeting that we could join in on if we wanted to. Immediately I was excited. I knew this was my chance to finally try this out. I asked my professor more about it, got the details, and went to the meeting with high hopes. There, forms were passed out listing the times of the week students would try to grab to host their shows. I didn’t entirely understand the layout of it at the time, and when I went to the professor to ask him about it, he explained that it may be tough to squeeze in with how many people were interested. I knew to keep my head high, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking there was probably no chance of some new guy bumping in front of existing radio members. Then a group of students called me over to talk to me and wanted to know who I was and how interested I really could be. After some talking and getting to know each other, one student told me I could be their co-host and help out with the show they did. Fast forward a week or so to when I was going to help them, and I got the news that due to some personal issues they wouldn’t be able to take part in radio anymore, and if I was still interested, the spot was mine. I told them I would be happy to take their spot for them and thanked them very much for it.
To conclude, I learned that the experience of joining the radio station applied to nearly any part of life. If you are interested in joining radio, find out where the station is, find out who the important people involved are, and express your interest. Talk to people who are part of the station and see what you can learn. By doing these things, you lose nothing and have many things to gain such as a new activity like radio, confidence in learning about new things, and even new friends.
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