By Billy Langdon ’21
Hello and welcome. This is Billy on 92.5 The Mike, serving Burlington and Colchester, as well as streaming worldwide at wwpv.smcvt.edu. I hope to show you a little bit of music you may not have heard before today, as well as some old favorites. To start off, Telegraph Road by Dire Straits.
That’s how a typical radio show might begin for me. This semester, I am in control of the station, ranked 8th for college radio stations by the Princeton Review, every Wednesday from 2pm to 3pm. I thought it would be easy – just pick a few songs and hit play. How wrong I was…
First, there is the selection of the songs. This starts with a choice. Do I want to focus in on a niche market, or do I want to let my wide range of musical tastes explode over the radio? I decided to play my whole range of musical taste, but that presents the next challenge. How do you transition from song to song? If you speak in between, any transition is acceptable. However, nobody wants to hear me speak that often, so I must meld together my musical taste so that one song can smoothly flow into another.
Next, I must actually figure out how to play the songs. This is the challenge of where to find the song, and also how to get it over the radio. This is something that I will get better at with experience, but for now it is stressful. The control panel is awash with buttons and dials to understand, but that is not even the most stressful part of the process.
Yet again, I am sure that this will become less stressful with time, but for now it is not easy. Speaking. I have to broadcast my voice over the air to an unknown amount of listeners and not mess up. This is a tall order for me, so I set my goal at not messing up too badly. With that goal in mind, all the components of the radio show are complete!
You may be wondering why I would want to do this. I just said that it is more work than I expected and stressful in more ways than one. However, I have not yet touched on the advantages of having a radio show, and they make it worth it. I get to spread music that I love to other people, and hopefully that gives them joy. I also get experience for any future career and, additionally, it helps me decide if I want a career in the broadcasting industry.
Overall, it has been a great experience so far. I really do enjoy putting my music out into the world every week, as well as gaining experience with broadcasting. I know this experience will stick with me and be useful in my future.