Job Shadows: What You Saw, Part 2

Here's a sampling of some of the various job shadows done by you all (this will be updated as job shadow reports are turned in, so please check back frequently). Take a look and see what you can learn from everyone's visits. There's a lot of good stuff here to help you decide what you want to do with your lives; what you need to be doing to get there; and what to expect when you do get there.

Please give each one of these a quick read, will you?

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On Wednesday, March 5, I job shadowed Promotions Director and Morning Show Co-host Tina Bree at the radio station Star 105.5 in Crystal Lake, Illinois. Tina was born and raised in the Chicago-area and studied radio at the Illinois Center for Broadcasting. Tina has worked at Star 105.5 for six years and is the Morning Show Co-host with Joe Cicero. The live Morning Show with Joe Cicero and Tina Bree is weekdays at 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. Star has a sister station 103.9 The Fox, which is in the same building with roughly 10 employees.

I arrived to the Star 105.5 station at 9:45 a.m. to meet Tina to begin my day of job shadowing a regular day in the office. Tina said the Star community is small with only 20 employees so they are very close and collaborative. Tina made me comfortable by having me meet everyone at the station right away. She handed me over to Molly Jackson, known as Mojo at the station who is the promotions coordinator and on-air at nights, to take me on a tour of the station and meet co-workers. Each office had their own computer and the building was playing the Star music over loudspeakers. Back in Tina’s office, which she shares with Mojo, I sat at an empty desk and Tina put me right to work that surprised me because I didn’t think I would have any hands on work.

Mojo had me pull airchecks that are basically a ‘check’ of what was ‘aired’ for a contest, remote, charity, interview, and pull them for clients. I jumped right into it and watched her pull one on the computer. I found it almost like editing a movie that we have done in class, but instead of iMovie they use a program called Profiler that is a recorded version of what goes over the air. It was my turn and I got the hang of it really quickly. I sent about three or four pulls to clients and right at about 10:30 was the conference meeting I was able to sit in and listen to.

The conference was held in the back conference room with six workers sitting around a large, oval shaped table then Joe and Tina started discussing their next big giveaway and concert. I was surprised to hear the name Phillip Phillips be thrown onto the table as one of the celebrities they had in mind. Star has some of his tickets to give away on-air, but they were trying to contact his PR director to get Phillips to the station and be live on-air with them in the morning. Tina said that Phillips people will not give Star a direct contact to the PR director and that they will keep trying, but to not get hopes up. They moved to discussing working on summer concert packages.

“We are booked for every Saturday event until the middle of July already, so it is going to be a very busy summer compared to others,” said Mojo.

After the meeting ended, Mojo went to record her show for that night and I did not know that radio hosts can record their shows for that day or even the next day. I learned that more goes into the live shows that can be very hectic in the 3 a.m. mornings. Tina said that in the mornings before the live show, she has interns pull news for that day to talk about on the show and also has the interns running the boards to cut to commercial on cue or if someone’s mic is low they can turn it up.

While sitting back at the desk, Tina showed me how to handle prize giveaways. If the winner answered the phone, Tina would congratulate them on their prize and let them know that their prize was for pickup at the station or they could send it to them in the mail. Once the caller’s information was taken, Tina hung up the phone and said, “It’s that easy!”

Towards the end of the day, since there was no event going on, which usually happens on the Fridays and Saturdays, Tina apologized that there wasn’t any real excitement at the station and asked me to come back again after school ends to actually get a feel for what it is like on a busy day and see how the live on-air talk works. I felt very special being asked back because it made me feel like I gave a good impression. Hopefully it could potentially lead to an internship at the radio station since I would love working in the promotions department and possibly get on-air.

Overall, the job shadow was very helpful because in the future I want to ultimately be on E News as an anchor. I have realized that you have to start from the bottom in any industry in which you learn and grow to become successful in the future, whether it be TV or radio or even newspaper. The pace and the process of the behind the scenes of radio helped me realize how much goes into a live show and preparedness is key. The job shadow will be very beneficial to my career moving forward.

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