March 1, 2019
Guest Blog: Brian C. Gregory, St. Francis College
As a new online station in Brooklyn, NY, we’re in our 3rd year at SFC Radio (St. Francis College). Our students have attended both the Seattle and San Antonio conferences. I was able to bring the two students who had founded the radio station to San Antonio. Both of these students joined again for the Seattle conference in addition to two students from our TV station, Terrier TV. After returning from Seattle, we met to discuss takeaways and brainstorm ideas for how the radio and T.V.stations could collaborate on events and foster greater synergy between the student-run media outlets (radio, T.V., newspaper, and digital magazine) at our college.
At one of the sessions, led by Raider Student Media from the University of Mount Union, we learned about ways to merge our media channels into one cohesive student media division, which has been one of our goals for a while. Since the conference, our student media leaders organized a meeting with all of the faculty in our Communication Arts Department to discuss how to best move forward with this goal, which would help get the word out about the great work that our students do both at the college and in the outside community. The students have also been working with each media group to lay the foundation for a website that would act as a central hub that can help us better connect with our audiences. We also envision that this site could be used to help us recruit new students who may have an interest in media production.
Our students, like others who graduate with degrees in communications and media and are hunting for jobs, are expected to be all-in-one media and marketing machines. Employers seek candidates who are proficient with a diverse range of media – from radio to T.V. to film and social media – and understand how to market themselves and their work through engaging and effective presentations to all types of audiences. The goal of our students and faculty is to create one central space that can help to bring our media under one umbrella so that we can better prepare our students for any career in the field they desire, post-graduation.
Since Seattle, the two radio station student leaders have taken on a number of projects to lay the foundation for a changing of the guard after they graduate in May, including creating a legacy training manual with station rules and procedures, e-board and station positions, equipment manuals, a schedule template, and tips for DJing and interviewing guests. They have used the resources from other schools on the CBI site and have been working to revamp our Word Press site with a new radio station theme. In addition, they are working to secure promotional items – stickers and cell phone wallets – and are looking into vendor recommendations made by other schools at the conference. At CBI, our station registered for Vinylthon, an event in which stations across the country play vinyl-only for at least an hour and up to 24. The last few weeks, one of our station leaders has canvassed Brooklyn for record stores and has contacted store owners to secure a location where we can set up shop and live broadcast vinyl on Record Store Day (Saturday, April 13th). This will be a great end-of-the-year event for our student DJs and a finale for the two leaders who have helped build our station from the ground-up.
Recruiting is underway for new students to take the torch and lead the station. Elections for leadership positions are taking place this month. There is no doubt that CBI and the contacts we’ve made have been instrumental in helping SFC Radio grow. It’s exciting to look at how far we’ve come in the past three years. At the informational meeting for leadership positions last week, the two leaders discussed their experiences at CBI the last two years and showed students the San Antonio conference program. The prospective student leaders are already excited about the possibility of attending next year’s conference in St. Louis. CBI will continue to help our station, and our new leaders, grow into the future.
