Week 2 of Practicum - I'm On-Air!

Hello all! This week has been a little more of a crazy one on practicum than the last. Unfortunately, I was informed on the Monday that I would be working remotely for the rest of the week. To make up for it however, as of Tuesday the 15th, I had been told that I would be given a afternoon slot to do voice tracking for! I was given the 1 to 4 spot on the other CAB-K station in Olds, Rock 104. Since it is a voice tracked show, the music director for Rock 104, Troy Laboucane, would send me the show logs for the next day and I would write up my show prep and record it all the day before. A really fun show I got to do was a St. Patrick’s day themed one. Which is funny, because one year ago to that day, was my first ever show during first year. It’s crazy to think that only a year later I would be voice tracking for a real station in Olds. And I guess they like what I’ve been doing well enough where they keep letting me go on, so that’s a relief. On top of the voice tracking, I’ve still been doing the stuff I started with last week. Writing and producing pieces for community events, voicing and producing commercials, but a majority of it was writing news stories. Bernd would send me interviews to write the stories about and then it would get delivered by their newsie. I got to write stories about the Olds College Bronco’s sports teams, A female hockey showcase going on in Carstairs, the Olds Stingers minor lacrosse starting up and more kinda sport related stories. I’ll be continuing to do the 1 to 4 show on Rock 104 for the next 2 weeks. I’m obviously super excited to be on-air for Olds, but the thing I’ve kind of struggled with is writing show prep. Usually I’m okay with writing my show prep, but since this is small town radio, the content has to be HYPER local. Which makes it a little tricky when I don’t know a ton about the town. But, Bernd, Troy and Melanie have been helpful in giving me tips and advice on how to do small town radio. If you ever want to listen to me on Rock 104, you can listen at www.rock104.ca from 1 to 4pm. I’ll keep you in the loop about what goes on for the second half of my practicum, right here in this blog! Until next time… - Brandon Smedley