Internship Experience #2: 90.5 FM WCBE

My second segment of 50 internship hours at WCBE Columbus really allowed me to delve deep into enhancing specific audio production and media marketing skills. A large portion of this segment of hours revolved around a large upcoming event for the station, the WCBE annual Spring Fund Drive. This is one of two of the station’s largest fundraising events, with the other being the Fall Fund Drive. As an intern, I was tasked with all sorts of things, from getting food donors and donations for volunteers to creating promotions to be played on air continuously through the week-long fundraiser. There are other tasks I completed with the other Capital interns that lay outside of the Fund Drive planning like podcast editing and high school student interviews.

The main portion of my time during this segment of internship hours was put towards preparing for the Fund Drive. The rest of the Capital interns and I were tasked with gathering food donors for the event, called “WCBE Delicious Donors”. We reached out to local businesses and offered an exchange of services during the week of the drive. In exchange for providing a food donation for us and our station volunteers (around 10-12 people), we would give the food service an on-air shoutout every hour of the day they provided their donation, as well as including their business logo in a Thank-you graphic on the station website, WCBE.org. We reached out to almost 50 restaurants and food vendors around Columbus and were able to find both breakfast and lunch for all six days of the Fund Drive (Mar. 20th-27th not including weekends). The restaurants that were able to become Delicious Donors included Dan’s Deli, The Lox Bagel Shop, Cafe Zuppas, Blue Bow Tie, Aladdin’s Eatery, Mikey’s Late Night Slice, Hound Dogs, Tasty Dawg, Cinco Mas, Pierogi Mountain, and Antolino’s Pizza. This process of attaining the donors took around a month and we were able to secure the entire event with food donations about a week before the fund drive began. I personally got Dan’s Deli for the drive and corresponded with the owner while also helping out send follow-up emails and communications for places like Pierogi Mountain and Aladdin’s Eatery.

WCBE Spring Fund Drive Delicious Donors List

A list of all the restaurants and food services around Columbus that provided us a food donation for a portion of the spring fund drive.

Another large part of the Fund Drive preparation involved writing, recording, and editing promotional messages to be played on-air between songs and interviews, encouraging people to donate throughout the drive. I ended up creating a couple by myself; I wrote up the scripts and got them approved, recorded and edited them in Studio C here at the station, and sent them to be reviewed. I also helped record and edit the Fort Hayes high school interns and their own Fund Drive promotions, which were all sent forward to approval and are expected to play throughout the drive. I found this experience to be really cool, as it gave me my first sense of a commercial-based message that wasn’t necessarily a “commercial”, at least not in my own eyes. To me, a commercial (especially one on the radio) is always trying to sell you something, usually in a loud, obnoxious, and aggravating way. These messages that I wrote, recorded, and edited all were relatively cheerful and much more relaxed than the average radio commercial, with a message intended to help increase support for a public service, not trying to sell someone something. It felt more authentic and genuine than past projects I’ve worked on, which really spoke to me from a creative perspective. Doing this work, I kind of even started to enjoy coming in and setting myself up at the studio, ready to record and overflowing with ideas on how I should sound, what I should say, etc.

Promotional messages for the Fund Drive were not the only promos created. Several of the promos that myself and the other interns created also incorporated some of the events we would have happening during our Fund Drive. For example, we all ended up making promos for the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center performance of the Linda May Han-Oh Jazz Trio, which was set to take place on Monday, March 23rd (2nd day of the drive). I also ended up creating some promotions for a couple of band performances taking place the week before the Fund Drive. With the other Capital interns, we were able to advertise the local bands DSTRESSR and The Deeptones and their performances within our Studio A live recording studio. These promotional messages definitely got me more immersed in the marketing aspect of music and bands. It involved me doing research into the bands (listening to their music, reading biographies and articles online, and more) and then turning that information into a short, sweet, and easy-to-listen-to segment to be played in the days leading up to their performance. It was certainly more work than a normal promotional script would require, but I found myself really applying myself to make a quality message that highlighted the bands and gave audiences all the accurate information they’d need if interested.

Additionally, there were other projects that required work and completion during this segment of internship hours. During the buildup to the Fund Drive, we also had to keep up with the Fort Hayes student initiatives. During this time, we came up with a new initiative centered around giving student interviews to the Fort Hayes and Columbus Alternative High School (CAHS) students. We came up with this initiative through the idea of bringing our WCBE audience enriching, slice-of-life conversations emphasizing the students who help make the station special compared to others around the city. We collaborated on the planning for the initiative and came up with details for 10-minute interview segments with each high school intern, discussing topics like student hobbies, extracurriculars, and special interests. To myself and the rest of the Capital interns, we believed that this not only puts a necessary highlight on the academic work WCBE supports year-round, but it also gives the students a change to “come out of their shell” and talk about topics they care about while practicing professional media skills like scriptwriting, improvisation, broadcast speaking techniques, and more.

Finally, another big portion of this segment of internship hours involved getting myself introduced to the world of podcast editing. Mike Foley, host of the WCBE morning show “The Morning Mix”, asked the Capital intern group if we could split up the work in editing some of the podcasts and interview discussions that he’s recorded recently. Some of these files were simple sound ID’s from guest performers who wanted to plug the station in a promo message, while others were 30-60 minute interview discussions with notable people like Gaelynn Lea and Ken Scott. I ended up volunteering for one of the longer interviews and started editing the Gaelynn Lea interview, which was between 35-40 minutes in length. It was a bit difficult to edit, mostly because the interview took place on zoom, so I had to troubleshoot a solid process for editing that wouldn’t affect the interviewee’s (Gaelynn’s) voice but would get rid of the noticeable digital interference in the recording. This process of editing, re-editing, and reviewing took me about a week total, with multiple hours each day going towards this project. It definitely was a lot more of a workload than I was expecting and really allowed me to gain an appreciation for professional podcast/interview editors, as it was a lot of tedious work. However, I’m definitely glad I was able to learn along the way and be of help to Mike for his project. Plus, it’s never a negative thing to add more skills to my repotoire.

Going forward, the next major event is the WCBE Spring Fund Drive, coming up Mar. 20th-27th. I can expect that the Capital interns and myself will be quite busy with social media engagement for the station, creating some more promotional materials, and even potentially get on the air!