Thursday, November 15, 2007

The spot can be a good place to be

I'm currently in a class called "Writing News for Radio" where we spend an awful lot of time training our voice and writing styles for those 30 second news updates or whatever. I actually enjoy it a lot, it's high energy but fairly relaxed... and easy. At least so far.

Our professor, Eileen, is one of the news anchors for local stations 630 CHED and Cool 880, so she decided to have an optional field trip to her station. I, of course, couldn't resist getting to wander around the halls of a major news station, so I was in for sure.

It was a cool day, I got to meet a number of news people that I've never heard of, and they were chock full of advice for the aspiring journalist.

What was also neat was were were taken to the on-air booth of the Chuck Chandler show, the morning show on Cool 880 (I didn't know that until this morning.) So he asked if any of us were actual eager disc-jockeys. My professor immediately pointed to me, and the next thing I know I'm sitting with my lips nearly pressed against a gigantic radio microphone, announcing the Chuck Chandler show on live radio.

What was really freaky about the experience was I had about five seconds to figure out what I was doing, which involved figuring out what the guy's name was, memorize what I was going to say and stop the orgy of butterflies swarming through my insides, and then I did it, and it was apparently perfect.

Now, no one I know listens to Cool 880 in the mornings, so chances are no one I know heard me. But still, it's a great feeling to know that I can be thrust into a totally foreign position like that and produce something resembling brilliance. So much so that I think I actually got a bit of a body-stone from the experience.

Life is good.

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