The Intern Diaries: Part III

Production room payoffs

In case you don’t know, it’s still raining in Florida – as in a lot. There are water spouts spurting up everywhere, and whenever I walk to my cubicle, it always looks like the apocalypse (or perhaps a “sharknado”) is ready to tear down the building from the outside in. (Side note: my co-worker blamed all of this bad weather on us interns. I couldn’t disagree with his reasoning. It’s just too coincidental.)

Anyway, this week’s intern adventures including wandering into a new (and slightly dark) part of the office: the production room.

Manic (Music) Monday

Bossman wasn’t in the office (again) and my other superiors were in and out of promotion meetings…so you know what that means: time to explore! I ended up in the office of a nice woman who I met on the elevator on one of my first days. Turns out she’s in charge of scheduling commercials and recording spots for several of our stations (in much more fancy, official terms, of course.) She invited me to watch how she maintained, organized, and scheduled customers’ commercial orders every week for different stations. Even better, she took me back to a production room and let me practice recording a commercial; my inner college DJ was singing praises. It felt so good to be behind a soundboard again.

Upon playing my spot back to her, she told me that she was “pleasantly surprised” by its turnout, explaining that it sounded better than some of the spots she had received from people hailing from prestigious broadcast schools. Now, I’m not one who normally preens, but I was very proud to be able to record in a professional terrestrial station – and make it sound professional, too!

Later in the week, I shadowed one of the head production honchos and gained new ideas to use when I return to my Gainesville soundboard in the fall. Not only have my two days in the production room been valuable, but it has been a reminder of just how much I enjoy the technical side of radio, as well. I’m having my cake and making it sound cool, too!

Friday, Friday, This Guy’s Doing Random Vocal Warm-Ups on Friday…

The end of the week brought another band to our station studio; Authority Zero, in all of their grungy punk glory, came in midafternoon for an acoustic performance. These are always my favorite kind of days – the live performances bring some fun to the normally quiet office. 

As I made my daily “I need to get out of this cubicle” walk around, the singer took a leisurely stroll around our break room, clutching a cup of tea and belting his vocal warm-ups. I could just picture some of the more straight-laced workers’ faces as he wailed his scales up and down the corridor – it made for quite the fun Friday.

The set was short and sweet. Said singer closed it out with an acoustic solo number, prompting his tattooed band mates to sit among the listeners. (Hey, bass player, you sounded awesome, but you smell questionable. Just sayin’.)

My day ended earlier than expected – with one condition. One of my superiors (and a truly cool dude (he had been showing me his group’s hip-hop videos earlier) plopped some blu-rays and McDonald’s coupons on my desk and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a “detour” and dropping something off at a station event. Needless to say, my “detour” made my normally 50-minute drive home take 2 hours, but hey, I had some cool shades (and personal pride in being able to navigate in a city I barely know – it’s the little things) to make up for it.

Each week is obviously different; depending on the number of events scheduled, the work days can fly by or drag on. However, with each entry in the Intern Diaries, I hope to shed some insight on not only my own experiences, but perhaps inspire you to search for your own opportunities or write about the ones you’re experiencing now.

Until next time. Happy interning.