During my time as a Programming Intern at Entercom Richmond, I gained a lot of new experiences and improved in skills that I already had, but I also faced some challenges. One of my main responsibilities as an intern was to help some of the DJs out with daily blogging, which we do to direct online traffic to different station’s websites through promoting the content on social media. The blog posts are meant to be entertaining, lighthearted, and fun, so one challenge that I had faced throughout my time there was figuring out what to do on days where there wasn’t many funny stories circulating and days where the news topics were particularly heavy. Another challenge that I faced was learning how to do voice work for commercials. At WMLU, we don’t record commercials, so it wasn’t anything that I had prior experience with. Learning how to put the right amount of energy into my voice and sound enthusiastic for these commercials was a challenge that I had to face and improve on.
Getting experience through this internship has greatly affected my career search. Before starting this internship, the only knowledge of the radio field I had was from WMLU, and while it is a very independent student-run station, I’ve learned through my internship that there are a lot of differences in how a professional, large market radio station runs. This has given me more insight into what my daily life and tasks would be like if I am to pursue a career in programming in the future. It also affected my career search by introducing me to different possible career paths that are still within the radio field, but outside of on-air talent. I was able to learn more about other people’s positions, such as director positions, production positions, and promotions positions.
During my first journal entry concerning this internship, I expressed that I would like to learn more about how a professional radio station works in relation to sales, contests, concerts, and on-air programming. I do believe that during my time at Entercom, I have gained this knowledge. I have learned about sales through an on-air personality lens, and have gained perspective through that. I learned about things such as endorsements, talent fees, and how the stations make money through advertising on air for different clients. I learned about contests by attending the promotions meetings, and have learned things like how they pick winners, how the prize is distributed, how those records are kept, which types of giveaways are more beneficial to do online rather than on air, and also how they record and cut together segments announcing the winners to air live only minutes after taking the call to begin with. I also learned about concerts and acoustic sessions/meet and greets that require close communication with the band and their management, as well as the advertising and promotion that comes before the event and also during/after the event.
There were also goals that my internship supervisor and I set during my performance evaluation. We said that it would be beneficial for me to further my knowledge in how the stations work, get more trained in voice work, and get on air more. As stated previously, I did vastly improve my knowledge of how the stations work and I did slightly improve my voice work skills. I also did get on air some by assisting my internship supervisor in certain segments.
I felt that I was greatly mentored and supported throughout my entire internship process. I worked with a couple of different people during this experience and helped with a number of things, but everyone that I spent time with in that office had something to teach me and something productive for me to do and learn about, and everyone I worked with was willing to help me.
I would highly suggest this company to future students who are seeking internships, not just in on-air talent or typical things that you would attribute to a radio station, but also for students who are seeking internships in things like sales, marketing, and also management. This company provides great insight to the different careers that are available there and have a lot to offer students who are trying to bridge the gap between their collegiate and professional experiences.
As discussed previously, a lot of the work that I did during my internship was to find fun and lighthearted stories to write blog posts about to direct web traffic to different station’s websites. To do this, I would search social media for current and interesting topics to write about, and once I’d found something, I would gather the facts and compile an article to then promote on social media to engage interaction between the DJs and the listeners. Some articles that I wrote during my time there include Bud Light offering free beer to any alien that escapes from Area 51 (great marketing on their part), French’s creating mustard ice cream, and police warning people against flushing drugs down their toilets out of the fear of creating “meth gators.”
My first week at Entercom was the week leading up to Big Field Day, which is a music festival put on by XL102. One of the DJs was going to conduct interviews with all of the artists performing to play on air and also publish online, so one of my first tasks was to compile information about all of the artists that could spark questions and guide conversations.
Another task that I completed was doing voice work for a commercial. I had to read the script in an energetic way that would interest and compel listeners to invest in the company that paid for us to advertise for them.
In the XL102 studio
At an XL Session for The 1975