Interview with UTA College Radio Faculty Advisor Lance Liguez

[00:00:06] It's a Jacked Up Review Show It's a Jacked Up Review Show Oh, Jacked Up Review Show It's a Jacked Up Review Show It's a Jacked Up Review Show Oh, Jacked Up Review Show Welcome all, welcome all. We are here with UT Arlington College Faculty Advisor Lance Liguez.

[00:00:52] Howdy. How we doing? I'm your host, Soli. And we're here to just kind of go through another tour de force on the meat and potatoes of what makes this College radio station tick. Sounds good. All right.

[00:01:03] It's interesting how College Radio is kind of one of those things you could introduce to just about anybody, even if you're not in your car or just it's kind of easier to talk about from word of mouth to also just allowing just independent people to play their music some days.

[00:01:20] How did you come into the fold of it? I mean, how did I get to this station here? Well, I was a news reporter in radio for about 13 years.

[00:01:32] You know, 14 if you count the other market I was in and then came back up here to Dallas and worked in Dallas. And the business was kind of changing at that time.

[00:01:42] And so I kind of had my escape plan and went back to grad school and thought I was going to find something else. And had no idea what and heard that here at the University of Texas Arlington,

[00:01:57] there was an opening for what at the time it was a part time position running the radio station. And so I threw my hat in and come to find out it was full time teaching and the radio station. And and that's how I got the gig.

[00:02:15] And it's interesting because you know, in this business, you know, you're always networking without realizing you're networking. And so the tip I got was a guy who had worked at the city of Dallas. He was an old radio guy and we'd work well together.

[00:02:32] And then his wife was an advisor here at UTA. Oh, wow. There you go. It's not just who you know, but it's also like how much work you want to put into it.

[00:02:42] Well, you know, in my radio production class, which I teach, you know, we tell the students, you know, 80 percent of jobs in this business are found through networking. And so it's not what you do. It's who you know. And that's true over over many industries, right?

[00:02:59] But at the same time, you know, if you get involved in college radio, you are building those skills while you're still in school, your production skills, learning how to operate a board, learning how to be on air.

[00:03:14] And then from there you can kind of decide, you know, what do you want to do with that? You want to be a DJ, a traditional music? You want to get a news reporter, sports coverage reporter? We always need help with news reporters. Absolutely. Lovely.

[00:03:27] We'll return after these messages. Hi, I'm James Gavzian on the Who Would Win Show. Me and my co-host Ray ignore anything important happening in the outside world and debate fictional battles between characters from comics, movies and video games.

[00:04:16] We got a new show every week and almost always am I the winner? Yeah, not true, Ray. In the past we've discussed such matches as Captain America versus Darth Vader, Solid Snake versus the Iron Giant, classic matchups like Robocop versus Terminator, and even the Muppets versus Sesame Street.

[00:04:33] That one was crazy. So if you're a fan of geek culture and love a spirited debate, check out the Who Would Win Show wherever you get your podcasts or check us out at whowadwindshow.com. Do you know when exactly a radio portion of the college first went live?

[00:04:48] Or is that kind of not clear? Yeah, I got kind of a rough idea. You know, late 2000, early 2001 somewhere there, and we actually have a copy of this article in our archives. Our archives are basically a binder of press clippings. That's the archive.

[00:05:06] And the student newspaper here did a story on UTA radio getting on the internet, and they were going to broadcast a softball game, and that was going to be their first broadcast. Oh, wow. And so that's kind of how it started on the internet portion.

[00:05:23] You know, before that there was kind of radio-ish things going on. I've been trying to research this on my off time a little bit. But there's never been an AMFM station associated with UTA, although there's rumors out there

[00:05:39] that there used to be like an AM station somewhere in the 700s, and I've not been able to track that down. So I've been going through like all the old yearbooks looking at stuff, and you know, when I found references to radio in the 60s,

[00:05:55] and it was under the Department of English, and then really nothing. And so my understanding was in the 80s and 90s, there was a studio here, but they were doing kind of class projects. It wasn't going out anywhere live necessarily. And then as the internet became viable,

[00:06:17] they were able to jump on board that and start actually broadcasting content. And after 2001, somewhere, 03, 04, somewhere before my time, they got a system where they were able to go 24-7. And it's been like that ever since and I came in in 2009. Sweet. Yeah.

[00:06:43] And you've been really impressed with just kind of the turnout, just how many students just each year always want to be a part of the action. Yeah, we had to build it up a little bit since I got here because when I got here,

[00:06:57] it was kind of a drift a little bit and that's the sense I got. And there is a handful of students who were still trying to do something and kind of keep it going. I mean, literally like three or four students.

[00:07:11] And so what we did was we made the radio production class kind of a feeder system into UTA radio to try to get some people interested and get some bodies in there to help out with my grand vision of whatever that is.

[00:07:28] And since then, it's been building and we've got a lot of interest of students not just in our program, but we get inquiries from other majors across the university. It dipped obviously during COVID and just out of COVID, right?

[00:07:46] And so the numbers weren't what they used to be, but they're slowly starting to come back. But we have probably right now about 20 to 25 staff members who keep this thing going, doing a variety of things to keep us on air and keep us generating content. That's lovely.

[00:08:07] What do you think is a good checklist to have? Not only just to see who belongs in what department, but also to see if someone has the maturity and organization skills and just content creator kind of mentality for this kind of

[00:08:26] profession, whether in college or just at an actual broadcasting radio station. Yeah. Well, this is kind of a term I kind of have a love-hate relationship with, which is called passion. And I used to think I just kind of rolled my eyes whenever I used to hear it.

[00:08:42] And because that can also mean when you see passion in a job posting, that means we'll work for very few money. Yeah, it could mean not a lot of money. You know, passion for this, you know.

[00:08:55] But really, the other part of that is people who just love radio and they love... It doesn't matter if it's AM, FM streaming. They love being in the studio. They love doing something having to do with radio. And that's a real thing.

[00:09:14] And so that's got to be there one, having that interest in it. And then, you know, as our students kind of get in there, and this is true with our television side as well, you find out kind of what you're good at and maybe what you

[00:09:31] thought you wanted to do something. But now you want to do this. And so our students come around and they realize I don't want to be on air. I want to be behind the scenes and, you know, I want to edit or I want to produce

[00:09:44] or something like that, you know, be a music director. And others say, no, I want to do a sports talk show. I want to be play by play and I want to get out there.

[00:09:54] And so that's the great thing about this is they can try a bunch of different things and see what works. And then they discover their passion for it. Lovely. And were there any participants who you don't have to name anyone, but just

[00:10:16] from day one, you were like, oh, they totally are speaking the language of like a producer or they sound like a broadcaster. Oh, it sounded like a broadcaster. Some students come through and this has been true over the years. They come through like they're,

[00:10:31] they came out of a box, you know, that said broadcaster somewhere. And I don't know how that happens, but you get some really savvy students who come in and they've got a voice

[00:10:41] and they've got a presence and they sound really good. And you identify it in that first radio production class. You're like that person right there. Doesn't mean you can't work with some of the other students, but you know, some are just just kind of come in ahead

[00:10:57] naturally or organically somehow. And so, and that happens, that happens, you know, fairly often. And then others have an aptitude for listening and audio editing and they can, and they get into the technical side of it. And they really like that kind of stuff. And they

[00:11:13] discover things that I don't even know regarding our editing software. And so, yeah, you know, that that kind of stuff does happen from time to time. Nice. Have you guys ever done like an honoring of the faculty, like at the end of the year? Honoring of faculty?

[00:11:37] Yeah, like just kind of giving out like awards like, hey, great participation, great leadership skills. Yeah, you know, not for not for the students necessarily like that. But one thing we

[00:11:48] do and I started when I got here was we do these class projects in the radio class. And we do these little projects based on what they might encounter at an AM or FM radio station, right? So one of them,

[00:12:03] for instance, is a PSA project public service announcement. And we take those and the really good ones we will put into rotation at UTA radio as our commercials, you know, we're a non-commercial

[00:12:19] station. So we don't do commercials. We do PSAs. We'll put them on there to rotate around on the station and then we'll send some of those up to national contests. College broadcasters,

[00:12:33] Inc is one college media association is another just to kind of see how we stack up with other universities who do the same thing. And we've won a lot of awards over the years and many

[00:12:45] times we're finalists for awards, not necessarily win the top prize, but still, you know, we try to showcase our student work as much as we can. Lovely. We guys ever thought of doing sponsorships with other existing radio franchises or? Other media have not really thought of

[00:13:10] that. We accept support since we're non-commercial, right? Support, which means someone could come in and, you know, pay to sponsor a semester or support a semester or even a program. And we've been doing

[00:13:27] that and trying to kind of bring in a little extra revenue, which goes back into the radio station by the way is not going into my pocket or anything like that. And we do that other,

[00:13:39] if there's other media entities that perhaps want to do something with us, we would look at that absolutely. We have a law firm we're working with right now. There's another podcast that used to run in Radio Free Europe that's using our facilities to record. And so those

[00:14:02] change over from time to time, but, you know, support kind of helps buy t-shirts and stickers and all those things we like to give away to students. Check, gotcha. And are you really just kind of impressed not only by the turnout,

[00:14:20] but by the different programs and coverage you guys have gotten a chance to do? Oh, yeah. You know, part of that is being a little bit ambitious for what we are, just a little old streaming radio station, college radio station. But, you know, when the

[00:14:40] Super Bowl came through here, Super Bowl 45 years and years ago, we thought, hey, we need to find a way to be there and cover that, right? And we did. We covered that. You know,

[00:14:55] you know, political rallies of someone of note who come through or close by. We try to get our students on our news side to go cover that. For the first time this past spring, we got actual

[00:15:10] media credentials to cover South by Southwest. So that's nice, right? And we're hoping to obviously continue that. And so, yeah, you know, some of the things that we're doing, we shoot for the moon on that because, you know, what is someone going to say no?

[00:15:27] And that's the worst they can say. You know, at least you tried and you're trying to, you're doing that because one, you want to increase the visibility of the station, but you also want to do the experiential learning for the students because this is

[00:15:40] really about them and learning how to cover things, to interview people, to do whatever. And so that is a big part of what we try to do. Absolutely. Lovely. And with the various sports games, have you guys also kind of sent some field agents,

[00:16:03] so to speak, to kind of go out and cover just events that happen at other campuses as well? So, not other campuses unless it's a UTA team, let's say like baseball,

[00:16:15] and I go and play Dallas Baptist University. We would go there if they had room for us and we would call that game. We have gone to TCU for baseball games in the past,

[00:16:30] have gone all the way down to Austin to cover basketball. Oh, wow. UTA would play Texas. And that's really kind of the passion and the want to of the student

[00:16:44] in that instance who came to me and said, hey, we want to go to Austin. We want to cover this. And if they want to do it, I'm like, go for it. That's great. They have all kinds of ideas

[00:16:56] that I probably haven't thought of, like I said before. But we do try to branch out from UTA sports. So, we just finished covering the Dallas Wings over the summer here as they made

[00:17:09] the playoffs and that was great. We do a couple of bowl games in the fall, arm forces bowl, first responders bowl, and we actually get our video students to come in and do some stories for them. We had covered the Rangers in the past. We weren't able to

[00:17:26] crack that nut this year. But on our social media account, it'll say UTA radio sports, covering UTA athletics and a sporting event near you. That's what we try to do is we try to

[00:17:39] branch out and get the kids more experience. Hopefully. I saw that it was recently a national college radio day. World College radio. World College radio day. All these many holidays had no idea about. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I used to be on the board for College radio day.

[00:18:04] And that's a fun little thing we've been doing with them for the last, I guess, they're on their 12th or 13th year doing that. And that's a day when college stations kind of come together and celebrate being weird and maybe a little subversive. And it's all the

[00:18:22] things that college radio is that maybe AM and FM can't do. And can't be as experimental or kind of zany. Absolutely. I mean, hey, we don't have to play three and a half minute songs. We can play

[00:18:33] four, five, six, seven minute songs. We don't care. We can get away with that. And that's the day that we celebrate every year. We're just getting the word out that, hey, you know, we're your college radio station. We're here. It helps us kick off a

[00:18:50] concert series that we do every October called Rocktober, which we did just this past Friday. And it's great. And it's just a it's a it's a reason to kind of come together

[00:19:04] with all of our staff members to kind of celebrate to talk to hang out because we don't get to hang out a lot because of class and internships and whatever else is going on. So it's a really

[00:19:16] it's a really fun time. It's lovely. Do you guys interact still with various members of the theater department and have them participate in skits or just jockey work? Or, you know, I say ish only

[00:19:32] because occasionally we will get an art or film major that comes over and says, hey, I want to be involved in radio. And the first thing I'll tell anybody is you got to take the radio

[00:19:44] production class first, which is an elective and it's open to all majors. But it's the best way to train a bunch of people at one time because it's kind of hard to train one person separately

[00:19:58] from others. You know, I've got four classes I'm teaching, you know, in addition to doing station stuff. So it's kind of difficult. So I encourage them to do that. And so right now,

[00:20:09] as a matter of fact, we have a theater major who's got a show on 11, 11am to 1pm Thursdays, which is called Figuring it Out with Faith. And she does a great job. You can tell she's

[00:20:26] an actor. She can talk and she can model, which is which is great. So, you know, any of them that want to come over and do something like that, we had a student before who kind of did

[00:20:39] little bits, little comedy bits show. And it was strange and weird, but you know, that's okay. We can make that work and get away with it. So the answer is every once in a while. Yeah.

[00:20:52] Okay, sweet. And has there ever been talk of like maybe doing CDs or digital uploads the various comedy bits to where kind of like the other departments can kind of give someone basically a demo reel by the time they graduate? Well, you know, I put that on the

[00:21:15] students really. And we do have a way for them to copy what has gone out over the year. And so I encourage them all the time to do that to grab it so they can make a demo reel or resume

[00:21:30] tape, whatever you want to copy it from the soundboard. That's nice. They can make a well, we have a system where everything is recorded, right? Every 24, 7, 365. And then go in and they can grab, they can look at the time and they can grab their show.

[00:21:45] And all stations do something like that. And so we encourage them to do that, especially those that are getting closer and closer to graduation because they need something that they can show a potential employer, you know, what they've done.

[00:22:03] And it may be a little rough, you know, because it's college radio and not remastered yet, but it's a start, you know, you can you can make it that way and you can mess with it. But,

[00:22:14] you know, they may not be as smooth as as they will be in the future. But that's okay. At least you're showing someone that you've done it and you have a little bit of experience.

[00:22:23] So that is absolutely something that we, I won't say mandate, but we strongly encourage. Right. Well, and with so many free editing tools that have been around forever like Pro Tools and Audacity, it is kind of interesting how it kind of encourages people to kind of just

[00:22:42] value not only just time management, but just their final cut at putting value in their work in their brand. How do you feel like this boosts their career advice? What doing the auditing the appreciating the audio remastering. Oh my gosh. Well,

[00:23:06] you know, back in the day and I don't know how they how they did this. They did this with film too when you had to edit you had to physically cut the tape right or the film and you had to

[00:23:16] kind of tape it together. And that was a real chore. And I tell them to just kind of, you know, thank the gods whoever those are that we have digital audio editing today. Because it's so much

[00:23:29] easier to build that tape into listen back to yourself and give yourself some critique. And you know what we're telling them too is hey only your very best stuff can go on this

[00:23:43] on this reel right you can't do something that you thought was funny. But was it, you know, you got to give yourself a critical ear and so I think by putting that together, they're listening to themselves. They're being their self critiquing themselves and they're realizing that, you know,

[00:24:02] this has got to be my very best stuff and something I did over here may not translate to a hiring manager I've got to make sure that it's kind of on point here.

[00:24:13] And it's hard to listen back to yourself too but you got to yeah, you got to do that because others are judging you, you know by what you do, you know, I say in my classes this is a performance-based

[00:24:25] business especially if you're on air right and so you have to get used to listening to yourself but others listening to you and making judgments of you. Judgment is a good way to segue this any tips and tricks you give out to anyone just, you know,

[00:24:41] concerned about their public image versus, you know, taking criticism constructive or not. You have to have a thick skin in radio or television or anything kind of on air YouTube, you know, now whatever. You've got to have a thick skin because it's about your performance,

[00:25:01] it's about the content, you're never going to make everyone happy. Right? And so you've got to just kind of let that roll off and keep doing your thing. You know, you need to listen

[00:25:14] to like a news director or a radio program director, someone who could be your future boss and take their constructive criticism and try to make yourself better. Absolutely. But you got to know too that they're not being mean and it's not personal,

[00:25:30] they're giving you tips to make yourself better. And I do that too in class and I don't say I'm harsh at it but you know, we give them the truth here about if something's not right,

[00:25:45] if the levels are off or whatnot and tell them that it's got to be right. When you get out of here, it's got to be good and correct and all of that. And I think sometimes they don't believe me,

[00:26:00] but when they get out, they realize, oh yeah, Lance was right. What are some good ways to kind of get their attention and have this sometimes difficult sound tech advice make sense? We'll play it back in class. And one of the things I have

[00:26:13] at the very beginning of the semester in my production class is it's on my syllabus. It says, some or all of your projects will be played in class. And I show that on the screen and I turn

[00:26:24] to them and I say all of them will be played in class. And so that's the start of, everyone is going to hear me in what I've done. And you can see it when we get to playing

[00:26:35] them that the students get kind of bunched up about it or they try to hide themselves or something like that. So that's one. And if I notice something, I will pick on someone and say,

[00:26:49] look at this and we'll see the sound wave. And it's got this and this here. But when you're criticizing someone, you have to point out what the problems are, but you also have to give the solution to it because it's not, it's like, hey, that's wrong,

[00:27:07] but here's why and here's how we fix it. Instead of making it come off as a wreck. This is crap. It's terrible, right? You can't do that. And you tell them, just a few

[00:27:19] little tweaks here. And that's usually what it is. It's usually like three or four or five things that they could fix, little things that would make that piece a lot better. So with the constructive

[00:27:32] criticism, there is also the, but here's how you can make it better. And you have to do that because we're not here to crush anybody's dreams on that. But I will call out someone's piece

[00:27:46] in front of class and just say, hey, this needs to be better here or there. I also teach a broadcast writing class. And so every Friday we write and we write new stories for radio.

[00:28:02] And every Monday we come in and I call up two or three of the stories that had problems. And we'll show it and I'll say, you know, that word's out of place. You need to lose that. That's a

[00:28:16] weird sentence. I don't know what you mean. Here's how you fix that though. Yeah. And then we turn to the class and say, does that sound better? And they kind of look around and say,

[00:28:24] yeah, that does sound better. You know, and so saying it out loud. Yeah. And then we'll say it out loud sometimes and they can see it. Then they're like, oh yeah. You know, isn't it funny how half the time the message is clear? It's just sounding unintentionally redundant

[00:28:41] or repetitive. Yeah. I mean, you know, sometimes they get kind of hearing me just kind of drone on a little bit. And what also helps too is, you know, we have the opportunity to bring in

[00:28:52] guest speakers to our classes. Oh, lovely. Who have worked in the business or I used to work with, you know, in some capacity. I still have a lot of colleagues and friends who are still doing it

[00:29:04] day after day. And when they see that and hear it from someone else, you know, that turns the light bulb on sometimes. It's empowering. Yeah. You know, radio professionals or someone in

[00:29:16] sports or someone like that, you know, that kind of opens their eyes to something. So we try to do that as much as possible. You know, it can be difficult. Like, you know, like right

[00:29:26] now the Rangers are in such a deep run as we're recording this in the playoffs. We're trying to get the sideline reporter into my class and I've got to wait, you know, because they, you know, that team

[00:29:36] may win the World Series, right? But she's going to be great. Keep them all day. And you're like, I was trying to get a five minutes and it's taking five minutes. Hey, I'm just trying

[00:29:46] to get you in for a class to talk about writing or something like that. So you do what you do and work around people's schedules. But that's another way that you can kind of reinforce

[00:30:00] you know, what we're trying to put across here in terms of the content and producing it effectively. Perfect. Who's been one of your favorite speakers to invite? Let's see. That's a good one. I hope it's a good one.

[00:30:15] That's a good one. Last semester, every spring I teach a sports reporting class and because you know, when I was reporting, you know, sports would kind of become news. And so

[00:30:29] that's my expertise in it, I guess. So I got Shereen Williams who used to write for the Dallas Morning News and now writes for, is it the NFL.com? Is it an NBC property? And she lives in Arlington.

[00:30:49] And so I'm like, hey, come speak to my class. And she's like, great. You know, and she's seen it. Yeah, I think you're right. MLB is, well, like Comcast. So yeah. And she's seen it and done it and been there and knows where all the bodies are

[00:31:03] buried and she's just a wealth of information. But you know, also too, you know, when you get someone like that has done it for a long time, they kind of got this little hard edge about them.

[00:31:15] Which is great because they'll be truthful about, you know, what the business is really like and some challenges you might face. And I love that because, you know, these students need to kind of know that it's not all roses and butterflies, as I sometimes

[00:31:33] say. They need to, you know, no surprises. I like to have those surprises. You can do a great job and still have a boss who is not paying you what you're worth or not appreciating your value. You know, that, you know, in radio, you know, there are

[00:31:49] program directors out there that, you know, they'll come in to a situation and they'll look at a person and say, I don't like your voice. Yeah. You know, and so when your contract's up, you're gone. I'm bringing someone else,

[00:32:04] you know, that stuff happens. Because this is like, it wasn't your fault. And it was just someone who didn't like it. Exactly. Exactly. You can't change you. You can change how you do and what you do. And no, that's lovely. What's been the most

[00:32:18] rewarding just from seeing people just get it finally. Just realizing, hey, this isn't gatekeeping, but this is a very realistic retrospect that we're doing here today. Oh, it's always nice when you see the live bulb kind of go on

[00:32:32] over their heads when a concept is like, oh, but, you know, you don't always see it when they're here, when they graduate. Yeah. And then they contact you and they'll say, oh my gosh, you were so right in this

[00:32:48] and it doesn't mean I have to be right or anything, but this is how we're doing it. And you know, they want this thing turned the same day and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, right, you know? And that's always satisfying, but it's really more satisfying

[00:33:02] because they're in it. They got a job in that situation. They got a job in the industry and they're in it. And so that's the greatest thing about it. That is wonderful. Do you really feel like this is always going to be a class

[00:33:18] collective that really keeps growing? I hope so. You know, I think the way it is right now, the two sections of radio production I take, there's still a demand for it, so that's good. Radio and I tell my students this, AMFM isn't dying. If anything, it's adapting

[00:33:39] to new technologies, right? Yeah. And so that means there are still jobs to be had in this industry in some form or fashion. We don't know where it's going, but I can pull up all the research and tell them that radio is still the number one mass

[00:33:56] reach medium in the country. By far over streaming or online radio or whatever, it really is. You still see people who will just fly out state, hey, I get everything if it's not on the

[00:34:09] radio, I don't get my news. Interesting. There's that and you're kind of a captured audience there in your car going to school or to work. So that's still a kind of a big thing. So I think here,

[00:34:25] still in demand, we have a heavy sports presence through UTA radio. So we see a lot of that coming around. We also do a twice weekly newscast here, which is something I brought in when I started here just for the students who are interested

[00:34:43] in news and it's not always a lot, but it's a few so they have an outlet. So news is always going to be a thing, radio or TV. Yeah, if we could, we could do an advanced radio

[00:34:59] production. I think we could do that and find other projects that delve a little deeper into the production process. I don't know what the demand for that would be. That gets into a whole

[00:35:12] other thing right now, but I think you could grow that. And then for UTA radio, there are still other things that we can do. Just this past summer, we got our own app. Finally, we were on a platform that I saw. I couldn't believe it.

[00:35:32] Yeah, it was a platform for other college stations, right? Other colleges could be on this one app. Well, that company could separate us out into our own app and we're like, thank you, we'll take that. It's only been 20 years now.

[00:35:43] But we finally got it done, right? And there are other things. There are industry awards that we would like to win and be recognized for big national awards and stuff like that. And so we're

[00:35:55] striving to kind of do the best college radio of the year, day by day, right? Things like that. Yeah, there's plenty of room. There's room for growth. There's still demand in the production classes. And I'm just here to enjoy the ride, really. That's lovely.

[00:36:18] And you did mention a good point there on getting everyone enthusiastic and organized on Tell in the News. Have you had to sometimes have a few reminders with everyone saying, hey, regardless of what corporation you're working for in the future, it shouldn't be about your

[00:36:38] agenda. It should be about telling a narrative. Oh, absolutely. And that comes right from the broadcast writing class, which is a required class for our broadcast majors, right? You have to take that class. And so that's where you reinforce that, hey, you know, you may have an opinion

[00:36:57] about some hot button issues like gun control, right? Immigration, politics, you know, you're the reporter. You are right down the middle. You have no dog in this fight. You've got to

[00:37:12] report both sides of a story. We hit them with that early on. And then as they move on and they get into UTA radio and do that, we're still on them for that. Our reporters, they will do stories

[00:37:27] and they'll send it to me and our student news director. And I'll listen to them before they go on air to make sure, you know, kind of everything's above board here and remind them,

[00:37:36] hey, you need to have that name. Where did you get that information? Right? The audience needs to know that name, right? If you don't cite it, it's just as bad as pulling it out of hat.

[00:37:47] Right? Because, you know, we get, and there's been too much in the last few years especially of people attacking journalism, you know, as fake news and your evil and whatever. And so it's up to our students to kind of fight that narrative and prove that no, you know,

[00:38:07] we do real news. It's a source of information that you need. And the methods that we do to bring that to you are journalistic standards that are above board and we've been doing since

[00:38:25] forever, since Walter Cronkite. All right? Nice. And isn't it said that some people don't know some of these famous reporters is like, no, look them up? It has been a while, right? But,

[00:38:38] you know, I see on social media people site, you know, it wasn't like that when Walter Cronkite was doing news or something like that. And maybe not, but there are plenty of people in

[00:38:49] local television news and radio news that are doing it every day. Yeah. And we're trying to teach our students the same way to do that. Just because the producer's not correct. Right way to do it. Yeah. It's a tough one. You kind of see it, I guess, with

[00:39:11] people's famous singers and sports stars. And they go, I want to be like him because they got a bad boy attitude. It's like, well, there's already a leash on that so-called bad boy attitude that

[00:39:23] they're only going to get them that far. Yeah. You know, well, you see a lot of that. It's a social media aspect of that, right? Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, things like that.

[00:39:34] Oh, yeah. And there's a place for that in radio and in journalism where you can kind of reach that audience with your storytelling. And I think our students today, they're very savvy with those

[00:39:49] online platforms, right? Yeah. And so it's up to them to figure out, to tell the story and tell it correctly, right? No bias. But still make it engaging for that type of audience. And

[00:40:05] I think that's kind of where that part is going. You're still going to have your traditional newscast, but you've got this other beast that you got to feed every day. And our students today

[00:40:16] are in the perfect time and line to kind of make that happen. Lovely. And so so much beyond resourcefulness, so much just positivity for this future. Is there anything you'd like to promote or just highlight that's an ongoing announcement? Well, you know, there's the app which you can

[00:40:47] download for free, iOS or Android. You'll have to sign in and listen to us. And the great thing about this app is it's got this little chat function where you can chat with our student DJs,

[00:41:01] our advanced DJs who are generally on in the evenings and night because they can do it by themselves. They don't need me to come rescue them. Rescue them. So we'd appreciate if you tuned into that. That'd be great. We're about to embark on basketball coverage here for UTA

[00:41:22] Radio Sports, Men's and Women's. You know that starts in November and we'd love you to get on our socials at UTA Radio or at UTA Radio Sports on what used to be Twitter, X, Instagram,

[00:41:38] as well as Facebook because our students are going to be really busy. And October is still a thing. Rocktober, we just did that. Your content series. Yeah. With College Radio Day. We have

[00:41:50] one more coming up this year on the 27th. That we'll be doing and Rocktober, of course, is our annual you know, fall concert festival. Not really a festival but a concert series that we do and that's

[00:42:03] fun. We're trying to get more into, you know, now that COVID is not as big as a thing is bring in artists into the studio because we used to do a fair amount of that before COVID.

[00:42:18] And we're trying to bring in more artists to kind of interview and play for us in studio. And so on the 20th, October 20th, we're going to have the cut throat finches in Friday between four and six p.m. Friday, Friday, four, six p.m. October 20th,

[00:42:36] central time. And we put them kind of in the corner. We call it Tiny Studio, which is kind of a take off Tiny Desk, you know, from NPR. And that's fun. We want to do more of that.

[00:42:52] And then we're getting into the fall or, you know, ending, you know, college football coverage and then getting ready for spring. In the spring, we do a thing called vinyl thawing and that's in conjunction with College Radio Day where we play nothing but vinyl on a Saturday

[00:43:08] in April. And that's fun, right? Because vinyl is making this big comeback. And so we try to get our staff, we try to get some alums, faculty involved with that. We try to

[00:43:22] make it a 24-hour thing. We're playing nothing but vinyl and I think last year was our best one yet because we had a lot of interest. And you find students today are really into vinyl

[00:43:33] more than you think and they have their own at home and they're willing to lug it up here to play. So that's always a fun thing that we look forward to. Hopefully.

[00:43:46] Thank you ever so much for just allowing me to pick your brain, but also just kind of showcasing your students and the lovely staff you got on display here. And I wish nothing but

[00:43:57] the best. I hope everyone keeps getting their feet wet and just realizing, hey, use your tools and resources that you have right at the tips of your fingers. Well, I appreciate that. You're helping with that. We got this old promo that we'll put in

[00:44:14] rotation every so often from about the time I started here and it's called We Exist. And we had this student going around going, hey, have you heard of UTA radio? And people

[00:44:26] were like, we have a radio station? And those were true responses, but it was funny in a way, right? You know, hey, yeah, we exist. That's what says. So things like this, you're kind of helping

[00:44:38] that narrative to put this out to Arlington and DFW and UTA. Yeah. Well, yeah, we're here and we're trying to do some cool stuff. So thank you. Interviews mean a lot really. I mean,

[00:44:52] I see so many people who only want to talk to famous people is like, well, that person might be famous later or they might just encourage other creatives at home. Fame should not be the only

[00:45:04] factor that you put into determining someone's talent. Right? Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Anytime. Follow us on the web on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The podcast is available on podby, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Anchor, Apple and anywhere else podcasts are available. Feel free

[00:45:29] to review our show and leave comments on any of those sites. Thanks a million for listening.