Training

Dear Friends,
We are looking for people who are serious about being part of our radio experience. We are particularly interested in freshmen and sophomores as new trainees, but the experience is open to students and non-students (students have preference). WSUM is your campus community radio station. It operates at 91.7 FM and is licensed to the University of Wisconsin. Your station manager, program director and other executives in charge of programming and other aspects of the station are students. I am the staff adviser, who oversees (among other things) leadership training, fund raising, Federal Communications Commission rule enforcement, as well as performing other administrative functions.
We will soon be going into our seventh year and have already become one of the best free-form stations in the state, if not the country. With your time and commitment, we will establish and maintain our position as the best free-form radio station in the U.S. You have been selected to receive this email either because you have expressed interest in WSUM or because we thought you would be interested in WSUM.
Here is what you need to do to qualify for training (we have 40 open slots).

PLEASE NOTE THESE CAREFULLY:

  1. Write a concise but illuminating statement of interest (why I want to be a part of WSUM) and send it to me via my contact form;
  2. In that email, include your availability during evening hours Sunday-Thursday. Please be as flexible as you can be in setting your availability schedule;
  3. Come to the station at 8, 8:30, 9, or 9:30 any weeknight between now and December 14th or January 22nd - 30th for a tour. Ask for the traffic director. Tours are given on the half hour. Make sure that the traffic director gets your name.

Here is the training schedule for Spring 2008:

  • R Jan 31 7-9PM, TITU- Large group training session with important introductory training information. This meeting is mandatory for this session only, no makeups are possible. If you miss the meeting, you cannot join our staff until the summer at the earliest. At this meeting, you will be assigned to a lab time.
  • Su, M,T,R Feb 3-7; Su, M,T,R Feb 10-14; Su, M,T,R Feb 17-21; Su, M,T,R Feb 24-28 (these meetings are on-site at WSUM’s studios). You will be assigned to attend 1 one-hour session per week to be trained as a DJ or other on-air person (e.g., news, sports, talk host). This will mostly deal with technical skills and internal policies that will prepare you to be on the air on WSUM.
  • Feb 29-Mar 29- You will ‘shadow’ an existing show and work on making an air-check tape (a sample show to be reviewed by our program director). We will have staff available to help you through this process of creating your own show proposal.
  • Sun Mar 30 7-9PM OR R Apr 3 6-8PM (your choice), TITU- Final large group training session, including a test, aircheck tape and show proposal turn-in and certification as a WSUM training graduate.

This is experience is both fun and challenging. It is a serious commitment of time and effort, so please only respond if this sounds like something you would be willing to devote your passion and your time to. We understand that there are many other things on campus and in your social life that you could be involved in. We have big plans and would love to have you involved, but we need you to jump in with both feet and not just put a toe in the water.
I look forward to hearing from you, thank you for taking the time to consider WSUM as your home for creating media information and entertainment.

Key Information:
TITU This means Today in the Union, which means the room for this meeting has not been assigned until the day of the meeting. Most likely, it will be held in 1111 Humanities, but check the TITU board at http://www.union.wisc.edu to verify.

Directions to the station:
By now, you have probably found Urban Outfitters. If not, then you have found State Street Brats. Urban Outfitters is across from State Street Brats. Enter through the glass door next to Urban Outfitters, take the elevator to the second floor. Enter the brown door next to the elevator and ask for a ‘traffic director.’

We hope to see you soon.

Dave Black-General Manager contact
WSUM-FM 91.7 University of Wisconsin-Madison
602 State St #205
Madison, WI 53703
608-262-9542 (no sales calls, please)