Week 6 6/23/14-6/2714

image courtesy of clearchannel.com

I began my final week of my internship at Clear Channel amazed that I had almost finished my entire time there. I felt as though just yesterday that I had started my journey and now I see how far I have come with what I have learned.

However after immediately walking in the door of the station I went directly to work. I was told once again to sit at the desk and assume the normal objectives that come along with the desk.

I continued to answer phone calls and respond to whoever came in through the doors looking for information or prizes that they might have won.

I only had one bad incident with a listen while on desk that was looking to redeem Circus tickets that he had won.   First when I asked for his ID he gave me his credit card and when I responded with No I need to see your real ID he got really annoyed.

He immediately went back at me say that the credit cards were good enough in a loud angry tone. To not upset him further I went on to try and find his tickets and they were not where they were supposed to be.

The listener started to become even more agitated so I immediately went and called Ricky. Ricky came as quick as he could with the tickets in hand to give to the man. When he got the tickets he started to get even more annoyed and said he thought it was a pack of four not two.

So Ricky had to go back and collect two more tickets as well while the man waited impatiently. When Ricky was handing the tickets to him he snatched them out of his hand and said “you guys better get your act together” and stormed off.

I found it rather odd that a man would get so agitated over something that he won, for free. Nonetheless I continued with my work of sitting at the desk with little to none interruptions to speak about.

Later that same day I went off to a weekly promotional event that the station has at the Franklin Sussex Hyundai auto mall.  It was my first time doing this particular event but obviously not my first promotional event.

Ricky however could not be there for the event so instead he sent his assistant and part timer Alex with me. I had not had too much interactions with her as of yet so it was kind of nice to get to know her more.

First we left the station and had to drive for about fifteen minutes to Rita’s ice cream shop to pick up the free Italian ice that we were going to give out at the event.

There was no real trouble getting the Italian ice from Rita’s but by the time we had gotten to Franklin Sussex auto mall a lot of it had melted. We quickly got the Italian Ice to the freezer where it waited till it was time for the event.

After this Alex and I went straight to setting up the tables for the event and everything else that came with it. Originally we had a little trouble getting the “Comrex” online but were able to figure it out.

Also after we had finished unpacking we had realized that Rita’s did not give us any spoons for the event and so Alex had to run out to the store to get some while I waited at the site alone. 

It was no real trouble because the DJ Borasio who was also at the event arrived shortly after she left.

 

For the event we were giving away tickets to a music festival that was occurring in the county that weekend. We were giving away a grand total of 10 pairs of tickets for the event.

The rest of the program went smoothly with no real bumps in the road and also the listeners loved it as well. Right before we left Borasio announced the winners and we had a safe and uneventful return to the station.

For my last day at the station I was hoping that I might do something special or new for my last time there. Unfortunately that did not really happen see that I was told to sit at the desk once again.

It was probably quite frankly the most boring time at the desk to date because only two people came into the office looking for prizes with no trouble. Also there were not too many people who called into the station as well.

I was told however to put a new program that was going to happen every Friday into their promotion program. This part of my day was the longest and most tedious which almost saw me throw the computer screen it got so frustrating.

The promotional program that was happening was called “Filthy Rich Friday.” In this giveaway the station was giving a total of $20 in New Jersey Lottery Tickets every Friday for a year starting this Friday.

Luckily I was able to figure out how to put this in the program on the computer so that anyone in the entire station could look it up and see what it was all about.

Before I left the station that day I went to everyone I knew and thanked them for all their help. I said one final goodbye to Ricky and he told me that I had done a good job.

I am satisfied about what I have done for this internship and am happy that I picked Clear Channel in Franklin, NJ. Everyone at the station was so nice and friendly that it made me feel like I was truly welcomed there.

In the future I would not mind at all working at this particular radio station knowing all that I know now. It was a great place to start and now I hope and look on to the future of my career. 

Week 5 6/16/14-6/20/14

Picture courtesy of ClearChannel.com

My penultimate week started off with an incident with a listener that came into the station a little perturbed.  As I walked into the station I was met by a woman that had an unhappy look on her face.

I preceded however to asked how she was and she just said not so good because she had missed the concert that she had won tickets for on the air. She also proceeded to complain that no one called her that her tickets arrived into the station for her to pick up before the concert.

Instead of me fumbling around with my words seeing that I really had no excuse for her to give because I am just the intern, I immediately got Ricky Hoffend to sort the mess out. Ricky got it sorted out and gave the woman tickets to another concert in the future.

After this great debacle I went on to do the work that was set up before me for the day. The first thing I had to do was take pictures from the Newton Day off my phone and onto the WNNJ website.  

It did not cause too much trouble or strain to get the pictures on the website, but it was just extremely time consuming. I also had to upload other pictures from different events on to the WNNJ website which was easier to do because they were already on the computer just need transferring to the website.

Following this Ricky instructed me to go on over to the paper utter and cut a bunch of the WNNJ flyers that had their logo on them. I also had to cut out other flyers for WSUS that read ways to meet the DJs of WSUS.

This task did not take too much effort but it was truly tedious and boring seeing that it must have been over two hundred flyers that I had to cut individually. I felt as though I were getting hypnotized because it just kept doing the same thing over and over again which took me over two hours just to cut flyers off.

After all of this mundane work, I went on over on remote to a deli in Hamburg which is a town not too far from the station. I went along with Ricky in the WNNJ car where we had the usual components for a promotion’s event.

When we got to the deli we met up with the store owner which led us to where we could set up. The reason why we were there primarily was because we were promoting the new game from the New Jersey lottery Cash for Life game. We were also handing out a punch of free scratch off lottery tickets from the New Jersey lottery as well.

Everyone that we encountered the whole time we were there were extremely friendly and thankful for having the free ticket they received.

Later in the week I had to call listeners of both WNNJ and WSUS that had won tickets for different events that were going down at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. The first event that I had to call people for was a Walking with Dinosaurs show that listeners had won tickets for.

There were plenty of winners that had to be called and I got a hold of all of them by either their answering machine or themselves. The second event that I had to call listeners for was a concert, and getting a hold of them came just as smoothly with no serious bumps in the road.

The only thing I found weird was the fact that the majority of the people that called told me that they had already received a call previously or that they had already picked up their tickets.

During the phone calls I was also asked to sit at the desk and presume the normal duties that went along with being at the desk. After the phone calls I had to print out a new label for an “enter to win” box for the “Circus” that I was going to use later for an event.

This event was called “Goches’s Garlic Run” which was in a town called Rockaway, NJ that was roughly about 30 minutes from the station. This event was a motorcycle run starting at the Rockaway mall and going all the way to Newark, NJ.

The motorcycle run was to help fundraise money for cancer children so that they could have a better chance at living life. For this remote site we packed all the regular essential items including an EZ-up canopy that we used over the table.

Ricky however did not come on this remote with me instead I went with a part-time promotion staff member named Branden.

It was kind of nice to have a change of pace for once and have to work with someone new. It was also nice because Branden was attempting to get into the same field as myself, sports radio.

It was great to hear about his experiences and the road that he was heading on so that I could see possibly what it’s going to be like for me when I hit the work force.

After setting up for the event however it seemed that Branden took advantage of having someone else work with him. While I was stuck behind the table talking to listeners and telling them how to win a free lottery ticket and put in for the “enter to win” box Branden just left the table.

He went around taking pictures of all the event and going to the different venders that were there. Even when he was there he did not help too much just mainly sat around in his chair that he brought with him.

Despite this however I did have a great time and it was great to interact with the other listeners. We also stayed to the very end to watch all of the motorcycles go by and leave for Newark.  

Week 4 6/9/14-6/15/14

Myself (Bela Vasszlavik) working Newton Day.

At the start of my fourth week at Clear Channel radio station I was really starting to feel like I belonged by working with the other people in the office. I started to have a real connection with the others in the office especially my supervisor Ricky.

At the beginning of the week I started by working on an online promotion auction that the radio was doing to make money. The auction was all about businesses that perhaps did not have the budget to advertise, would give the station items that the station could sell on an auction site.  

Once the items were sold for whatever money that was made, would turn directly into advertising dollars for the business on the air. This auction was going to go online so that people could bid on them starting Friday the 13^th and until the end of that weekend.

So in order to get this auction online however, there were a lot of things that need to go right with it needing all the help it could get. For myself I had a number of jobs that I needed to do to help get this auction up and running.

First I started by taking the twenty-five or so different auction items that were listed and getting pictures for each one. I was told to go through Ricky’s email and look up the business and find the pictures that were sent and save them onto the office file drive.

This was so that any computer could easily access the file and picture quickly and easily without having to scroll through Ricky’s entire email just looking for pictures. Sometimes for the pictures I had to also get them off Google just to get the logo of the business in case they did not send the station a picture.

I did not come into too much trouble along the way while I was doing the work but it was long and tedious to do. Also at one point during the whole process I had to go on the front desk once again.

For some reason it became extremely busy while I was working the desk which made it extremely difficult to complete the work I was presented. I had a number of listeners that won on the air that were collecting prizes.

Strangely however I could not find them in the system and had to frequently ask Ricky for assistance. One lady even came in looking to get some on air advertising for her not for profit organization. I was so confused what to do but just decided to go get someone that knew what was going on.

After finding all the pictures for the auction on Ricky’s email I was then instructed to take those pictures and upload them onto the auction website. This was very easy and did not take too long either because of all the work I had already done with the pictures.  

Later I then was told to look through each of the items and prof read all of their descriptions. This was another long and tedious task that was given to me because there were a lot of mistakes that really need to be corrected.

One of the descriptions was so bad that we had no clue what was meant by it.  Ricky actually had to call the business and ask them to send a new description of their item.

Other than that snag the rest of the task went rather smoothly and after doing this I was done working on the auction for the rest of the week. My next task was ripping lottery tickets for future prize winners.

What I did was very simple and therapeutic I felt because all I did was sit there and keep ripping lottery tickets in stacks of ten dollars’ worth.

On Saturday I was able to go to an event that the 103.7 radio station was going to do in Newton, NJ. The event was a huge block party event in the town of Newton and in doing so was called “Newton Day.”

I arrived at the station at 7:45 a.m., to prepare and travel to the town of Newton for the event. When we arrived in Newton we had to unpack and set up the WNNJ table.  

For the event we had a lot of the same things that we had for other events such as a sounds system with speakers, a microphone, table cloth that said WNNJ, and the comrex that helped us connect with the radio.

However we also had two other things for this event that we do not normally have which were a dunk tank and a helium canister for blowing up balloons.

The other people that also came to the event with me were Ricky and DJ Borasio. Though I never participated in going into the dunk tank Ricky and Borasio did.

The dunk tank was there to help fundraise for the Newton Volunteer Fire Department. We charged a dollar for every ball that was tossed and a 100 percent of the profit went directly went to the Fire Department.

Everyone was thrilled and excited to throw the ball at anyone that was in the dunk but more so for Borasio because they wanted to sink their morning DJ. It was a lot of fun and entertaining and was very busy all day.

We rose over $300 for the fire department in total which they were so grateful for. I felt like I never stopped and kept working all day but I was really enjoying myself and seemed that everyone else was having a great time too.

During the last hour or so things slowed down and the dunk tank was shut down due to lack of people wanting to get in the dunk tank because it was so cold. However when there was not much going on I was able to pick Ricky’s brain about how hard it was to get into radio, how I was doing with my internship, and other questions that I was concerned with in relation to the job or radio itself.  

All in all the week seemed slow and tedious to start out but really started to pick up at the end that I just loved. 

Promotions Director Ricky Hoffend taking an unexpected plunge into the dunk tank

Week 3 6/2/14- 6/6/14

picture courtesy of wsus102-3.com

The beginning of the week I did not see much change from what I was doing in the previous weeks. The receptionist was again out for an extend period of time so they put me back up there to monitor what goes on.

 I was able to interact with the listeners that came in to the office once again looking to redeem their prize that they perhaps won on air.

One lady did come into the office looking for a prize that she had won. Unfortunately I could not locate the specific prize that she was looking for and she started to get a little irate with me.

To not cause a full stir I quickly got my supervisor Ricky on the phone. He came rushing to the desk to help me out.

Fortunately I was able to acquire the prize she was looking for and everything went smoothly from there. The rest of my time at the desk went pretty fluent without any more real snags in the road.

I also continued to answer the phone calls that came in and answered questions to the best of my knowledge. If I had no idea or they needed further help I then transferred their call to someone that could help them achieve this.

Later in the week I was once again able to sit down in one of their promotional meetings that they have on a weekly basis. As same as the first meeting that I sat in on during my first week at the internship the same people were there.

All the DJs were there Steve Andrews, Steve Allen, Borasio, and Gary Cee. Also at the promotions meeting was the promotions’ director and my supervisor Ricky Hoffend with his assistant and part-time employee Alex. The head director Chuck however did not arrive into the meeting until a little after the meeting officially started.

They once again began the meeting by talking about past promotions and events that had gone on the previous week and weekend. 

They collaborated about what went right and thus what also went awry so that they could improve on the event as a whole.

Following this they progressed by discussing events that were coming up for the station and what need to be done for each event. Also they pooled their thoughts on what ought to and ought not to occur at each event.

After the meeting however instead of writing up an email I was instructed by Ricky to do something more useful. I was told to call about fifty different winners that had won tickets to different concerts.

This was not the first time the winners were being called it was in fact the third time this was happening. They were being called for the third time because it was the second time the information had changed on the subject.

Instead of them receiving their tickets for the concert at the will call window I had to instructed them that they had to come down to the station in order to pick up their tickets.

For this reason I felt that they would be angry that they had to drive to the station instead of just picking them up at the concerts’ will call window. However this was not the case for the majority of the people that I called.

Most of the people in fact were just excited that they were getting free tickets for a concert that they really wanted to go to.

I only received only about a handful of angry winner that were annoyed to come all the way down to the station. They felt since they lived so far way and had no time to go get the tickets that it was not at all accommodating to them.

Instead of me just fumbling around with words to say because I had no idea what to say to that, I would transfer the call straight to Ricky. Since he was just in the cubical next to me I could hear everything that he was saying to the winner.

He calmly accommodated to what they needed and told them that to just call them when the tickets officially arrive so that the station could send them through the mail.

Ricky also warned them that they were not liable for anything the US postal service does or does not get there in the time that the winner wanted the tickets.

I was really nervous for doing the phone calls because I do not like doing them for the fact that I feel that I always stumble over m words when talking to them.

However this turned out as a great learning experience because by the end I was doing fantastic  and Ricky even said so himself. It really helped me tap out of my shell and do something that I was a little uncomfortable in doing.

The phone calls took up a majority of my time for the week lasting all the way up till Friday when I finished them all up.

I also then accompanied Ricky to go get food from a local sandwich restaurant and bring them to an office that won the free lunch.

During the ride it was a great opportunity because we are not doing anything but driving so I was able to talk about things that go on in radio.  

When we got back to the station for the rest of the day I was placed on taking and clearing out cubicles.  This was actually kind of sad to witness because it showed that the radio world is condensing down.

A lot of their cubicles that had been empty for almost ten years were being taken down so that they could rent that space out to someone else and make money that way.

This may counter my previous argument that there are jobs in the radio business. If we see this radio station condensing down I wonder how the other stations are faring.

By the end of the week I could tell it was not my favorite week as of yet because I did a lot of clerical work. However, Ricky did reassure me that the best was still to come and that I would learn a lot. I am going to hold him to this. 

Week 2 5/26/14- 5/31/14

Memorial Day Parade in Newton, NJ

The beginning of the week started with Memorial Day so since it is a national holiday the office was officially closed for the entire day. However the station as a whole decided to participate in a Memorial Day parade that was located in Newton, NJ not too far from where the station is located.

 Technically this was my second event in which I was working even though it was a parade. When we arrived at the parade start I was instructed to help Ricky set up the vehicles in a patriotic theme.

We had three separate vehicles two company cars that sported the logos of two of the three radio stations broadcasted from the Franklin station. The other vehicle was a large commercial flatbed truck that the veterans sat on.

For the parade the station was able to get listeners that are veterans who have served or currently serve in our armed forces to ride along in the parade. They did this along with the rest of us who included Ricky, Gary Cee, Borasio, Steve Allen and myself.

There were supposed to be four veterans to show up to this parade but unfortunately only three veterans arrived for the parade. With the unfortunate miscommunications they needed four people in total still to fill the seats in the back of the truck.

With this problem it was going to look totally awkward with three guys and one empty chair. To fix this problem they all decided to put me on the back of the truck with the veterans.

Personally this felt really awkward for me because there was no way, for one that I looked like a veteran. Also I could tell that some people in the crowd felt it was weird too when they looked at me strangely.

Nonetheless I did what I was told and sat on back of the truck and acted as best I could that I belonged. The great thing however about being on top of the back of the truck, was that it was a great vantage point to take the pictures that I was asked to take.

As the week progressed and I went back into the office Ricky had me sit on the front reception desk. This could have been another one of those opportunities like clearing the office out to not learn anything.

However this was far from the actual case and in fact it was a great opportunity for me. I was able to interact with the listeners that came in to the office looking to redeem their prize that they perhaps won on air.

Also I answered phone calls that came in and answered questions to the best of my knowledge. If I had no idea or they needed further help I then transferred their call to someone that could help them achieve this.

When there was nothing for me to do and instead of doing nothing I decided to research jobs. The jobs I researched on the computer were available in the entire Clear Channel company business all over the United States.

Since Clear Channel is speared across the entire nation in radio and television it was great to see how many jobs were in fact out there to do. When people say there are not jobs in radio I can tell them that they are in fact wrong.

Also during the week I worked on the computer by helping set up a promotions calendar that the whole office could look at and refer to for guidance.  I used a program called promo-suite to help filter out what was prudent information for each event.

For every event there was information to put in such as, where the event is located, when the event is, what was necessary to bring, who was going to be there, how we were getting there, and what the event was about or for.

It helped me further my knowledge on what goes into the planning process of an event and that the planning process could start at least a month ahead of time.   

To finish off the week, I probably had one of the most rewarding things about the internship thus far. I was able to go see the Charlie Daniels band at Fox and Friends in New York City.

I had to get up at 2:30 in the morning just to arrive at the station by 3:30 a.m. Ricky and I waited till 3:50 to gather all the listeners that won the trip to go to New York and see the Charlie Daniels Band perform.

It took us about an hour to get to New York City and the Fox and Friends studio. While there we got the listeners that came with us, which was about nine of them, inside the outside concert fences.

Inside the fences Ricky and I took a bunch of pictures with different listeners and people working there. We had each one of them hold up the 103.7 radio logo. Ricky took one of these pictures and put them on the radio’s twitter page.

We also decided to take a lot of the pictures of Charlie Daniels Band when they performed to help post later on the twitter page as well.

Even though it was a lot of fun and exciting we did wind up running into one problem however. When I was holding the sign of the 103.7 logo a man from Fox got angry with both me and Ricky.

He sternly told us that we either had to leave or throw out our signs. To not cause a scene we both inclined to just throw the signs away unfortunately.

Other than that one snag that had occurred, the event and trip went very successfully. The trip was a lot of fun and helps me really enjoy my internship thus far while learning a lot along the way

Charlie Daniels at the Fox and Friends Summer Concert Series 

Week 1 5/19/14- 5/23/14

picture courtesy of wnnj.com

I began my first week as an intern at Clear Channel radio station in Franklin, NJ on May 19. I was not sure what to expect from the first week of the internship or what exactly I would be doing but I was eager to start.

At the begging of the week I did not take a real hands-on approach inside the radio station. Instead I shadowed my supervisor a lot to figure how to do different things within the job. My supervisor, Ricky Hoffend, is the Promotions Director at Clear Channel and also a part time DJ as well.

Also at the beginning of the week I got the chance to meet the other full time DJ that also worked at the radio station. Talking with them helped me figure out how to get into becoming a radio DJ myself which I have always wanted.

In their opinion the best way to do this was by being the promotions director. With shadowing the promotions director here at Clear Channel they said would help me understand.

Furthermore I learned how to conduct myself properly in an office environment between the curtsey and manners expected.  It was a great way to practice how to be professional when I officially go out into the workplace.

By the middle of the week I entered a meeting with the entire promotions team at Clear Channel.  The promotions team involved all the DJs which were a total of four. The names of these DJs are Steve Andrews, Steve Allen, Borasio, and Gary Cee.  Also at the meeting was Ricky the promotions director, his assistant Alex, as well as the head Director of Clear Channel in Franklin, Chuck.

They started off the meeting talking about past promotions and events that had gone on the previous week and weekend. They interacted about what went right and thus what also went wrong so that they could improve on the event as a whole.

Following this they continued by discussing events that were coming up and what need to be done for each event. Also they shared their thoughts on what should and should not happen at the events.

It was a great learning experience for me to see what actually goes on behind the scene at the radio station. It was great to see how and why they try to remain relevant by promotions throughout much of the county where the majority of the station casts out to.

After the meeting rounded up I was then instructed to take the notes that I made on the meeting and send out an email on what happened in the meeting.

I was then able to take the skills I was taught in my journalism classes to help me write a clear and concise order of accounts that carried on in the meeting. This email was to show to anyone that did not at the meeting to understand what happened during it. 

Upon completion of this task I was then instructed to go help organize a new office space by clearing out a room. At first I felt as though they were just using the intern to do their dirty work for them but I found that it was in fact very rewarding.

While clearing out the old boxes and such I found many old relics of the past stored away. Being the history minor that I am I was able to appreciate the old tapes and recordings that were from the past well before they started really just using the computer to help do the radio.

It was great to witness the growth of mass communications that has transpired throughout the time, especially at the radio station.  I even found old photographs of when the station first opened in the 1950s which was really cool to see because most of the people at the station had not seen them either.

For the majority of the rest of the week I performed many of these similar duties moving old papers and other things that need to be place else where or just thrown away. I continued to pour threw the boxes however to see if I could find anything that was interesting to help further my knowledge of history of the radio business.

By the end of the week I was able to accompany Ricky on my first event outside the station.  Before we left to go out on remote we first had to pack the company vehicle so that we had everything for the event.

We packed an amp with two speaker systems with an XLR cord as well. We also packed a “comrex” that would later help the DJ Borasio talk on the radio station while on the remote site away from the station. Many other miscellaneous things were also packed such as banners, table, table cloth, with a dice game, and some prizes that would be given out later.

The event was at the Irish Cottage Inn which was a local bar and restaurant not too far away from the station. When we arrived we contacted the owner of the restaurant who showed us where he wanted us to set up for the event.

During set up I was able to connect the “comrex” to the internet and then the radio station so that we could broadcast live from the bar. After set up we got everything organized for the event which was giving out raffle tickets to everyone in the bar and up until it was time to announce the winner.

The winner of the raffle received two tickets to the Pocono 500 NASCAR race.  Also though there were multiple opportunities to win lottery tickets by rolling a pair of dice and either getting a one or a three.

I found this experience to be a lot of fun and showed that I was really excited for what is to come for the rest of the internship. At the conclusion of my first week I feel myself wanting more and more from the radio station as a whole and cannot wait for what is to come.