Photo Courtesy of Riverside.fm
Podcasting has been a trending medium of online entertainment, amassing over 70 million listeners across all kinds of genres in 2023. As a senior communications major, I dreamt of creating my own podcast, and Dean College had the resources to make that dream a reality.
It all started when I joined a newly formed senior capstone class called COM-495-02, where you can create your own podcast using Pro Tools and other audio production equipment. This was a class that was added this year, and is offered every fall. I was always more interested in the audio side of media production rather than video, so this is a great alternative for seniors who feel the same way I do.
Since I aspire to work in the music radio industry, I was always curious about what the industry was like before I was born. For my senior capstone, I decided to create a podcast that talks about the history of music radio from the 1930’s to the present. The podcast is titled “Cruising Through the Airwaves”, where each episode includes interesting historical deep-diving and intriguing interviews with famous on-air veterans about the origins of music radio.
If you had to ask me what the biggest challenge was while making an episode, it would probably be the recording process, specifically the voice lines I wrote. I’m so used to writing professional papers for classes that I forget to write in a way that sounds natural. Sometimes, I would add fancy descriptive words to describe things, but I have to remember that saying phrases like “According to my sources” and “quintessential” is not considered gen Z slang. Of course, I would only realize that once I had to record my lines to meet the due date.
I think what was most fun about creating my own podcast here was the interview process. It was awesome to hear established personalities talk about their experiences in the radio business, and they gave me a lot of great advice in terms of working in commercial radio. If Vic Michaels, my audio capstone professor, didn’t push me to reach out to people connected to radio, I probably wouldn’t have gotten anything out of this project (aside from a good grade, of course).
The other part that was fun about creating my own podcast here was the post-production process. For this class, we used the audio production software Pro Tools for our podcasts, and I’ve already been using this service since I came to Dean. Since I was already familiar with the software, I had more fun organizing my voice lines and adding cool music (having fun while working on your senior project, can you believe it)?
All in all, creating my own podcast at Dean College has been a blast, and there are still more episodes along the way! If you’re an upcoming senior that loves listening to podcasts and wants to create your own, I highly recommend taking the podcasting capstone course next fall. If you want to stay notified for future episodes of the “Cruising Through the Airwaves” podcast, be sure to follow my Instagram to be notified of future episodes.
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