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Jon Francois
This week, me and fellow Radio Connection student Ali got the chance to work together again. Much like our work during Thanksgiving week, Jay gave us the assignment of producing a mock radio show consisting of jock breaks, conversational segments, commercials, and weather. During show prep, Ali and I split duties; I contributed ideas and she put together an outline to structure those ideas within a radio format. Since we did a show together a few months ago, we had a more comfortable collaborative chemistry this time around where we were constantly bouncing ideas back and forth (Grammys, President’s Day Binge Watching, Facebook’s 12th anniversary, “Don’t You Hate It When?”). Naturally, I thought we were going to be pros during the recording because of this chemistry, but we did have our bumps along the way. A key obstacle was abiding by the time limits we set for each part of the show, espiacelly during the conversational segments where our engagment with a topic often made us forget that we needed to stay on track and keep the pace moving. An interesting challenge for me throughout this process was adjusting to the fact that I had to share control as oppose to solely take control. Whether its through solo work or producing segments with my friend Laura, I’m very accustomed to being the leader and Ali happens to have a strong enough personality where i have no choice but to tone that control down and become more generous. I look forward to working with her more in the future so I can get a better idea of how I work with people on the air vs. on my own. Towards the end of the day, we were introduced to a new student by the name of Regina. She comes in every Tuesday at 4 so I look forward to working with her.
In addtion, Jay took a listen to a segment I produced with my friend Laura called “Don’t You Hate It When?”. Jay liked the animation I put into the segment and thinks the idea could easily be a recurring segment given how many pet peeves people have on a regular basis. Helpful notes he gave include introducing the segment quicker (instead of “Hey this is Jon and Laura and let’s do a segment”, maybe something like “Hey, this is Jon and Laura, don’t you hate it when…) and making the transitions between dont you hate it when topics more smoother. I also got the chance to listen to Ali’s sports report based on last week’s assignment. She had a rapid fire delivery that I found really interesting to listen to because I tend to hear that kind of delivery a lot any time I listen to sports newscasters. I’ve always associated that delivery with a confident knowledge of sports as opposed to a slower, careful delivery which might indicate hesitation or overthinking.
