This year, UNA students, including myself, had the opportunity to participate in the Global News Relay. Universities from around the world bounced broadcasts and interviews during the day, making one simultaneous broadcast from Hong-Kong all the way through Alabama, and back to Japan. This was such a great experience, getting to collaborate with so many other universities. The topic for the overall broadcast this year was “Migration.” While that topic may sound fairly limited, we did find several really interesting directions to take our stories. While some were broad, scoped around national news, other topics were kept close to home.
I took my part as a producer, helping with the production of most of the packages we produced. I worked cameras, audio, and editing, with my main story being about the migration of music out of the south and around the country. I am very proud of how all of our stories turned out. Below is the full broadcast, starting with when our show aired this morning at 9:30.
While our final product wasn’t perfect, I do feel like we made a name for ourselves this year. UNA has brought in an excellent professor, Travis Cronan, who has taken our production values through the roof. None of this polish and experience would have been possible without him. Secondly, I think our director Spencer Brooks needs a huge portion of the credit for this broadcast. Spencer worked incredibly hard on making sure everything was going smoothly, and both he and Morgan were understanding that I had many other projects I really needed to work on during these past few weeks. While I do believe we all worked well as a group, without their help and support I know this would have been a massive flop. Thank you both so much for helping me through this and I hope both of you go on to do truly great things.
There were a few funny moments from our side of things. Watch our faces during the first question. It was fairly obvious that the student interviewing us had limited information as to what our story was actually about, but that was probably our fault. When we were asked what we would like to discuss we mentioned that story. Her notes probably just read “Ask about Montana.” Well, that really threw us for a loop but thankfully we were able to get back on track quickly and continue the interview. Beyond that, there was a moment I went on some crazy tangent about roads and driving to Texas, and Morgan was able to think of something better to say while I rambled on. Thankfully she thought of something before I made too much of a fool of myself.
Global News Relay was an amazing experience for me. It has certainly opened me up to the idea of pursuing a role in television possibly in the future. While I still see myself strongly rooted in radio, production work is my calling. I loved getting to be a part of this experience, and I hope other UNA students to come will be just as inspired as we three feel.
Additional thanks and credits go to Anna Mahan, Eric Marchan, Will Hopper, and Harold Lewis. You all were such a big help in making this production happen. Thank you to Dr. Butler Cain and Dr. Pat Sanders for also being there and supporting us students over the past few years. Both of your guidance have made us who we are today. Anyone I may have left out of this list if you helped with even just letting us interview you, thank you.
Finally, here is a promotional video I directed and produced for our department.
Kobee Vance 