When people were tuning out, Sarah Barker was tuning in.
When the radio station KPCC left the Pasadena City College campus in 2010, the school’s television and radio instructor seized the opportunity to build the institution’s lesser-known Lancer Radio into something better.
Now, after five years of grant writing, the college radio station has moved into a new space and has updated equipment to ensure students get a great start in a career in radio.
“Technology changes, and in radio stations nowadays everything is digital,” said PCC instructor of audio production and operations Sonn Eidem. “In order to create an educational environment that gives the students a competitive edge into their entry level position in a radio station, we needed to upgrade.”
Lancer Radio boasts three digital boards, a call screen system, a Vox Pro system that enables the user to record and edit audio quickly and other items that are used in professional radio stations today.
“It’s awesome. I can’t wait to get our hands in here and start playing with it,” said Gina Harris, a student at the college.
Harris has been a board operator and co-producer for Lancer Radio programs. She has completed most of her certificates in radio and television and hopes to become a board operator at a professional radio station.
“We’re so lucky to have this facility and so lucky that the college has invested in it because I can’t think of another radio station that is as good as this, that has this kind of equipment in it and students can use it for free while they’re here and make mistakes and they’re not going to get to do that out in the real world,” Barker said. “The only way to get good at this is to just do a show. It’s like playing an instrument or a sport, you just have to keep doing it over and over again.”
Students create Lancer Radio programming
PCC students actively work at Lancer Radio, including serving as on-air talent and board operators. To participate they are required to take and pass classes that provide the certifications required by the Federal Communications Commission. Any shows they produce are owned by the college.
Lancer Radio is an Internet-only station at www.lancernetwork.org and operates 24/7 with live programming supplemented by automated “turn key” programming. The shows change each semester and this fall Barker said that there will be a couple of music/talk shows. For example, one show will feature PCC musicians as guests, while another talk show aims to aid college students on a budget. The station is also hoping to revive a past show that was produced live on the college quad and focused on different topics that directly affect students and highlighted the various departments and educational opportunities on campus.
In addition, Lancer Radio will present its annual live coverage of the Rose Parade, along with spotlights of the events leading up to the big day.
Radio has a bright future
Barker and the rest of her staff are confident that the future is bright for Lancer Radio.
“A lot of time students will come in and say radio is dying. The problem is they don’t understand what radio is,” Barker explained. “What is dying is the delivery system, but all delivery systems will die sooner or later so you can’t get too attached to a delivery system.”
When television was created people thought that meant the end for film and radio, but they continued. Barker said radio is thriving due to the variety of delivery systems, from terrestrial to Internet, and it is great for multitasking, as it can be in the background while you are working on other things.
“Radio is never going to die if you talk about content. Content is king and what we teach here is content,” Barker said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to it on satellite, the Internet, your iPhone or iPad or your terrestrial radio in the car, content is always going to be relevant and we’re always going to be able to discern between good content and bad content. Our job here is to teach students how to make good content.”
