Broadcast yourself

 

Photo Credit: Kbeach.org website

Student DJ manning the controls during a morning talk show. 

     With the semester nearing the end KBeach radio is looking for student voices to fill the voids created by students returning home for the summer or being forced to leave the dorms while school is out of session. 

     KBeach runs year round with over 45 shows fueled by the voice and ideas of students. However, the summer break and graduation tends to leave the station short handed while students go home to visit family or move on to the next phase of their lives. The process of getting involved with the station is a fairly simple process. Students must first pitch a show idea to the general manager of the station, John Trapper. After that, it's a matter of being trained and groomed by the staff as their show takes shape. 

     "We try to make it as easy as possible recognizing this is a commuter school and people don't have that much time," Trapper said. "You can be up in like four training sessions and we assess your capabilities. Everyone is welcome to have a show as long as they meet those criteria. It's not like we're going to reject anyone, we're going to make you work, and when you get on the air we're going to make you work some more."  

      This resource is especially useful to students seeking a career in broadcast as real world experience is gained through hands on interaction with the technology employed by professionals in the field. Although KBeach runs on a limited budget of about $40,000 a year, their facilities are comparable to that of most radio stations in the area with all the capabilities of a professional station readily available to CSULB students.

    

  "We crank out real entertainment industry professionals at this station and I love that," Trapper said.  I mean I have a former student and she's the vice president at Interscope Records right now we have people in television that got their foundation here, a little of everything out there is represented by us.You can't get the kind of experience that you can get here in the real world, if you get an internship somewhere most likely you're going to be getting somebody coffee. But here you get to do all the things that you actually do at a real radio station. And i don't like to say that we're not a real radio station but we're a training ground."