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Mike West...Z89.5

Heard Mike West on Z89.5 this morning...very refreshing to hear someone older than my socks on the radio.
 
Freudian...'C" always struck me as a whimpy brand logo...thanks for the correction...
 
Jackson Dell Weaver said:
Freudian...'C" always struck me as a whimpy brand logo...thanks for the correction...

Exactly how old are your socks? No, I really don't want to know, but West is relatively young. Perhaps because he started early...I won't give away his age, but I happen to know he is years, if not a decade + away from social security.
 
Or do you mean Mike West of "Crow & West" fame?

Didn't he start out there?
 
Ooo, pinch me!

However, one has to wonder if the new location will help the kids who can't read or write do a better job with reading the news? You have to admit, it is quite painful to listen to.
 
Oh, I should clarify:

C89 switched studios ON-AIR - to the 'new' studios Friday morning (30th) around 1pm..

Mike West just did a 'newscast' that time - for whatever special reason is uncertain
 
TVradioguru said:
Ooo, pinch me!

However, one has to wonder if the new location will help the kids who can't read or write do a better job with reading the news? You have to admit, it is quite painful to listen to.

Just because you're miserable and jaded doesn't mean the rest of us have to be......
 
Bongwater said:
Just because you're miserable and jaded doesn't mean the rest of us have to be......

Pretty funny coming from a person who recently had a signature that said "never keep up with people, always drag them down to your level."
 
AQH said:
Bongwater said:
Just because you're miserable and jaded doesn't mean the rest of us have to be......

Pretty funny coming from a person who recently had a signature that said "never keep up with people, always drag them down to your level."

Ummm.....That's "Never Keep Up With The Joneses, Drag Them Down To Your Level" - Quentin Crisp. What he was illustrating was material wealth don't mean itshay when it comes to TRUE happiness.....

Big difference there Chief.....
 
Bongwater said:
TVradioguru said:
Ooo, pinch me!

However, one has to wonder if the new location will help the kids who can't read or write do a better job with reading the news? You have to admit, it is quite painful to listen to.

Just because you're miserable and jaded doesn't mean the rest of us have to be......

Oh yes Sir Bongster, you're not jaded in your views in any way. I also find it interesting that you label someone as miserable if you disagree with them. Allow me to once again assure you that I am not miserable.

My comment was based on the point that allowing high school students to struggle through a newscast when clearly they neither wrote nor proofread the material is inappropriate. Allowing this to occur does nothing more than broadcast (literally) the current state of high school students and their ability to read and write. If the Seattle Schools radio station is teaching journalism as a prerequisite of doing news on the air, then its easy to assume after listening to the horrible newscasts, then that program should receive a failing grade.

Teaching kids to spin the hits is easy, teaching them to write and then present the material to thousands of people listening is indeed much harder. Ultimately which is going to be more benefitial to the student in a future career?
 
Not miserable either, although I agree with 'TVrg' here

On-air students will ultimately mis-pronounce words and stumble though newscasts,
being wet behind the ears and overcoming the nervousness...

..there's really no college/high-school (if ANY) station 'spinning' the hits (stax of wax) anymore -

- putting the turntable's needle onto the vinyl and cueing-up the record 'WAS' a skill
 
FWIW...The U.W. communications (broadcast portion) was no prize either; though I believe it is more on-track now. At the time I was there, some prof's were former broadcasters roaming the halls with coffee cups filled with gin ... letting students flail through the coursework on a self-serve basis. In the earlier courses, you learned all about all this Marshall McLuhan crap that had absolutely NO relevance on real world. Eventually you were treated to learning the craft on the old B/W gear that KCTS had rejected...which was originally donated from KING-TV as the stuff THEY rejected.

Now they have a new media program that gave them a chance for a fresh start at being competitive and is actually very well done. At the time I was @ UW, though, I remember having remorse that I knew community college programs that were much more relevant using contemporary gear (also case @ KBTC & Clover Park) than this 4-year high institution (insert joke about WSU program being MUCH better here, please, coug's!!).

At least at the time my strategy was to back up the degree with another major because I knew KING-TV didn't focus on hiring people with Comm. degrees...they wanted journalists who had depth in things like Economics, Political Science, etc. Not sure stations still care about that kind of depth.
 
Personally I feel like the tide is beginning to change shifting back to actually reporting news on TV and radio, less prompter/script readers. In order to actually report the news with credibility, one has to research and write the content. For the radio and TV industry, the death of Walter Cronkite punctuated over recent 20th century history what made news important to Americans; the belief factor.

A vocational program as Seattle Schools has, should get in front of this changing tide and be ready to actually teach broadcast journalism again. I was reporting news on a college station in my youth, and was held to very high standards. Sticking someone in front of a mic to read newspaper or AP copy, badly, does nobody any good.
 
TVradioguru said:
Personally I feel like the tide is beginning to change shifting back to actually reporting news on TV and radio, less prompter/script readers.

Yes, those latter jobs are now going to DC politicians. :D

C89 has turned out some talent. And even the C89 kids are more listenable than some "pros" I've heard now and then on commercial stations. The kids stumble because they're learning and I'd rather listen to them than some self-important and/or snarky jackass that thinks they're God's gift.

Interesting comments about UW CMU and the radio side of it. A Don Pember class was no "easy A." I also worked at The Daily newspaper 20 years ago and while it was a casual atmosphere and people had fun, it was also serious business. Daily alumni have gone on to a number of solid careers in journalism and media. Didn't know that radio got short shrift. Did you mean KUOW or KCMU?
 
Daily/Print is what CARRIED the UW program, backed up by the P/R & advertising program. Broadcast journalism was an after-thought. Pember did the law class (think it was 320) when I was there...and it was a little more practical, teaching the basics of what is defensible in journalism lawsuits. He cared about the program, and was not yet the director of the school (Alex Edelstein @ that point). I didn't do KCMU or KUOW (except when they had us read one newscast a day on KUOW as part of the program) as I was working at other stations in the market (also a source of my disconnect of what I was being taught @ UW and what I knew was the case "out there"). Actually, I did KCMU *ONE NIGHT* because I lived in dorm and they asked me to go over and cover for something. And like a typical "know-it-all" ass of that agegroup, I went over armed with a box of my own 45's and introduced KCMU audience to Barry White, etc. Got the four hour shift knocked down to approx. 45 minutes and fell off the "emergency fill-in" roster for KCMU.

Years later, I took boxes of carts from KVI library to KCMU so they could recycle/use them. Got a thanks note back that they were ecstatic about what was ON the carts and I couldn't help but note the irony between those two stories.
 
I haven't been involved in the radio program at KNHC for many years, but I suppose that because the same guy running the program is still there with the policy of having the kids "read the news" okay on air before they are allowed to host a music show. True to form, the same manager/instructor of the station has no prior broadcasting experience, certainly not in the commercial sector.

It's nice to see Mike West doing some work there. He knows how to write copy and do news. That being said, in an effort to teach the kids something worthwhile, hopefully Mike won't face all the same politics and frustration from the manager as other professionals who have tried to help, only later to have their efforts sabotaged by incompetence and pointless micro-management.
 
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