FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Intercollegiate Broadcasting System
68th International radio, TV, webcasting, podcasting, conference!
is scheduled for Friday - Sunday, March 7-9, 2008,
Hotel Pennsylvania (Across from Madison Square Garden),
New York City, NY.
Hotel Pennsylvania (Across from Madison Square Garden),
New York City, NY.
The IBS has held a national conference for 67 years at the New York Penn Hotel and the 68th annual event should be one of the best yet due to the tremendous response IBS had to the regionals in Boston and Chicago this past October, 2007.
There's been a perception that these legendary conferences are exclusively for radio insiders, but the door is open to everyone - radio students, radio professionals and radio fans - these gatherings continuing the tradition started by the IBS almost 7 decades ago.
Along with the big October radio show developed by our IBS colleagues at College Media Journal, the CMJ Convention, these IBS meets - attended by students of radio with professional panelists from commercial radio, the media, college teachers/professors/instructors/faculty and other knowledgeable individuals - help fill a void left by the the much-missed "New Music Seminar" that New York's Rockpool promotions ran in the 1980s.
OCTOBER 27 at COLUMBIA COLLEGE, CHICAGO:
The "Keynote Speech" was given by John Gehron, the General Manager of Harpo Radio, Inc. - overseeing the operations and programming for "Oprah & Friends", a lifestyle talk radio channel that airs nationwide exclusively on XM Satellite Radio. Gehron recently was Regional Vice President and Market Manager for Clear Channel Chicago's seven stations. The beauty of these regionals is that along with national figures volunteering their time to speak, notables from each area of the country visited by the IBS get an opportunity to speak to those who attend - and consider participating in the national three day affair in March.
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AN OVERVIEW OF CHICAGO IBS OCTOBER 27, 2008
(a work in progress - more information will be added on Sunday night; it's 11:27 AM EST,
10:27 Chicago time and the writer is about to catch a plane)
Deb is a success story of Columbia College - and she's thankful that some of the things that were arduous at WCRX, the college radio station at the Illinois educational institution, are now paying off; she has the technical skills to go along with her management role at WKKD, Aurora Illinois. "Stuff that I took for granted that I didn't think was important I understand is a huge necessity now. What I learned at Columbia really has transferred to where I'm working now - mainstream radio." She says about her position at commercial radio "I feel very very comfortable wearing so many hats at WKKD because of the education and hands-on experience I received at Columbia."
The station is amazing. You walk through the glass doors off Wabash and Congress in Chicago and the radio station is visible from the lobby of the university. It's big, it's comfortable, it looks and sounds like major radio. Columbia College is serious about students learning their craft and being able to take those skills right into the marketplace. The 4 PM session, "Future Stars: Obtaining and Maintaining Your First Full-Time Radio Position" has 5 graduates of Columbia College Chicago, all now working at stations from WTMT, KFMW, WSCR, WGN to Weiner's programming position at WKKD. Earlier we listened to Weiner's colleague, Ashley Davis, play us her aircheck WTMT Asheville, North Carolina. The alumni of "Chicago 's Underground", WCRX, impressed adjunct faculty member Burt Burdeen who critiqued the WTMT tape with a thumbs up - or perhaps more with pride that the college graduate was so very good on the air, neither D.J. at WTMT stepping on toes as the shows crossed from afternoon to evening.
Tony Kwiecinski is the Operations Manager of WCRX, 88.1 FM, and his business-like approach to college radio is refreshing if one has ever visited a radio station at a school were communications is not a top priority. But if a station has an FCC License and broadcasts to a city as big as Chicago, those who tune in to these "public airwaves" deserve quality on-air product.
The theme of this year's conference seemed to be taken right from Harpo Radio General Manager John Gehron's keynote speach: The Future of Radio. The five morning sessions actually made a good thread to Gehron's talk as those panels were built on the fundamentals of radio's future - IBS Chief Operating Officer Fritz Kass appearing with the New England Art Institutes radio veteran, Len Mailloud, Scott Vyerman from WDRP and the aforementioned Tony Kwiecinski from WCRX all discussing starting a radio station from scratch. Well-known blogger Craig Bonnell and Fundamental Records owner Tim White were in another room discussing Indie Music on college radio as well as utilizing public access airwaves as an additional boost to college radio's potential audience - the true future of college radio's expansion into the everyday lives of radio listeners. Barbara Calabrese of Columbia College joined in on the conversation as did Gershon Indiana's faculty advisor to WGCS - Globe Radio.org.
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