How Does Broadcast Radio Work?

Video Transcript

"I'm Bruce Edwards, the business reporter for The Rutland Herald. I've been doing this for about 20 years but before I got into the print side of journalism I was in radio news and was for a time actually for several years a combination disc jockey reporter and it was a lot of fun and I would probably still be doing that if there was radio news and there is less radio news today than there was 20 years ago. There has been a, it is a weeding out of radio news operations. Part of that is the deregulation of the broadcast business and the number of companies or very few companies that have bought up any number of radio stations in a single market which we never could do prior to the 1990's or 1980's, whatever, don't hold me to that date. The way to get into broadcasting is again, it is similar to print journalism. If you are going to college and I would recommend a college education just about every college has some kind of radio station or even television station. It is a great experience. They also have audio visual courses, courses in broadcast news and as part of their journalism courses or our media courses. I think if you want to get into radio whether it is disc jockey or news. It is not as easy today as it used to be. There used to be a lot or a plethora of broadcasting schools just specific broadcasting or technical schools around the country. You used to actually even need a license to go on the air as a disc jockey, a third class license or a permit they called it and there was a second class and a first class depending on how much engineering experience you wanted to get. You don't need that now which makes it somewhat easier but there are fewer jobs in radio today because so much of the broadcast industry especially on a local level in a small market, a small market radio town like Rutland is automated. Automation has really like a lot of other industries taken jobs away and that has been true in the radio business as well. But there are still radio jobs out there. There are still disc jockey or announcing jobs out there and there is also radio news jobs out there as well. So I gravitated from just being a disc jockey to hosting a daily public affairs talk show and doing local news and again going back you can get that experience at a local college just about any college has radio TV courses. It is a great foundation for getting into the radio broadcasting business."