Welcome all

This is another post about school, but this time it took place outside of Seycove. As part of our Planning 10 course, we were given the task to contact someone in a career field we were interested in, and then perform and one day job shadow.

The first step is to make a list of people or careers we were interested in. At this time I really didn’t know what I wanted to do for my career, and so at first I didn’t have any ideas on who to shadow. No jobs really stood out to me as my “Dream Job.” But I made a short list of people I knew:

• My cousins Grandpa, Harold, he is a home construction and renovation contractor for expensive homes in the Abbotsford and Vancouver area.
• My Uncle, Ryan, a spray foam and construction business owner
• My Dad’s cousin Andrew, a Sportsnet Radio Host in Vancouver

After making this list I thought about my preferences, and continued looking around if any other jobs interested me. I had a few other ideas but in the end I went with my dad’s cousin Andrew, as I thought job shadowing a sports radio host would be pretty cool.

And it was.

My day started at 2:00 on a Thursday in May. I didn’t miss any school, unfortunately, because I had a spare last block that day. My dad dropped me off at the Sportsnet 650 Radio office in downtown Vancouver and we met up with Andrew.

He brought us into the building, a small and quiet office building where Sportsnet had set up its offices and recording booths. In the same building were other Vancouver radio shows, some quite popular, like Kiss Radio, Jack 96.9, and News 1130. Sportsnet 650 had just joined the building on September 4th this year.

Andrew showed me around, and he started at his office. He shared an office room with 3-4 other people, where they all could work on preparing for the show, and talking with each other about ideas they have about what they could talk about on the air. The main part of what they were doing then was browsing the media around sports in Vancouver, such as player trades, exciting scores and sports games in general. They also looked for people to interview on later days in the show. The day I was there was a bit different because the guy they wanted to interview was going to be on a plane when the show was on air. What they did to solve this problem was call him ahead of time, and record it so that they can just add it when they need it as if it was live. The software they used to record and edit this looked a lot like the app I use called Ferrite.

I thought this was cool to see because instead of just trying to find someone else to interview they came up with a solution that worked really well. So later on, when they were on air, they just hit play on the recording and it was as if the recording was live. But we’ll get to that soon.

For the first 2 hours, I was sitting next to Andrew at his desk where he was working on putting all his ideas together. He has had a lot of experience in this field, as he worked for Sportsnet out in Toronto for a few years, and just recently moved out here to do the show in Vancouver. He told me that in Toronto, there is a lot more sports to talk about because they have the Blue Jays, Raptors, and Maple Leafs home to Toronto, and Vancouver only has the Canucks. And, in Toronto the show was a bigger deal and the office was more fancy but he said the Vancouver one is still good.

Once the show started at 4:00, I sat in the “Control Booth” with the Producer Technical Supervisor right next to the recording room where Andrew and his co-worker sat talking on the air. His co-host wasn’t there that day so his co-worker stepped in to talk with Andrew.

So from 4:00 until 7:00 pm I was in the control booth, and I thought this was pretty cool. For me, if I was to work at this job, I’d rather be behind the scenes like the two guys with me, Art and Cam, than in Andrew’s position as I’m not too great at speaking on the spot. Art and Cam were both at computers, and we could hear what Andrew was saying. They could communicate with Andrew without the audience knowing, and that helped keep the show in order. Art and Cams job was to play recordings, like the interview from earlier, advertisements and sports clips at the right time. Overall this part was awesome to see what goes into a good radio show.

Once Andrew was done, we got in his Jeep and he drove me home. Because he was busy earlier, I asked him the questions I had prepared before coming on the job shadow.

These are my questions and his answers:

Job Shadow Q&A-2ev0yp6

Overall, I found this Job Shadow really interesting. I learned a lot about what it’s like being a radio host, and the other jobs surrounding the radio show. I met a bunch of other people, some were other radio announcers at different times in the day, and some people were editions or as pretty cool to see.

I also really liked seeing the media side of the job. Andrew was always keeping up to date on all the social media platforms on any sports event that happened. I thought this was very interesting because then every show he does will be different. Something he does is something we do a lot of in PLP right now. We research a topic, break it down, ask questions,  form an opinion on it, make a project, and then present it. This is what his daily schedule is. I really liked seeing what we’ve been learning in PLP applied in the real world. This is definitely going to help me plan out my career options in the future m

In conclusion I had a ton of fun on this job shadow, and learned a lot. Once again, thanks to Andrew and his office for letting me join you for a day!

 

See you