New announcer introduced to a new genre of music
Musical tastes have already been broadened greatly
OK, I have to admit: Even though I spent my entire college career studying radio, rock was always a lesser known genre to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved it, but I just didn’t know a lot about it.
To give you a bit of history on me, I’m the newest staff member here at 105.3 Rock. I am taking over for Jesse or “The Coz” as the new producer here. It’s an absolute dream for me to be here and I’m so excited to be living in this lovely city.
I’m a recent college grad, I just finished up a twoyear associates degree at SAIT Polytechnic studying radio broadcasting and was hired here right out of it. In that time, I did more than 100 hours of on-air shows and although the station rotates formats every three hours to give students more experience, somehow I only ever did the rock show for one week in the entirety of those two years.
So you may ask… “Melissa, how did you get hired at a rock station?”
Well I’m going to be real with you. I was nervous about my lack of knowledge at first. But working here so far has easily been the most educational experience of my life. It’s like everything I ever wanted to know about rock is right here in front of me and I love it. Just listening to Poncho’s Rockflash alone (airing every afternoon) I’ve learned a whole pocketful of fun facts about incredible artists and my musical tastes have greatly broadened.
I’m going to take a second to make things pretty cliché here: In life you have to take risks and jump into things that might make you uncomfortable at first. If you don’t, how will you ever realize the things that were gaps in your knowledge are actually some of the most interesting facts you’ve ever learned? Now, I don’t just have to smile and nod politely when people talk about rock music, I can (for the most part) chime in7 and give my two cents as well.
Cheers to taking risks and as AC/DC says: “For those about to rock, we salute you.”
Melissa Thomas is a new producer and announcer at 105.3 Rock. Tune in online at www.1053rock.ca, through our own free app or the Radioplayer Canada
app!