Who Are They? Where Are They? How Do They Do It?

Greetings! If you are reading this, it means you are completely caught up with all the work you needed to do for the first part of this month. Now it's time to move onwards and upwards.

What you will be starting today is to try and understand a little bit more as to what is involved in being a "radio personality": people who actually already do this for a living. One way to do this is to find out who these people are, and then ASK THEM.

The obvious first step then is to find these people. One possible way of doing this is to look at the websites for various local radio stations in Massachusetts. I have done some preliminary research for you, and this is what I've found:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=local+radio+stations+Massachusetts.&btnG=Google+Search

the original Google search

http://www.officialusa.com/stateguides/media/radiostations/massachusetts.html

a pretty good list, fairly comprehensive

http://www.usnewslinks.com/radiostations/ma.html

another good list, which breaks down the stations by genre and city location. A multiple page list

http://www.shgresources.com/ma/radio/

another really good resource, which not only does the break down by genre and location, it also lets you know if it’s a college station or not.

http://www.ontheradio.net/states/massachusetts.aspx

yet another good place to look, this one has direct links to the websites associated with the radio station in question.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

A) Make a list of at least five different radio stations. List their "call letters" -- WBZ, WNRB, etc, along with the town where they are located, their "format" (Top 40? Sports? Hip Hop? Easy Listening? News/Talk?) and the address for their website.

You will need to post this list to our Google group as part of a discussion posting you will make. You will also need to include in this discussion posting why you chose these particular stations

B) Once you have five stations in mind, please use their websites to find at least five "radio personalities" -- people who actually make broadcasts of some kind or another-- who you feel know something about this business, and might be able to tell you a little about what they do. Please list their names in a second discussion posting.

C) Finally, begin to compile a list of questions you would want to ask any of these people. You might ask them how they got their start, what first got them interested in doing what they do. Please come up with at least three good questions for now, and put them in a third discussion posting

Cheers,

Mr. L