Blaze Radio's music director Brandon King and radio personality Morae Jordane talk about what an average day is like at Blaze. Mythilli Gubbi, radio personality, and Jordane shared what their favorite part of being radio personalities is. Gubbi, Jordane and King share their thoughts on Blaze being ranked fourth in the nation.
Brandon King: [00:00:00] That's the beautiful thing about Blaze, which is that you know it is a radio station. First and foremost we do want you to know present people's on-air personalities, but in addition that there's so many other avenues to take.
Austin Villegas: [00:00:10] Blaze Radio, ASU's resident radio station run by students, has been broadcasting for the past 36 years. Brendan King, Music Director, and Morae Jordan, radio host, talked about what a day of their life at Blaze is.
Brandon King: [00:00:23] At the start of every year the directors will gather round will listen to all the specialty show pilots that come in and we'll basically say what works, what doesn't work. Generally the shows will send me a list of songs that they want every week and then I'll go into our Blaze iTunes account, download all the songs and put them on the Blaze library so they can use me every week and then continue that every week just so they have continuously new music so they can go and use whatever they want. In addition, the show hosts have to be prepared and have talk to our program director about where they're gonna be in studio, if they're not gonna be in studio why they aren't going to be in studio because timing is such a key issue in student radio.
Morae Jordane: [00:01:00] Basically like you come in an hour before the radios show and you go on EMPS you look up all your stories for the day whether it's entertainment, business, politics and you just write down all your stories do a little kind of rough draft rundown of what you want to talk about on the show. And then in an hour you just kind of go on and do your thing and talk about what topics you're doing that day.
Austin Villegas: [00:01:22] Mythili Gubbi, radio host, and Jordane said what their favorite part of being a radio host is.
Mythilli Gubbi: [00:01:28] I love that Blaze gives me the opportunity. They can't even understand any of the songs that I've played but they've just been so supportive. They've been really good about getting us whatever we need. And it's great to be able to have a platform to talk about where you're from, where you come from and spread that to everyone here.
Morae Jordane: [00:01:44] I feel like I could be myself. I feel like I can be goofy and silly and just talk about all the fun stuff I like to talk about and I think there's the camaraderie like you're just a part of a group. So radio is kind of like you all have to work together to make the show amazing. And I think those are all the things that I really really enjoy about it.
Austin Villegas: [00:02:03] Recently, Blaze was voted fourth best college radio in the nation. Gubbi, Jordane and King all shared their thoughts on this accolade.
Mythilli Gubbi: [00:02:11] I'm really happy that we're recognized at this point because if you look at the variety of music that we have, even though we do focus on local music, there's so much out there like our sports department is amazing they go and they call different games. We have of course local music, local talent, there are other people that talking about concerts. There's a culture shows, there's one show that talks about debunking conspiracies and yeah mine is an Indian music show so if you look at how diverse we are it's amazing.
Morae Jordane: [00:02:41] Everyone who runs the station is super passionate about what about what they do. They're always there if you need help with setting anything up or editing or whatever it is. No, it's a group of really hardworking students so it's well-deserved in my opinion.
Brandon King: [00:02:56] It's surreal, to be perfectly honest. And the thing that astounds me the most about is when you look at those statistics, we're not only the number four radio station in the country, we are the number one radio station on the West Coast. And you know I think we want to instill that to some of the new personalities coming in, just to be like you know you're part of this legacy you know the station's been around 20-30 plus years and now we're being recognized for all the work that some amazing shows have been doing.
Reach the reporter at amville8@asu.edu or follow @AustinMVillegas on Twitter.
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