Communications department introduces new morning radio show

By Allie Dickson

The Hood College Communication Arts department has launched a new morning announcements segment on Blazer Radio in hopes of building interest in the club.

Hood College’s morning announcements aired the first episode on Monday, Jan. 31.

“We’re trying to get Blazer Radio back up and running,” said Tim Jacobsen, coordinator for Hood College Broadcasting Studios and instructor of various media courses. “We couldn’t get students involved through COVID. Now that we have the cool broadcast suite, we’re trying to get more people interested.”

The idea originally came from a student in Jacobsen’s podcasting class who wanted to do morning announcements as her class project. When the idea didn’t pan out the way she originally planned, Jacobsen thought he would try to build it into the curriculum as a way to give the students a real-world experience.

“At Hood College we try to incorporate High Impact Practices (HIP) into our classes,” Jacobsen said. He added that HIP are real world experiences that give students a taste of what is really going on in their field.

Each morning announcements episode will have a host and co-host who take turns talking about multiple segments, while also having their own conversation, Jacobsen explained. The shows will be led mostly by the students in his new podcasting class.

Each episode will include five different segments in a roughly 20-minute time period.

It will start off with a “Sport Report,” in which the hosts breakdown the Blazer’s athletic performance from the week prior, then give a preview of the upcoming week. Annoucers will also discuss any other sports stories relevant to that week, like the Olympics.

“Around the Quad” is a segment covering any upcoming campus events and academic deadlines students should be aware of.

“Downtown Breakdown” walks listeners through upcoming events in downtown Frederick. This allows Hood students access to off-campus events.

The announcements also have a brief weather report for Frederick called “Weather You Like it or Not.”

Each episode also includes a trivia question and the first person to answer the question correctly in an email to Jacobsen wins Blazer Radio merchandise.

New episodes air every Monday at 10 a.m. at www.hood.edu/blazer-radio. If there is an event you want covered by Blazer Radio, contact Jacobsen at Jacobsen@hood.edu.