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The author is student technical director for WRHU(FM) at Hofstra University. She also a recipient of the SBE’s Harold E. Ennes Scholarship. 

It’s a ubiquitous point of discussion in the radio industry: The idea that radio is doomed because there are no young people to take up the mantle — but that’s not true.

In some amount of time you’ll be retired, and when you tune in to your old station once again you may be met with a single thought: “I did it better than that.” And maybe you did. But the question you really should be asking yourself is why the quality of the station has changed. 

Is it because the new engineers are intentionally making worse decisions, or could it be because they didn’t receive the same amount or type of training you did? And if it is because of that, how can we ensure the next generation of talented engineers are interested in radio? 

Easy, just reach out. 

That may sound overly simple, and I’ll admit to being a bit facetious, but think about it. When was the last time you, or any of your coworkers actually talked to someone looking to enter the industry? What did they say, and how did you respond?

It may sound tedious, but if you want new talent to take an interest in your work, you have to help show new talent that there is a place for them in the industry. Knowledge is something that needs to be shared, or else it gets lost forever. It can be rediscovered, sure, but what happens to the quality of work in the industry in the meantime? 

It’s difficult, the paradox of experience. You want to hire employees that have shown that they know what they’re doing, but if everyone does this, eventually it will become nearly impossible for people to enter the field. But where does that leave us if you don’t want to hire someone who has no experience for an important role that can’t easily be trained?

While you may not want to hire someone fresh out of college looking for an entry level position, if there’s nowhere in the industry to go for that experience, they will turn elsewhere. Then the industry gets nothing. 

For this reason, it’s important to start reaching out with internships and opportunities much earlier.  

Offering internships is an investment, and it’s not one you’ll always see a quick return on. When you have an intern who’s in college, or even high school, whom you want to hire for a full-time position, you may have to wait a few years while they finish school. 

While you may not see the benefit in waiting, what is often overlooked is that, in those few years between their internship and their potential employment at your station, they are still learning. They may leave your internship with just one set of skills and the knowledge of how your station operates, but, when they return, they’ll have the same knowledge and experience they left with plus a new perspective from other styles of operation.

They might find a way to streamline your system, or find uses for equipment you thought obsolete but kept around just in case. 

Learning from multiple sources only increases the depth of skill and knowledge, as it allows you to ask more questions and therefore find more answers to be used in your career. 

If you give students a chance to gain that knowledge and experience with you, they will remember that, and you will help them more than you realize. Plus, if given the opportunity, they have a better chance of returning to work for you again.

I’ve gotten lucky, personally. Back in 2023, I interned at the Newburyport Community Media (NCM) Hub, which is a community radio and cable station in Newburyport, Mass. 

At the time,I was pretty inexperienced. I only had experience in post-production, editing video and audio using free software — I didn’t even know what an XLR cable was. However, throughout the course of my internship, not only did I learn all facets of live production, I also got acquainted with troubleshooting and basic equipment repair, which shaped the trajectory of my current college education. 

But, most importantly, I was able to show my boss that I now had that desired experience that station managers look for, and she hired me as a part time employee. I’ve been working there between semesters since. 

When not working at the NCM Hub, I attend college at Hofstra University, where I major in radio and minor in IT. Hofstra has a radio station, 88.7 FM WRHU, where I am the technical director. The experience I gain there from studying with Chief Engineer Andy Gladding is immediately put to work back at the NCM hub, and vice versa. 

Just this week, at the time of writing this article, I reworked our Comrex Access rack and our Axia QOR rack to run over AES67, with skills I learned from Andy, which solved a two-year-old issue. 

People who are looking for a foothold in the industry truly want to help, so giving them the tools and knowledge they need can only come around to help you in the end.

Of course, in reaching out and garnering interest, you’ll have to abandon the rhetoric that people — especially young people — aren’t interested in radio, and that it’s going to die because of that. 

When looking for a job, and looking into the current job market, what many people are concerned about is job stability. They don’t just want a job for now, they want a job they can continue to have for a few years, at least. All this negative rhetoric does is push people who are interested in the industry away from it, because they hear the industry veterans saying it won’t survive. They abandon ship before they’ve had a chance to board.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: Complaining about how a lack of young interest is an industry killer only serves to kill young interest. And, frankly, blaming any group of people for the failure of an industry is never going to get them interested in helping it, and may even cause them to resent it.

You’ll never be able to get more people interested in what you do by sitting around, so take the first initiative. Reach out to prospective engineers, see if you can partner with college stations in the area or find and promote organizations like the Society of Broadcast Engineers and extend a hand to people who are a bit hesitant about the industry.

You’ll thank yourself later.

Radio World welcomes letters to the editor on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

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