Spending the night with CMRC
by Megan Darragh
Photo by James Paton. Kalista Antoniuk is one of CMRC’s 50 DJs filling ears with a diverse range of tunes.
A brightly coloured control panel glows green and blue in the dimly lit room. Two young girls are sitting huddled together around a microphone exchanging
witty comments and comical
stories. A large digital clock above them on the wall flashes down the minutes until the end of a long and tiring shift.
Kalista Antoniuk, 19, and Alisha Raymond, 18, both in broadcasting, are the DJ’s on CMRC radio for the night. They are only two of the 50 DJ’s who host the radio station.
The girls get to pick the music that suits their mood at the time, which makes the radio great for variety.
“[We] play a bit of everything. All 50 of us get to play whatever we want, as long as the song doesn’t have any swear words,” Antoniuk explains.
On this particular night, the feed for the radio station isn’t working properly and Antoniuk and Raymond are constantly being
interrupted by older broadcasts.
As they chose different songs ranging from Metric over to Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, they aren’t talking on air as much as usual.
The night shift for the two girls includes a few larger than life jugs of slurpees, some singing, and a few hours of Facebook. They both say that being on the night shift takes off some of the pressure you feel during the day because you have a partner with you, which can also make the shift a lot more fun and interesting.
The downside to the radio’s night shift is the lack of sleep.
“It screws up your sleep schedule,
especially if you don’t do it often. Around 3:30 [a.m.] you hit a wall and there’s a moment of dead air,” Antoniuk says.
They equally agree that the station has a lack of advertising,
and is not as well known as it could be around campus. “I’ve had no calls on a Friday afternoon
when it should be busiest,” Raymond adds.
Unlike the University of Calgary radio station CJSW, CMRC is only able to play online at CMRCradio.ca, due to lack of an FM transmitter. Antoniuk and Raymond both say that CJSW has more funding, which makes it easier for them to run their station. In addition, the people on air at CJSW aren’t broadcasting students like CMRC, which is aimed towards students in the program. Laura Gigg, a 20-year-old bachelor of education student, says that she’s heard of the station once or twice but was never sure where she could listen to it. Gigg agrees that more advertising around campus could improve the station’s ratings.
Thomas Nickel, a 19-year-old supply chain management student, states that he tried listening to the station once but he could barely hear anything they were playing. Antoniuk and Raymond explain
that a lot of the time family is their biggest fan base. They say when they do receive phone calls it’s quite exciting since they don’t exactly occur all that often. Although CMRC radio isn’t overflowing with devoted fans, the music they play and the stories the DJ’s have to offer are worth a listen. Even if you aren’t a fan of the music you hear, all you have to do is call in and request your favourites. Just no swearing please.
