Yesterday...

After class, we visited RCB (I think that´s what it´s called- my memory sucks). It´s a TV/radio station up on top of a hill in Floripa. It has wonderful views of the whole island. It was pretty interesting. I´ve never really been to a TV or radio station, so it was cool to see one, especially one in Brasil. We visited 2 different TV stations where they broadcast their daily news and other programs and then 3 different radio stations. One of the stations was talk radio and the other two were for music. The music radio stations seemed interesting because the DJ´s don´t get to pick the music that they play- they have a list of songs already lined up for them by a higher up, but they do get to correspond with callers and take requests, so that´s kind of cool. I don´t know much about American radio, mainly because I think new music today is crap and I don´t really listen to the radio because of that, but after visiting this Brasilian station, I have a little bit more sympathy for stations back home such as KROQ. I think that they may operate in a similar fashion. I´m almost positive that American DJ´s (with the exception of Jim Ladd- which is why he´s my hero) have to play what they´re told to play, which may be why KROQ plays so much crap all the time. I´m inspired now to discover if this is really the case in the U.S. I´ve never really been interested in the broadcast side of journalism, but visiting RCB sort of change that. I still don´t really want to work in broadcast, but I definitely want to learn more about it, especially so that I can compare the differences between U.S. and Brasil broadcast.

Some day, I´ll crawl out from under my rock...