Evan Sinclair, a junior at Butler, is a student broadcaster for the college’s only radio station 88.1 The Grizz. Every Monday and Tuesday, he comes on air as a DJ.
Sinclair admitted that broadcasting was not initially an interest for him.
“I came and toured Butler originally because I wanted to get into video production, which is still what I want to do,”
Sinclair said.
Sinclair heard from the Head of the Media Department, Dr. Keith West, that the college was offering scholarships through the radio station.
“One hundred percent of the students that are at the radio station are on scholarship. They're on tuition and textbook scholarships. And that coupled with federal financial aid and other scholarships that they may be eligible for will pay the vast majority of their expenses here at Butler,” West explained.
Sinclair took advantage of this opportunity, applied and got the scholarship.
“Now, twice a week I come in here for two hours and either play music or talk about stuff,” Sinclair said.
Sinclair’s broadcasting schedule varies by the day. On Mondays, he is a DJ for the radio’s talk show.
“I'll come down here about an hour before my show starts and talk to my co-host. He and I will converse a bit. Basically, ‘what do we have this week? Do we need more? Do we have too much?’ And then we'll go in there and we'll get everything set up,” Sinclair said.
“I tell an opening joke, we roll the intro, we come out from the intro and a little bit of banter, [and] get into the first topic.”
Sinclair admitted that a talk show is best done with two people.
“You can do a single person talk show, but it's honestly not as fun. You're just sitting there saying stuff. It's a lot easier to do talk shows when you have another person to bounce off of,” Sinclair said.
Doing things such as talk shows for the radio has helped Sinclair form relationships with other broadcasters both during work at the station as well as outside of class. However, the two DJs enjoy talking so much they can lose track of time.
“There's often times where we don't quite get through all of our topics. And some of those things were maybe a little important, but we didn't quite get to them,” Sinclair said.
“I am still an entertainer at the end of the day, so I'm entertaining and I'm also trying to get the news across. And a lot of the times it ends up being we have three or four topics we don't quite get to.”
On Tuesdays, instead of a talk show, Sinclair goes on air to play music. This is a day that can take a lot of prep work. After a 1:30 p.m. class, Sinclair goes to his dorm to listen to music and create a playlist around a particular theme. At 5:30 p.m. he airs the music he has prepared, interjecting every now and again to identify the station and inform the audience what songs have been playing.
Head of the station, Dr. Keith West, has been one of the biggest influencers in Sinclair’s time as a student broadcaster.
“Dr. West has been a huge help, just with learning how to use the technology, as well as like ‘here's advice for broadcasting,’” Sinclair said.
“I try to work with all of my students and find out, okay, what do you know? What do you not know? What do you want to know? Let's try to get to that point,” West explained.
“[Evan] knows what he wants. And he's also open to trying different things. He's open to suggestions and critiques and comments from other people, but he's also solid enough on his own that if he really wants to do something, he's going to
do it,” West said.
During his time as a DJ, Sinclair has grown to appreciate radio more.
“Just because an art form is dying doesn't mean it's dead yet. It still has time to be brought back. There are advantages with live radio that you don't quite get from just playing a playlist,” Sinclair said.
Working as a DJ has also helped Sinclair both in his personal life and pursuit of a video degree to be more outgoing andentertaining in front of an audience.
“I think that [radio has] definitely helped me learn how to keep being entertaining while there's a live bite, because prior to doing this, one of my biggest issues with content creation and stuff is continuing to be entertaining. Keeping up the, ‘I'm this funny guy’ persona for several hours straight is a little difficult, but through this I've learned comes a little bit easier if you have someone else you're bouncing off of,” Sinclair said.
“At the end of the day, nobody wants to watch someone who's just sitting there. People want an engaging creator,”
Sinclair said.
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