Wayne State College’s radio station KWSC-FM was nominated by College Broadcasters Incorporated for two national level awards.
KWSC-FM’s election coverage was nominated for “Best Special Audio Broadcast.” KWSC-FM also received a nomination in the “Best Audio Interview” category for their series “Culture Shock of the Week,” in which international students are interviewed about their experiences in Wayne.
Culture Shock of the Week (CSW) was started by Katryst Chari, a radio student from South Africa. According to her, the idea spontaneously came to her during a meeting where they were discussing ideas to come up with ways to increase listenership.
“I was just kind of speaking as I was thinking, and I’m like, ‘what if we interviewed the student body, primarily targeted people that aren’t from Wayne, and asked them about things that are different to their hometown?’” Chari said.
Chari and her fellow radio students reached out to students who came from outside Wayne. Then, they would talk with the students and interview them to learn what differences there are between Wayne and their hometown. It was the second episode of CSW that was selected by CBI for the nomination of “Best Audio Interview.”
In the segment, which was recorded in January 2025, Chari compared how different terms for the same thing were used between Wayne and her hometown. For example, she says “dustbin” instead of “garbage can” and “aircon” instead of “AC.’
The second CSW was edited by Hannah Aldridge, another radio student. It was one of the only CSW interviews that used music, which is why Chari chose to submit that episode to the competition. Aldridge said she spent two days cleaning up the audio to improve the quality of the sound.
Chari says she was not aware of the scale of the awards when she submitted her piece. When she was selected five months after submitting, her professor and friends informed her that she had just been nominated for a national-level award.
Chari said a friend as well as Dr. Sean Ahern, a professor at WSC who teaches the radio program, had to explain to her how big of a deal this was.
“I was like, ‘Oh. Oh? Oh! Crap,” Chari said.
Chari is also planning on continuing her Culture Shock of the Week series. Anyone from outside of Wayne, whether they be student, staff or neither, canemail her if they’d like to be interviewed at [email protected]
In addition to the audio interview award, KWSC-FM was also nominated for “Best Special Audio Broadcast” for their coverage of the 2024 election. This program also had its challenges. According to Ahern, KWSC-FM’s involvement in news surrounding the election was very short notice. The station was asked by Live365 with only 48 hours of notice to make a thirty-minute program covering local impacts of the election.
Wayne State Alumni Becca Arkfeld, who now works at US92 in Norfolk, worked with Grant Ferrell, who now works at KETV in Omaha. Together, they conducted interviews for the radio. They interviewed students on campus who had special interest in the election. They also had the opportunity to interview Carol Blood, who was the Democratic candidate for Nebraska’s First Congressional District representative in 2024.
While the students were working on their interviews, they were asked to make it suitable for more than just radio. What was initially intended to be an audio-only project soon had a video component attached to it, meaning more students would have to be brought in.
“[We thought] it was only going to be a radio special, so we had a lot of audio and no video,” film student Mackinzie Arnholt said.
Arnholt said that fellow student CJ Silvera went out to campus to film B-roll to pair with the audio interviews that had been conducted. Arnholt, who has an interest in video editing, paired the audio interviews with the footage that Silvera gathered to make a version suitable for video broadcasts. After the production was completed, the audio version was submitted to CBI and later received a nomination for Best Special Audio Broadcast.
CBI’s website says that they will announce the winners of the awards during their convention in Denver on October 25. Residents of Wayne can listen to KWSC-FM on their website or on 91.9FM on the radio dial.
