Radio TV Film students at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh continue to win honors for their media productions with awards from two competitions in April.
On April 10, the Broadcast Education Association held their national “Festival of Media Arts” in Las Vegas. In the category for radio hard news reporting, student Pafoua Yang took third place for her news spot on American Airlines adding Appleton to its route schedule. The segment was produced for the RTF News Production class and aired over WRST-FM. Yang is now a reporter with WLUK-TV in Green Bay.
In the category for video studio program/multi-camera or live-to-tape, third place went to “Cole and Claudia’s Christmas Show,” a black and white program done as an homage to the network TV holiday specials of the 1950s and 1960s. Cole Boettcher, Claudia Blair, Tess Kraly and Alex Wright were the student producers of this special, which aired over UWO’s Titan TV cable channel.
BEA also offers the “Signature Station Award” for best operations and practices at student media outlets. Honorable mention in the television category went to Titan TV. It’s the third time the station has been honored in this competition since 2012. UWO has now won 23 BEA awards.
The six-state Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association gave out its awards on April 14 at the Midwest Journalism Conference in Bloomington, Minnesota. UWO’s WRST-FM garnered five awards, which are named for Eric Sevareid, the longtime CBS News reporter and commentator.
The station took first place for radio newscast for an effort from March 16, 2017, anchored by student Emma Resop and featuring a radio report by student reporter Gary Dodge.
WRST also took first place for sports program for “Oshkosh Sports Saturday” from Nov. 11, 2017 hosted by Hunter Magdanz and Jordan Fremstad.
In the category for sports play-by-play, WRST took another first place for the live broadcast of the NCAA football semi-final between UWO and the University of Mount Union, with Hunter Magdanz and Alex Loroff on the call. An award of merit in this category went to Magdanz and Nicholas Bode for their live broadcast of the UW Oshkosh vs. UW-Whitewater football match-up.
The station also took an award of merit in the category for sports reporting for a news spot by Pafoua Yang on concussion insurance available to high school athletes. With these honors, WRST has now won 63 Sevareid awards.
In the MBJA’s professional competition, UWO Director of Radio Services Randall Davidson took three awards for a long form radio feature on the history of professional basketball in Oshkosh. The segment was scheduled to air the day that the new Wisconsin Herd G-League basketball team made their home court debut in Oshkosh. Davidson also took first place for best broadcast writing and best soft feature and an award of merit in the sports reporting category.
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