Department of Broadcasting Blog

Pat Stout, academic advisor, broadcasting

Pat Stout, academic advisor broadcasting, wrote an excellent editorial for the McDonough County Voice in December. Stout’s editorial is about the best and worst of marching band culture.  Here is the editorial as it appeared in the Voice.

Kindness and acceptance for students
Patrick Stout, column (#1018), December 6, 2011

“When I came here, I had no friends,” said a Western Illinois University student on Saturday. “After four years, I’m leaving as part of a family.”

Those words were uttered at the WIU Marching Leathernecks awards luncheon. Variations came in the farewell remarks of all the graduating seniors.

Some remembered their freshman days and told how, after accepting the invitation to join the band, they almost immediately received welcome e-mails from the leaders of the instrument section they’d be joining. Others told stories of older students who worked with them during their first August band camp, and who told them, “If you need any help during the school year, just let me know.”

The Marching Leathernecks hold a welcoming ceremony for each year’s new members. They hold a show closing ceremony after each home football game. The final ceremony allows each departing member to retire his or her uniform as they stand on Hanson Field.

Traditions are built and kept through consistent effort. The band director has a core cadre of graduate assistants and drum majors who enforce the traditions, supported by the section leaders.

The tradition of kindness and mutual support exhibited by the Marching Leathernecks stands in contrast to an ugly tradition revealed last week regarding the Marching 100 of Florida A&M University. There a student lost his life due to the behavior of a rogue group of students bent on maintaining hazing behaviors.

Robert Champion was a drum major with the Marching 100. They had tryouts at the end of marching band season and Champion was chosen head drum major for the 2012 season. He didn’t know that and died before he could find out.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, according to CNN, said a group of band members punched Champion repeatedly. He later complained of shortness of breath, became ill, and then died.

The band director at Florida A&M said he tried for years to get rid of the hazing tradition. But because he didn’t, and Champion died on his watch, he has been fired. The university president has expelled five students, and an investigation continues at the state level.

Other band members, alumni, and parents have come forward: a trombone player who said she was beaten and kicked in 2007, a trumpet player in 1989 who was hit on the head and taunted with cruel songs until he had to leave school for awhile, and a former band member who told NBC News that he was paid to drop a lawsuit he filed against FAMU because of his brutal treatment.

Which school would you want your young musician to go to?

Buzz Hoon and the sports broadcasting students Skype with the WGEM sports broadcasters.

Mountain…Mohammed. You know what they say. If you can’t bring the mountain to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go the mountain.

That’s what happened with current broadcasting students and WIU alums working at WGEM, the NBC affiliate station in Quincy, Illinois. They Skyped!

On December 6, students in Buzz Hoon’s sports broadcasting class Skyped with WIU sportscasting alums at WGEM. The Skype session took place at the Living Learning Center–LLC–in Tanner Hall.

Sam Edsall thinks it is the “start of something great.”  See more pics at the broadcasting Facebook page.

Richard Ness was a panelist for the program “Look! Up in the Sky!! Superhero Films and You” sponsored by the Western Illinois Museum and held at the Rialto Theater on July 24.

Cinema Journal

Also Ness’s article “A Lotta Night Music: The Sound of Film Noir” that was originally published in Cinema Journal Winter 2008 has been used as the case study for a Master’s thesis by Filip Svensson, a student at Linnaeus University in Sweden, on the challenges of translating complex academic writing from English into Swedish and writing for a more general audience. The thesis is entitled “Breaking Down the Wall of Difficulty: Adapting a Translation for New Readers.”

Healing Field Memorial Park, 2011

Chair Sharon Evans received the following message from Fred Lue, US Army 1963-1966, Patriot Guard Rider Ride Captain, 37 year employee at the Rock Island Arsenal, Proud Marine Dad, Proud Army Dad.  Dancia Holst is a senior broadcasting major from Davenport.

We have had the opportunity of working with Dancia Holst.

Every year we are involved with All Era Veterans Healing Field. It is a three day affair. The Field has 106 Flags. These Flags were donated or given to the cemetery in Davenport, Iowa. Each Flag has the name of the brave young men and women who have given their all so that we can enjoy the Freedoms that we have today. There is an opening ceremony and a closing ceremony. It is open 24 hours during those three days. As a member, of the Program Committee, we decided to record the names of the fallen and have then running during the times the Field is opened. During the twlight and early morning hearing those names is awsome. When the wind blows the Flags, it is like troops are marching by.

Danica was a part of this by recording these names. We had different speakers reading names that were placed on MP3 drives. She made sure that if there were errors, she knew what to do. She is very pleasant to work with. She went the extra mile to make sure the recordings were done in a very professional manner. She was there when we needed her. She was very helpful with the readers. I am sure she will do well in her profession…. Sharon, you have one of the finest. Thank You.

The College of Fine Arts and Communication is proud to announce the 2011 Faculty Excellence Award winners.  These COFAC faculty award winners are now in competition with the other college award winners for the Provost’s Awards of Excellence which will be announced in early fall 2011.

William “Buzz” Hoon is the COFAC Teaching with Excellence Award winner.  Hoon is an associate professor in Broadcasting.

Sam Edsall is the COFAC Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award winner.  Edsall is a professor in Broadcasting.

Broadcast Education Association Conference

Buzz Hoon and Sam Edsall attended the Broadcast Education Association conference at the Hilton in Las Vegas April 10 - 13. Edsall hosted and moderated a panel titled, New Technologies to Enhance Student Learning and Hoon sat on that panel presenting Developing Multimedia Sports Journalists.

They also attended the National Association of Broadcasters convention  next door at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The conference includes over 100,000 attendees from all over the world.

Robert Altman: Critical Essays

Richard Ness’s article “Doing Some Replacin’: Gender, Genre and the Subversion of Dominant Ideology in the Music Scores [of Robert Altman films] was published in the book Robert Altman: Critical Essays, ed. by Rick Armstrong (published by McFarland and Co.).

His article Family Plots: Hitchcock and Melodrama has been published in A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, ed. by Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague (Wiley-Blackwell publishers).

A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock

Ness chaired the panel “Politics and Representation” at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in New Orleans during April.

He did double duty at the Partners in Suspense: Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock Conference in York, UK, sponsored by York St. John University. He chaired the panel on Torn Curtain and presented a paper, Born to Want Too Much: Music as Female Voice in Pino Donaggio’s score for Brian De Palma’s ‘Carrie’ . Read more about the conference at the official conference program.

You can start your broadcasting major as soon as you get to Western….or even before!

Amy Koeller, first-year broadcasting major

Amy Koeller, second-semester first-year student, from Oak Park, IL does court-side reporting at Leatherneck basketball.  Broadcasting covers basketball on WIUTV 3 live and radio.

Or you could start broadcasting before you are even a Western student! Jake Molburg, senior, Sherrard High School, stopped by for a visit and ended up doing camera.

Jake Molburg, Sherard High School senior at WIU Basketball

Broadcasting at Western is hands-on.  You can start the minute you get here.  You can do production, sports and news or any combination you choose.  You can be in front of the camera or behind the camera.

Tuition waivers–that’s money in academic language–are available for dedicated students.  Check out the tuition waiver info on the broadcasting website.  You can also keep up with broadcasting on their Facebook.

WIUS-FM sponsored a gift wrapping project at K-Mart before the holidays. K-Mart customers drop off toys that are donated to the Salvation Army and the WIUS staffers wrap the customers’ other gifts at no charge.

WIUS is a student led and run radio station playing all of your favorite Urban and Alternative hits. WIUS gives students experience and knowledge of how to be a Disc Jockey, radio talk show host, or even manage a radio station. WIUS is a great opportunity for all students, even if they are not interested in pursuing a future in broadcast radio.

Michael Moore: Filmmaker, Newsmaker, Cultural Icon

Richard Ness’s article Prelude to Moore:  A Comparison of Rhetorical Techniques in Frank Capra’s Why We Fight Series and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 has been published in the anthology Michael Moore: Filmmaker, Newsmaker, Cultural Icon, edited by Matthew Bernstein and published by The University of Michigan Press.