Operations Department Training Program

This video was produced by mikO Tolliver, a graduate of the Operations Department Training Program.

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Mission

The Operations Department Training Program is an immersive, hands-on training ground based at community radio station 94.1 KPFA/Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, CA. Our goal is to empower diverse voices from local communities to become skilled media professionals, while creating unique and thought-provoking live and pre-produced audio and multimedia content.

Vision

For the Operations Department Training Program Graduates to be active participants and groundbreakers in an ever changing media landscape.

Background History

In 2018, a high school student Ricardo Gonzalez emailed the General Manager, Quincy McCoy, inquiring about a summer internship program at KPFA Radio. Quincy forwarded that email to Operations Manager Antonio Ortiz and urged him to create an internship for this young person because they made the effort to email the General Manager and had a convincing cover letter. At the time, the Operations Department had no interns and was understaffed, but there was a need for more people to learn radio production and support the station by doing necessary station tasks. On the third day of the internship, the Program Director Kevin Cartwright came into Antonio’s office asking for assistance on a 14-hour July 4th special. The following day, Ricardo Gonzalez was editing the 14-hour broadcast with the guidance of the Program Director.

That experience showed Antonio how important it was to have interns at KPFA during business hours when opportunities to work on content for air is the most abundant. From that point, Antonio brought in a Fall Intern, Tanaya Landry, who edited and mixed a podcast on Area 941 with content Producer Mukta Patil for her show California In Flux, a podcast that focuses on how climate change is affecting California’s people, places and things.

From there, the third group of interns – mikO Tolliver, Kyle Gustafson and Hallie Smith – participated in the first official 6-month program where all three became KPFA certified fill-in technical producers, which meant they qualified to get paid fill-in work through the Operations Department.

Currently, we are in the 6th iteration of the Operations Department Training Program with 9 trainees who are getting hands-on experience AND take production classes for radio, voice work, live music engineering and podcasting. As the program grows, more classes will be offered for the continued development of students. From this background history, we are excited for the training program to expand to be able to serve the needs of burgeoning content producers.

Meet our Interns

Impact Stories

Core Activities

Operations Department trainees will get hands on experience in the following:

Editing pre-produced content for future broadcast.
Recording content at KPFA’s Main Production studio for future broadcast.
Line-Producing for Live Shows.
Running the On Air Board for Live Shows.
Promoting content on the station’s website and social media.

Program Description

Operations Department Training Program

The KPFA Operations Department Training Program is a 6-month program designed to train and integrate individuals interested in learning and doing radio production. Interns will learn (and apply) the skills of multi-track digital audio editing, engineering studio recordings, media management, website and social media content posting and promotion, line producing and board operating live radio programs.

Internship sessions: January-June and July-December

Commitment: 12 hours per week, 2 days a week.

Day 1: 10am-4pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday

Day 2: 10am-4pm Friday – Internship meeting date, radio production training and content creation.

KPFA equipment and resources are accessible to all KPFA Interns and Staff members who want to learn and apply the basics of radio production from initial concept to distribution. Classes include: studio engineering, live music engineering, board operating, radio production, radio documentary production, podcasting, field production, digital audio editing, audio cleaning, voice acting, improvisation for radio, interviewing techniques, social media marketing and more.

Classes take place February-March and August-September. All participants are required to complete segments, podcasts, live music shows or any other content for broadcast on the B-Side.