With San Diego City College still closed for in-person classes, the first news radio class since the start of the pandemic recently wrapped up remote production at the end of the spring 2020 semester. 

Operations Manager Vicky Pineda, Podcast Director Devon Doane and Newscene Executive Producer Susana Serrano of City Times Media sat down to discuss the ups and downs of producing a radio show virtually.

News Radio Midday was a twice-weekly radio newscast featuring students from the Radio, Television & Film program.

The team missed the deadline for the show to air on the radio multiple times, often due to miscommunications and delays in assignment completion.

“I just feel that’s where remote learning just kind of reared its ugly head,” Doane said. “People not really being attached to it physically, they lose some of their interest in it and assignments don’t necessarily get done.”

Pineda and Serrano were both in the radio program before the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Having this type of show, having everyone together participating and just creating something informative and fun,” Serrano said, “was completely different to what the radio program had been in the past semesters before COVID.” 

The radio program of previous semesters was more of an individual experience, where this semester, the team relied on everyone to get a show completed.

“I think what really helped us a lot was we had both anchors, we have everyone in the same (Zoom) room,” Pineda said. “You get to talk to everyone around you, you guys can tag team and ab lib and that’s what we did throughout the semester and I feel that really helped us out a lot.”