Produced, edited and DJed live radio and television productions segments for all age groups at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC).

I was a Media & Programming Intern at Seacrest Studios at Children’s Hospital of Orange County under the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. At my school, Chapman University, the program is raved about throughout campus. I first heard about the internship through Chapman Radio, when Bryan Mundia came to talk about the program. Later, my resident advisor recommended the opportunity to me again and at that point I decided to apply.

Once accepted, the internship starts out with interns pitching television and radio shows. Once we chose our favorite ideas we scheduled a program for that semester. After that, interns were assigned one television show and one radio show to host per day.  Some shows we pitched and actually made are Busy with Disney, a radio show with only Disney songs,  Starstruck, a television show where interns and kids dance in their favorite music videos and Nifty Fifty,  a radio show with the top 50 songs & celebrity gossip.

All programming is run by the interns.  As interns we wrote news articles for the Ryan Seacrest website, interviewed artists that visit the studio and produced radio & television content in the areas of hosting, editing, and DJ-ing. However, when people ask me what I did I usually say, “I acted silly in front of a green screen, played popular songs, and gave away toys to kids.”  It was a really fun job.

Everything we did was industry standard. We utilized similar equipment that most public radio stations have like the Newtek TriCaster 410, VoxPro, Op-X, Vaddio PT2 Cameras, Instant Replay, and Comrex Stac Phone System.

My favorite part of my internship was the constant interaction with our audience. Kids frequently came in the studio and worked with us. Also, all of our content was directly streamed into patient rooms. I am proud of my past work, but I know that the work I did at Seacrest Studios will be some of the most satisfying work I ever do. The opportunity to make a child smile is a beautiful experience and it’s a consistent reminder of why I decided to be a storyteller.  

ABOUT THE RYAN SEACREST FOUNDATION

The Ryan Seacrest Foundation (RSF) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to inspiring today’s youth through entertainment and education focused initiatives. RSF’s first initiative is to build broadcast media centers, named Seacrest Studios, within pediatric hospitals for patients to explore the creative realms of radio, television and new media. RSF’s aim is to contribute positively to the healing process for children and their families during their stay by developing these centers to bring an uplifting spirit to the hospital community. We believe access to multimedia experiences will bring patients exciting and stimulating adventures to encourage optimistic thoughts during treatment. It is also important to us to reach out to the community and involve students from local journalism schools by providing them with the opportunity to gain first-hand experience in broadcasting, programming and operating a multimedia center.