photo by Ray Ekness

Moms in Vegas: J-School students who won big BEA celebrate with family: (L-R): Sandra Hamner and her daughter, Jessica Hamner, who won second place in radio sports reporting; Suzanne Richards and her daughter, Danielle Cross, who produced and anchored the winning KBGA broadcast; and Keagan Harsha, who helped create the broadcast and also took third place in radio hard news.

UM's KBGA tops charts in broadcasting awards

By Ramey Corn
Montana Kaimin

Though it was the first time KBGA Radio News entered its newscasts in a national competition, that didn’t keep UM’s student-run radio station from taking top honors.

"We were shocked," said Jenny Kuglin, KBGA news director. "It speaks for our news staff and all of their hard work."

A KBGA newscast that aired on Sept. 11, 2002, won best student radio newscast in the country at the Broadcast Education Association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas on the weekend of April 5. The award honors outstanding student work in television, radio and mixed media.

The station’s winning newscast began with five minutes of sound bytes from Sept. 11, 2001, mixed with interviews of students remembering their day. This was followed by a story about the memorial ceremony in Missoula’s Rose Park; the piece concluded with Grizzly football players talking about being at Ground Zero, Kuglin said.

"Radio is audio, and we tried to recall people’s memories through sounds," she said.

The radio newscast was produced and anchored by Danielle Cross, a junior in radio-television. Keagan Harsha and Dax VanFossen, both juniors in R-TV, also contributed to the coverage.

Cross also won second place in the radio hard news division for a story called, "Underage and Under the Influence" that looked at the consequences of people buying alcohol for underage friends, Cross said.

Jessica Hamner, an R-TV junior, received second place in radio sports reporting for her profile of a Special Olympics basketball team.

"I was very surprised; it was only the second radio show I had ever done," Hamner said. "I was so excited I was just jumping all over the place."

Harsha placed third in radio hard news with his story about NASA’s visit to UM in November.
In the student video competition, the R-TV department’s 2002 junior class won first place for "Business: Made in Montana," which aired on Montana PBS and profiled six businesses around Montana.

"It’s always a thrill when our students do so well in a national competition," said Denise Dowling, assistant radio-television professor.

Ray Ekness, an assistant radio-television professor, won a faculty award for his work on the PBS program "Backroads of Montana."

Kuglin said many college radio stations focus only on playing music, but KBGA tries to expand beyond just music to include newscasts and other programs.

"It is important to keep the listener informed," Kuglin said.

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