On Feb. 11, the Broadcast Education Association awarded three students from 95.7 The Spin from two different categories of radio audios they submitted between Nov. 15 and Dec. 15.
The event, formally named The Festival of Media Arts and held annually by the BEA, is an international digital media and broadcast competition that more than 300 universities participate every year.
Last year’s competition was successful for the radio station, which saw The Spin win 5 awards.
Isaac Heldt, senior radio-television major and station manager, when asked about last year’s competition, said, “Last year was actually a crazy year for us. We won, I think, four or five of them.”
In the 2024 BEA awards, The Spin won the Best of Festival Award in the Studio Audio section for the Comedy or Drama category with “Alice in Wonderland Reimagined” by Ethan MacCowan & Amber Brinton. This was the first of its kind for USI.
“It’s pretty cool, you know, especially for us, because we’re a smaller university and we’re competing against some of the best, you know, not even in the country but in the world as well,” Heldt said.
The categories were in Public Service Announcements, Promotion or Commercial and Audio/Video Sports Event: Play-by-play.
In the PSA category, USI students Isaac Heldt, Dawson Cochran and Rebecca Lanham were up for awards.
Heldt placed third overall with his PSA “Evansville Wartime Museum – Thunderbolt.”
“It was for the P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft,” he said. “But what I did to it was I made it sound vintage, like a radio broadcast where I added different effects on my voice and sound effects and made it sound like a 1940s broadcast. I think it had like a vinyl record cracking sound play underneath the entire thing, so just a lot of different elements in it.”
Cochran and Lanham won the Award of Excellence in the category with their “VHS Cuddlegrams” PSA. This category is a de facto honorable mention for the PSA category.
Cochran, senior radio-television major, said, “Pretty much the PSA was kind of like making fun of Hallmarks… the whole country boy gets with city girl wife.”
He said that he was excited about the award and that it was his second time being given the honor in the same category with Rebecca Lanham.
In the sports play-by-play category, Payton Buse, senior sports management major and radio television minor was up for the award. He placed third overall for his play-by-play with USI’s Women’s Basketball vs Louisville, a tie with Elon University.
“For me, it means a lot just because it’s the first major award that I’ve won with my play-by-play and getting to work at it for a couple of years, it really helps me understand that it is paying off,” Buse said. “Not hearing it from, you know, family members. I believe them, but it means a little bit more when it’s an actual concrete award.”
Buse is excited about the opportunity to fly to Las Vegas to accept the award. He believes it will be a good opportunity to make friends and network with others in his field.
