Charlotte Reilly
NEWS EDITOR
Five University of Nebraska at Omaha students took home awards from the 2017 Nebraska Broadcasters Association/Pinnacle Bank banquet on Aug. 16, 2017.
Lyle Kwiatkowski’s “Bubble the Sad Clown” won gold in Best Promotional Announcement, Blake Donelan won gold for Best TV Public Service Announcement, Avery Wenck won Best TV Sports Feature with “Mit Mender”, Shane Mitchell’s “Meet Andrew” won gold in Best Public Service Announcement and Brandon McDermott won bronze for “District 9 Candidate Sara Howard” in the Best Election Coverage category.
“It is a testament to the hard work of professors, like Jodeane Brownlee and Chris Allen, and the individual efforts of these outstanding students that they received these well-deserved honors,” said Hugh Reilly, the director of the communication department at UNO. “We have done very well in the last two or three years in the Nebraska Broadcasters Association awards. The trend is up, up, up.”
MavRadio has done particularly well, Reilly said. MavRadio is a student-run radio station on the UNO campus. The organization is open to students interested in gaining experience in radio broadcasting. The program can be listened to on 90.7 HD-2, www.MavRadio.fm and the Tunein and RadioFX apps.
“MavRadio strives to enrich not only the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, but also the community of Omaha by engaging, informing and entertaining through means that go beyond just programming,” according to their website.
MavRadio has increased the number of topics they cover. The student-run station now covers about a half-dozen sports teams, and they are still looking to expand.
“I think the MavRadio students are doing more than ever. They are continuing to add coverage of different sports teams. They started off with just a couple, and now they do a half-dozen different teams,” Reilly said. “They’re looking to do even more, and we hope the amount of students involved will continue to increase.”
Professors within the school of communication are working to create a student TV club that is similar to MavRadio. They want students who are interested in the TV side of broadcasting to be able to gain experience at UNO. Professors hope to launch the club this fall. Reilly said the accomplishments of UNO students has inspired the addition.
“The students that have gone before have laid a great foundation for the students that are coming now and the students that will come in the future,” Reilly said.
