North Central radio station captures awards
Naperville's North Central College was among the top winners of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System annual awards announced March 8 at the 75th International IBS Conference in New York City.
WONC student broadcasters won four first-place awards and 13 finalist trophies.
The first-place awards went to senior Jason Krug of Naperville who won two top trophies for Best Sports Update and for Best Social Media Director; senior Yasmeen Kiswani of Plainfield for Best Documentary; and senior Kevin Jackman of Glenview for Best Podcast.
"I was delighted to see so many of our students honored at this year's event," said John Madormo, assistant professor of broadcast communication and general manager of WONC-FM 89.1. "We have an extremely talented group of seniors this year. And come June, I will dearly miss them."
The finalist trophies are presented to students who placed in the top five in the nation; no second- or third-place awards are named.
North Central's finalist winners by category included Jackman for Best Newscast and Best Station Manager; Jackman and senior Bobby Mette for Best Play-by-Play; seniors Kristin Gitchell and Kelsey King and junior Adam Halick for Best Promo; senior Jeremy Rushing for Best Liner/ID/Sweeper and Best Station Blog; Gitchell and King for Best Talk Program; Gitchell and King for Best Specialty Show; senior Jared Shlensky for Best Podcast; Krug, Halick and junior Alex Palac for Best Podcast; Gitchell for Best News Director; and King for Best Production Director. WONC-FM also was a finalist for Best College/University Station (enrollments under 10,000).
"Those receiving finalist awards are just as deserving as those who received first-place awards," said Madormo. "What sometimes is lost when someone doesn't walk away with a first-place trophy is the fact that the finalist is one of the top five candidates in the country - it doesn't get much better than that."
The top IBS award recipients this year are Krug with two first-place and one finalist awards; Jackman with one first-place and three finalist awards; Gitchell of Villa Park and King of Winfield with four finalist awards; and Rushing of Moline and Halick of Wood Dale with two finalist awards.
WONC is among the most honored collegiate radio stations in America and has won national and state awards in commercial and collegiate competitions. The station has won 20 Marconi College Radio Awards; no other college or university radio station in the country has won more.
With a 30-mile listening radius and potential listening audience of 4 million people, WONC's pure rock music format broadcasts a mix of news, sports, traffic, music and public affairs programming 24 hours a day, year-round. Listen live at wonc.org.