Green show hits college airwaves
By Stephanie Vaccaro, Special Writer
Green initiatives are sprouting up everywhere you look in Central Jersey — even on the airwaves. On 107.7 The Bronc, Rider University’s radio station, junior Emily Mazzio and freshman Cheyenne Simmons have a weekly show called “Sustainable You.”
Ms. Mazzio, a communications major, was taking a class about writing for broadcast and was offered the position of host by the station’s general manager, John Moses. She originally co-hosted the show with a graduate student. Ms. Simmons joined this past January when the grad student left.
The co-hosts work together to decide on the topics and do the necessary research.
”Once the show starts, we discuss the topics; the type of conversation is back-and-forth on our opinions, whether we agree, disagree and whatnot,” says Ms. Simmons, an Englewood native.
The show consists of three segments. At the start of each broadcast, the hosts focus on the top three green current events stories of the week. They’ve found treehugger.com to be an excellent source of information.
”So, we pick the most entertaining or interesting ones, the ones we think we can talk about the most,” says Ms. Mazzio, a Medford native. “And we encourage callers as well. We have a couple of callers from around the area (who) ask us questions or leave comments.”
For the second segment, they’ll interview a guest.
”That’s one of our biggest things, we’re trying to get more guests on the show,” Ms. Mazzio says. “In the past we’ve had people from Toyota USA, who actually gave us a Toyota Prius to drive around for two months. We talked to Debbie Schaeffer, of Mrs. G’s appliances, recently, and she loves to talk about buying local and going green. We talked to our sponsors, such as Terhune Orchards as well. They talk about buying local. We talk to a lot of local people. It’s pretty much promoting how to support the economy by buying local and organic food and stuff like that.”
If there’s no guest scheduled for a particular week, they’ll cover another article that sparked controversy and discuss it.
For the final segment, they like to close the show with practical green tips geared toward younger audiences.
”So, we just talked about how to buy used bikes, and how to go green during spring break, and we’ll probably have how to go green during the summer,” Ms. Mazzio says. “But they’re all stuff that you can apply to everyday life.
”When we started out, I know it was pretty much just our family. I still think it is our family listening, but I think the people in the Princeton area are listening. And as we do more live remotes and reach out to local people, they’re turned on, they’re geared toward our show, and they realize that these green companies that they’re representing are interested in what we have to say.”
And since Ms. Simmons is from North Jersey, her friends there have downloaded the free apps and are listening as well.
When they do a live remote at one of their sponsors, they have backup on what the whole show is going to be about.
”But we like to focus on random, impromptu interviews with people that work there,” Ms. Mazzio says. “You get what’s going on there from real-world experience. There’s nothing prepared, that’s what’s really cool about it.
”We have people coming up to us saying that they never knew that there was a green radio station, a college radio station where kids are geared toward becoming sustainable. It’s great because they get to discover us, and we get to discover their businesses. And it’s almost like how we connect locally and help each other out in the same way.”
Their goal for the show is to help reach and educate as many people as possible. From their experience with live remotes, they learned that more people are listening.
”We’re starting to expand on our social media as well,” Ms. Mazzio says.
”We need to reach the younger audience, such as high school students and more college students,” Ms. Simmons says. “Younger students especially, I don’t think they know exactly how to go green. As co-hosts, we didn’t know how to go green. We knew the basics like recycling and turning off the water when you brush your teeth. But the more you research into this, you learn so much more. You learn a whole new aspect of sustainability that we want to pass onto other people.”
The show is sponsored by Terhune Orchards, Lawrence Toyota, Mrs. G’s TV, Appliances and Sleep Center, and the Energy and Sustainability Steering Committee at Rider University. It airs every Saturday morning at 10 a.m., and the shows are also available on the free app for smartphones and online at www.1077thebronc.com.