The UW-Oshkosh Radio-TV-Film department made their mark at the Wisconsin Broadcast Association student media conference, taking home more awards than any other Wisconsin college.
The RTF department won 11 of the 52 awards at the March 6 conference held in Middleton, including four first-place finishes.
“The people associated with that organization (WBA) are the major media players in the state,” Justine Stokes, director of television services, said.
“And for a lot of these students, they’ll stay here and they’ll work here and to get that recognition and to get the opportunity to talk to people at the conference, that’s a bonus.”
Oshkosh took first, second and third place in the long-form, non-news radio production category.
John Calliari won first place for his profile on video game culture.
Colin Bennett and Stefanie Jacobson finished in second place for an episode of “A Day in the Life” and Jared Bublitz finished in third place for an article about WRST considering a change to its radio station slogan.
Bryan Scholz and Tyler Thrune received first place in the radio play-by-play category for their broadcast of the UW-Oshkosh women’s volleyball team’s victory over UW-Eau Claire in the NCAA Division III tournament semifinal.
First place in the segment of a short film category went to “Condition One,” a short film by J.P. Russell and Peter Murphy.
Jon Kline, Kelly Rettig and Brittney Berna scored the final first-place finish for Oshkosh, winning the public service announcement category for their PSA for the Oshkosh Community Foundation.
Kline said it was “really cool” to see their work being broadcast in the Green Bay television market.
In addition, Oshkosh took home four second-place and three third-place awards at the conference.
This year’s field for the WBA student media awards had a record 162 entries.
“I think college media is seeing the value of competing, sharing their work and getting it reviewed,” Randall Davidson, director of radio services, said.
Since the WBA student media competition began in 2004, Oshkosh has won 34 WBA awards.
In addition, Oshkosh also received three awards from the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts, which will present the awards at their annual convention in Las Vegas next month.
Oshkosh students also placed first in two script categories. Kayde Fisher took first place in the short subject category for “Crimson Shadows,” her script that is going to be produced by the UW-Oshkosh Film Society this spring.
Jared Robinson won first place in the television spec scripts category for his episode of the TV series “The Office,” titled “Outbreak.”
“Really both with TV and radio we’ve hit on it with sports,” WRST sports director Thrune said. “But we’ve got great film people like J.P. Russell and Peter Murphy getting their awards. We’ve really built up news a lot, especially on the radio side of things. So that’s kind of what the whole major is and that trickles down into how many categories we were able to put awards into.”
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