Cool Cat: Tommy Skaggs
Q&A and photo by Hondo Acosta
Tommy Skaggs oversees Central’s radio station 88.1 the BURG, helping students gain new skills and opportunities to be involved on campus, as well as ensuring students can enjoy a good tune at games and events on campus!
Q: Why is Central your home?
A: I was here as a student back in 2004 to 2006 and I fell in love with the town. I loved it, I fell in love with the people here. It’s my home because people bring their true selves and they’re authentic when they’re here. I feel like when I’m talking with people, they are honest and open, and it’s just a good environment.
Q: What’s your favorite part about working with the students?
A: I love seeing the growth. I love when students come into the radio station, and then they haven’t done radio before, they haven’t done any audio before. Maybe they haven’t even done media. Maybe not even super interested in it, but they want to try something out. And then watching the progression of the growth and the learning and seeing like when, how people walk in. And then when they finally leave, when they graduate, or just how much the progression of what their show is, it’s really neat to see the growth that happens at the station.
Q: What is your favorite show?
A: Um, I’ll say D&D weekends is my favorite show. It’s, I mean like seriously, I know I’m talking to you, but D&D weekends is pretty good because it’s you know, it’s 4 people having a good time. You could hear that they’re having a good time. So if you, that’s a show that if you follow it along and think, well, you could go back and watch the video, you could see people having fun on it. But more broadly, we’ve had a lot of involvement this year. So it’s really fun seeing the new ideas that people are bringing.
Like once people get established, they improve on those ideas, but the cool thing about fall quarter is we have a whole bunch of new people coming to the station and they’re just doing a whole bunch of new ideas and it’s really neat to see the creativity.
Q: Can you share a little bit of what that's like to provide music at events?
A: So, anybody can hire us for their event to play music. We’ll do anything from off campus events to community events, to being hired to play music at, like anything that’s happening on or off campus, we were able to be a part of one of the cool things, coming up (we) are also going to be doing some more video work. We got hired by the lacrosse team to cover lacrosse games. So like, back up in February, we’ll be playing some or doing some video broadcasting for lacrosse.
Q: What can students expect to be able to do with a radio show, what kind of growth can they see from themselves?
A: Yeah, so the cool thing about the station is, like, we can meet people where, we could meet them where they want their goals are. So if your goal is to come in, have fun with your friends and just play some cool music, you can do that. But if people want to do it as a career, we offer those pathways as well and that kind of mentorship that happens. So if somebody wants to have a radio show, like no experience necessary.
You could come in and we’ll do all the training. We do a content session, let you know what you can say and like the structure for your show and we work with you about the content. Then we do the technology training, and then the 3rd time you come in, you have a practice show, and you’re actively broadcasting on our secondary station called BURG 2. So people could tune into your show the 3rd time you come into the station. And then we help you get into the main station after a few more sessions.
Q: What’s your favorite event that you guys have DJ’d at?
A: Yeah, oh boy. I’ll say it’s a tie for two. I think Wellington’s Wildfire is always pretty fun. That’s something historically we do and that’s a really fun partnership with ASCWU and other on-campus organizations, including dining. Yeah, wildfire is a really fun way to start the year and it's timed perfectly. It’s like right after all of the major beginning of the year events are over and then you do Wellington’s Wildfire and then it’s like you feel like in the quarter after that. Wellington’s Wildfire is fun. We also do CWU night at the Mariners. And so that’s also a really fun one where we actually get to take a crew and be part of the Mariners game, like in the alumni section.
One other fun thing, we have a whole subdivision of the radio station called WSRN, which is the Wildcats Sports Radio Network. It’s a separate S&A funded department. And we were able to travel to Oregon to see the wildcats during the Lone Star Conference Championship. So that was a really cool opportunity to do that broadcast. And we’ve also gone to Western at their basketball game. We did that last year. And so, yeah, it’s a lot of fun things happening at the BURG.