By Cal Lutheran NewsFrom 8 to 10 p.m. on Wednesdays, there’s no question where you’ll find Richard and Andrew Perez. The siblings, who grew up in Santa Barbara and are attending California Lutheran on scholarships, will be sitting behind microphones in the state-of-art KCLU Broadcast Center as they spin tunes and riff on everything from road trips and Grammy nominees to who has the best taste in music.
It’s all part of their weekly Boyth Night show on iCLU Radio, California Lutheran’s student-run, web-based radio station that can be heard live online at icluradio.org and via the RadioFX app.
Tune in to iCLU Radio from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and you’ll hear a mix of live shows that are as diverse as the California Lutheran student body. Dia Tardino, a senior majoring in Communication, talks about music and other topics on The DDDDia Show; junior (majoring in education) Markie Seabaugh offers listeners A Ticket to Yapperville; and junior Lex Lambros presents the Alt Rock Hour.
Students enrolled in one of the university’s radio classes can receive credit for hosting their own shows and podcasts. But you don’t have to be a radio student to take part; students who sign up for the iCLU Radio Club can host their own shows, too.
Hosts must follow Federal Communications Commission rules, and the songs they play can’t feature any inappropriate content, but beyond that “they pretty much have the freedom to do whatever type of shows they want,” said Giana Gutridge ’18, MBA ’21, a social media specialist at California Lutheran who co-manages iCLU Radio with fellow volunteer Kyle Tamkin ’18, MBA ’21, an adjunct professor in the Communication Department.
“iCLU really serves as a channel for students to be creative, to express themselves and to have their voices heard across campus,” Gutridge said.
Students who want to work behind the scenes have plenty of opportunities, too. As part of the iCLU Radio Club, they can gain experience in audio editing and mixing, creating marketing campaigns for radio shows and shepherding talent in the green room during the club’s annual all-day CalLuPalooza concert.
Richard Perez, a senior majoring in film and television, joined the radio club his first year. By the time he was a sophomore, he was taking a radio class and hosting his own show, Decade Mixup. Each week, he takes a deep dive into a different decade, from the 1950s to today.
He was having such a blast that his brother Andrew Perez, now a sophomore, signed up for Tamkin’s radio class and launched the show PB & Jamz, where he mixes sports talk and tunes. He spotlights different genres of music every week, from EDM and hip-hop to indie rock and pop.
Andrew is eyeing a career as a high school history teacher, and he’s beginning to realize that the skills he’s learning about formulating a focused, engaging radio show will serve him well when he begins crafting classroom lesson plans.
Hosting Boyth Night together every week has been a jolt of pure sibling revelry for not only Richard and Andrew but their pals, too. “When we told one our friends that the show was going on break for Christmas,” Andrew said, “he texted us back and said, ‘No! What am I going to do with my Wednesday nights now?’”
