Broadcasting Faculty

Broadcasting faculty document Devaney

By Mindy Leiter
News-editorial student

  Effective teaching at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications often puts a new twist on the old adage, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Instead, journalism faculty can tell students, “Do as I say – AND as I do.”

  Rick Alloway and Jerry Renaud, members of the broadcasting faculty at UNL, do exactly that. Both Alloway and Renaud are teachers and practitioners of the broadcaster’s art.

 “Here in the journalism college we have people who like to produce. We like to do the things that we are trying to teach our students to do,” Alloway said.

  Renaud and Alloway’s desire to practice their profession as well as to tech it led them to produce a hone-hour radio documentary on former UNL athletic director and head football coach Bob Devaney. The two faculty members describe the program as a “labour of love” that sprang from their interests in sports as well as their desire to produce radio programs.

  They chose Bob Devaney as their subject because Renaud and Alloway are both longtime Husker football fans.

  The project, Alloway said, was intended to be an oral history of Devaney’s life, particularly 1962-1972 when he was head coach of the Cornhuskers. Finding a unique angle to a story about the well-known coach was the first problem Alloway and Renaud sought to solve.

  Renaud said he and Alloway decided to focus on big games from Devaney’s coaching years such as the coach’s first game against Michigan, the Gotham Bowl and the 1971 national championship game.

  The documentary included interviews with people like former player Johnny Rodgers, sportscaster Keith Jackson and Jim Simpson and former Oklahoma football coach Chuck Fairbanks. In addition, Renaud And Alloway obtained copies of the original play-by-play sportscasts of games from the Devaney era to use along with the live interviews.

  A centerpiece of the program was the play-by play account of Johnny Rodger’s famous punt return against Oklahoma during the 1971 Big 8 Conference championship contest that was billed as the “Game of the Century.”

  Once they completed their interviewing, Renaud said, he and Alloway began piecing the program together out of 20-30 hours of audio tape. When they began to edit their tape, using the department’s Audio Wizard electronic digital audio system Renaud said, they realized they would not be able to cut the piece down to only 30 minutes. That’s when they decided to produce a one-hour show.

  Renaud and Alloway included three commercial breaks filled with public service announcements. The stations that aired the piece wither used the announcements as recorded or sold their own advertising to fill the time. Renaud said use of the Wizard did not come without its frustrations, but he said it gave him a little more insight into what students go through when they are learning to use the system.

 “There are times I just about ran screaming out into the hallway when we were editing,” he said.

  Alloway said one-hour radio programs are highly unusual, but he said he thought there would be a market for this piece because it featured Husker football and its very famous former coach.

  In fact, the market was a healthy one. The show debuted on UNL’s student-operated KRNU-FM on Dec. 18, 1993, and Alloway and Renaud also sent the piece to 24 other radio stations.

  The favorable response they received both from radio stations and from their students made the effort worthwhile, the two faculty members said. “It’s always nice to have students come up to you and say, ‘Gee you guys sounded really nice on the radio,’” Alloway said.

  Renaud said putting effort into a project like this taught the two professors more about the frustrations their students face, both as journalists and as editors trying to use a new computer-based system.

  Renaud and Alloway are both working on other radio projects. Renaud recently completed a half-hour documentary on rural Nebraska. And he is currently working on a scholarly study about children’s radio.

  Alloway hosts a montly statewide call-in radio talk show with Nebraska Governor Ben Nelson, and he has a specialty program featuring a cappella music on KRNU on Sunday night each month.

  Renaud and Alloway would also like to produce a documentary on the changes in college football over the last 30 years, and they plan to package a radio interview with best-selling author John Grisham.

  Renaud said he has been encouraged by the fact that the Devaney program was well received. “We have been told, ‘Gee, that was great. Do some more,’” he said.

  Alloway said both he and Renaud plan to do as much more as they can do. “We have far more ideas than we have time,” Alloway said.