Sorry about the cheesy title, but it had to be said, right? Last year was a blockbuster in the awards department — 20 campus, regional, and national nods for our news and music programming, plus honors for student engagement and engineering — but the 2025-26 academic year is shaping up to be even bigger. These words are actually coming to you from the eastern time zone, where Radio 1190 picked up no fewer than seven awards at this year’s MediaFest student media conference in Washington, D.C.:
- Associated College Press: Broadcast Feature Story of the Year, Honorable Mention
Ethel Yagudayeva, “Combatting School Shootings” - College Media Association: Division I Audio Outlet of the Year, Honorable Mention
- College Media Association: Creative Pinnacle, Best DJ Personality, Second Place
Vicki Valentine, “Electronica Esoterica” - College Media Association: News Pinnacle, General News Multimedia Coverage, Honorable Mention
Celia Frazier, “Transgender Athletes, Colorado Law And LGBTQ Resilience” - College Media Association: Features Pinnacle, Feature Multimedia Package, Honorable Mention
Juanita Hurtado and Lily Wright, “Review: A Dazzle of Darkness” - College Media Association: Features Pinnacle, Feature Package (audio/video), Honorable Mention
Samyukta Sarma, “Sounds of Our Current World” - College Media Association: 2025 Emerging Adviser Award
Iris Berkeley
And while we were on the east coast, I had the wonderful opportunity to be the keynote speaker and a session facilitator at this year’s Virginia College Radio Conference, held at the shared studios of WTJU and its University of Virginia college station sibling, WXTJ, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Student station leaders from across the state met to roundtable on programming, marketing, social media, live events, serving their respective campus communities, and a lot more — plus swap some pretty fantastic station merch. (Keep an eye out for some new items from us in the spring!) Having the opportunity to meet face-to-face with other college radio stations is so valuable when it comes to trading ideas, brainstorming on the future of our shared visions, and dreaming big about what’s next for college radio as a whole — especially as we are heading into our big station move across campus at the end of December. (More about that soon!)
If that weren’t enough, thousands of students, staff, and advisors from the college media community are actually headed our way later this week, as the College Broadcasters Inc National Student Media Conference heads to Denver from Oct. 22-25. Four of our News Team leads are attending the entire conference, and I’ll be speaking at a panel diving into improving engagement with our campus communities as a whole. Plus, we’re also up for even more awards at this conference — we’ll know in a matter of days if our two (!) finalists in the CBI awards’ Best Documentary category made the cut.
All that is to say — we’ve been busy! And that’s not even including our Homecoming/Halloweekend events coming up, including our own collab Halloween bash at the CU Art Museum on Oct. 30 … come say hi and enter the costume contest!
How do you say it’s the best semester yet, but without saying it’s the best semester yet?
Slightly jetlagged but always yours,
Iris Berkeley, general manager