Freshmen suitemates Julio Montenegro, Walter Aragon, Jair Lopez and Denilson Lemus have an original and creative way to interact with each other and the rest of the student community: they started a YouTube radio show.
The radio show, “Julio’s Night Talk,” was Montenegro’s idea, and he sees it as a way to have fun talking to his friends while also creating content that can be shared with others.
“I started the show this semester,” Montenegro said. “But I actually had the idea at home in Nicaragua. I always have fun talking to my friends, and I had the idea that we could create a show where we can discuss whatever material we find interesting and also entertain our community.”
Aragon helps Montenegro gather news and they go through their materials on Fridays and then decide what they want to cover during the show. On Sunday nights at 10 p.m., the show is broadcast live from their Graduate Hall dorm room on the YouTube channel “Radio Libre Internacional” with Lopez setting up the audio systems and Lemus acting as the web technician.
Montenegro said that apart from watching his uncle running a small radio station in Nicaragua, he has had no hands-on experience with broadcasting a show and learned how specifically for this project. Lopez lends his expertise and equipment he has from producing multi-track songs in the past.
“We are mostly broadcasting for our friend group right now, so we speak in both Spanish and English on the show,” Lopez said. “But as it grows and we reach more listeners, we may start to use more English and invite faculty and professors to give interviews.”
For their first guest speaker, Montenegro set up a raffle that would award the listener who posted the best picture while listening to his show a free caf swipe and a guest speaker spot on the show, and the winner was sophomore Javier Lara.
“When I got to his room, I was really surprised because he had all this equipment that helped him to broadcast and it was exciting,” Lara said.
On the show, Lara and Montenegro discussed the possibility of having a Latino soccer team for intramural sports, and other topics that their listeners might like such as the weather, happenings in the Harding community and news related to their home countries.
“This was a very unique experience because it all took place in a dorm,” Lara said. “I’m so happy for Julio because when I first met him he mentioned that he wanted to have a radio show, and now he is getting there with his night talks.”
