Schools around the na­tion will soon be closed and al­ready thou­sands of grad­u­ates are search­ing for ful­fill­ing ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od. Starr Broad­cast­ing of­fers an amaz­ing hands-on work­shop to in­tro­duce the art of DJ-ing and an­nounc­ing to prospec­tive broad­cast­ers.

From Ju­ly 5 to Ju­ly 28, Starr Broad­cast­ing will share the fun­da­men­tals of these two arts with stu­dents who are en­rolled in their one-of-a-kind "In­ter­me­di­ate Broad­cast­ing Pro­gramme."

This pro­gramme of­fers in­struc­tions from the top DJs and an­nounc­ers in the land, along with hand-on ses­sions us­ing the lat­est in­dus­try stan­dard equip­ment and re­al-time broad­cast­ing as­sign­ments via their on­line ra­dio sta­tion at www.star­rbroad­cast­ing.com

"I wish I had this kind of in­ter­ac­tive course when I was com­ing in­to this field," said Starr MD and HITS 107.1 FM an­nounc­er, Nigel Nichol­son. "Our stu­dents are trained by the top pro­fes­sion­als in the in­dus­try and they al­so re­ceive prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and use of the lat­est broad­cast­ing equip­ment: this is the rea­son why so many of our grad­u­ates have been hired by the top ra­dio sta­tions in the coun­try."

Re­cent Starr grad­u­ates in­clude Shey­na We­st­on,one half of the dy­nam­ic duo heard on 96.1's The Hook Up; DJ Lennon, who now plays on NEXT 99.1 FM; Di­ane Tay­lor, heard on Bash­ment 91.9 FM; and, De­von Moses, a new an­nounc­er with the Boom Cham­pi­ons at 94.1 FM.

They all tes­ti­fy to the qual­i­ty and prac­ti­cal­i­ty of the ex­pe­ri­ence they re­ceived at Starr Broad­cast­ing and share their suc­cess­ful tes­ti­monies with new stu­dents dur­ing reg­u­lar vis­its to the St James-based fa­cil­i­ty.

Aside from the bud­ding DJs and an­nounc­ers, who will be cer­ti­fied by the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency up­on com­ple­tion of the four-week course, lo­cal artistes al­so stand to ben­e­fit from this unique pro­gramme. Artistes of all gen­res can now e-mail their lat­est re­leas­es to star­rbroad­cast@gmail.com and have them re­viewed and played by stu­dents dur­ing their many on-air as­sign­ments.

"Starr Broad­cast­ing is ded­i­cat­ed to im­prov­ing and ex­pand­ing the lo­cal in­dus­try," said Nichol­son.

"We are aware that many lo­cal artistes are not re­ceiv­ing enough air­play and thus, we came up with the idea to in­vite artistes to sub­mit their lat­est re­leas­es and have them re­viewed and played dur­ing our pro­gramme. "This will give artistes an ad­di­tion­al out­let for their cre­ative works and al­so add to the ex­pe­ri­ence re­ceived by our stu­dents, as we con­tin­ue to of­fer them the most prac­ti­cal un­der­stand­ing of what it takes to be a suc­cess­ful broad­cast­er," he said.

Starr Broad­cast­ing cur­rent­ly of­fers in­ten­sive cours­es in an­nounc­ing, DJ-ing and au­dio pro­duc­tion and will soon add video-edit­ing and pro­duc­tion to their ever-ex­pand­ing cur­ricu­lum.

Through the re­cent in­tro­duc­tion of artistes' sub­mis­sions, new mu­sic re­view ses­sions and live on-air as­sign­ments, Starr con­tin­ues to in­no­vate and en­hance their tu­ition pro­grammes in or­der to pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty and most ef­fec­tive learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to their stu­dents.

"We all know that prac­tice makes per­fect," added Nichol­son, "so at Starr we try to ex­pose our stu­dents to a re­al-life broad­cast­ing en­vi­ron­ment and thus, pre­pare them and get them ac­cus­tomed to all the chal­lenges that they may face in a typ­i­cal me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tion."