If you have had a conversation of
any length of time with me since January 2014, the chances are sooner rather
then later I will find a way to tell you about my amazing internship. Since
last January, I have been interning for the Charlotte location of the Ryan
Seacrest Foundation, which is located at Levine Children’s Hospital (right in
the heart of Charlotte). The Ryan Seacrest Foundation (RSF) is Ryan Seacrest’s
charitable foundation, which he founded in 2010. RSF uses their funds to open
radio stations in children’s’ top hospitals across the United States, providing
entertainment and encouragement to the patients and their families. These radio
studios also provide for an excellent location for celebrity guests to visit
when they are on tour in the areas near the hospitals, and the studios give
internship opportunities to college students interested in radio and television
broadcasting (Like me, and fellow COMM 348 class member Max!). All in all it is
a pretty much a win-win-win situation. I absolutely adore my internship, and
through it I have gotten to meet many celebrity guests, get so much hands on
experience in broadcasting, and meet patients who have truly left an impact on
my life.
Anyways, now that I have explained a
little bit about what the Ryan Seacrest Foundation does in general, what they
do here in Charlotte specifically, and how my internship actually works, I
thought it would be cool for this blog post (since it was a free choice topic!)
to use the cultural diamond theory and some of the terms that we have been discussing in class so
far and apply them to how the Ryan Seacrest Foundation works.
When looking at the actual key
players in RSF, it’s interesting because the foundation is completely run by
the Seacrest family. Ryan is the founder and his other position is chairman. He
isn’t as directly involved with the foundation as his other family members due
to his other commitments within the entertainment world, but he still finds the
opportunity to visit the various RSF hospital locations from time to time.
Ryan’s father, Gary Seacrest, is the President and CEO of RSF. His wife, Ryan’s
mother Connie, is the Vice President and is also in charge of Community Affairs
and Hospital Relations. And Ryan’s sister, Meredith Seacrest, is the Executive
Director. According to my boss at the Charlotte studios, with the position of
Executive Director Meredith Seacrest When applying RSF to the cultural diamond
that is discussed in the Kidd text, the Seacrest family would be the creators
for RSF- not just because they literally created the organization with Ryan’s
help, but because they hold the power and creative decisions in determining the
type of atmosphere that they want each studio to have, therefore helping to
influence the media culture of each children’s hospital. Within each hospital
directly the program coordinator and interns also serve as creators to an
extent, as we have some control as to what we choose to talk about on the radio
each day and what songs we play (when following the original guidelines set by
RSF).
The patients and families of each
hospital would be the receivers in the cultural diamond. Something important to
be taken into consideration for the creators is that children’s hospital
patients are a very different type of receiver when compared with peers their
own age that might not be hospital patients. Some of the children that are in
the hospital are there for very long periods of time, and have lost a lot of
contact with the outside world. Oftentimes they are too weak or sick to be able
to partake in day-to-day activities that most children could do easily, so it
is important that the on-air content is always focused on messages of
encouragement and positivity. The creators of RSF were also creative in using
the radio technology in the studios to reach out to the receivers through
weekly radio games and shows. (The patients are able to participate in the
radio games right from their hospital rooms if they aren’t able to come down to
the studio.)
The cultural object would be the
fact that RSF puts radio stations in children’s hospitals (which I happen to
think is a pretty cool concept- even if I didn’t intern there!). All of the
locations of Seacrest Studios definitely have a lot of influence from Ryan and
some of the other Hollywood companies that he is involved with. The E! Network
(owned by Comcast) is a major donor of RSF, and Ryan is a producer for many E! programs. The cast of the American Idols Live Tour tries to visit various RSF hospital locations each year as well, because of Ryan's involvement with American Idol. American Idol is a Fox show, which is owned by NewsCorporation. The fact that both of these corporations have involvement in RSF could show eveidence of interlock and synergy.
And lastly, the social world surrounding RSF would be that of a children's hospital. As I talked about in the receivors section, the patients in children's hospitals are different then their peers because they have often had to endure hardships beyond what most adults ever have to experience in their lifetimes. Because of this, the social world of a hospital is different then that of the regular world. Very heavy situations (like loss of quality of previous quality of life or even death) which may not be a concern for most children and teens, could be an actual day-to-day threat for some patients. This means that in addition to the radio stations being a place of encouagement, Because of this, they are also used as a bridge between the gap of the hospital world and the mainstream pop culture world (which most of the patients love to keep up with!). It is important to remember that hospital patients are still children, and like their peers they follow many of the same pop culture trends. It is a bit harder for them to follow everything since many of the patients are out of school and the rest of the "real world" for long periods at a time, so it is great that RSF stations are able to help the patients keep up with things that they enjoy and make the hospital process a little bit more fun.
I am ending this very long blog post with a picture of when Mr. and Mrs. Seacrest, (the President and Vice President of RSF) came to visit Levine Children's Hospital last spring!! This was one of the highlights of my internship to date. I am hoping to get to meet Ryan and his sister Meredith at some point as well!
-Annaliese
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