Quack Smack, KWVA’s Sports Talk Show, Now Every Weekday

Quack Smack Website Image

This is big: the flagship show of KWVA Sports, Quack Smack, will become a daily talk show starting Monday, January 6th on KWVA 88.1 FM.

That’s right – we get to talk about sports EVERY DAMN DAY *Nike joke*. The long-running, hour-long program will move from its 7-8 time slot on Mondays and air every weekday from 6-7 pm on the University of Oregon student radio station.

We call it ‘Quack Smack 2.0’ since we’re all The Newsroom junkies. The only downside to this name, which obviously wasn’t considered in Aaron Sorkin’s show, is the ‘.’ ends the hashtag. So, right now we’re going with #QuackSmack2 in the Twitterverse. Alternate ideas can be emailed to sports@kwvaradio.org.

Anyway – Sports Director Joey McMurry (writing this post) will host and supervise the Monday program with Assistant Sports Directors Travis Teich and Ryan Rouillard hosting/supervising Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. Thursday’s show will feature the three directors (the ‘A-team’, if you will) on the air together and will be produced by Production Director AJ Untermeyer. Friday’s show will vary based on the week’s Friday Night Spotlight, which regularly features live event broadcasts from 7-9 pm.

All of these shows will feature rotating panelists and co-hosts so that the more than 20 KWVA Sports volunteers can sharpen their broadcast, debate and analytic skills. Plus, we will bring on regular guests including other journalists, coaches, players, you name it from all over to offer a more in-depth perspective on the local teams, topics and issues.

The increased coverage comes after a tremendous amount of growth in the department over the last few years. Applications for volunteers have steadily flown in over the last two years and in order for students to continue to gain experience in the live talk format, we needed to increase the number of opportunities. Now, we’ve got as many things to do as Oregon has uniform combos. Every professional sports-talk station has a daily show so I thought to myself, “Self, if the big boys get to do it every day, why can’t we?” Quack Smack 2.0 was born.

And this is just the beginning. The department already broadcasts Oregon volleyball, soccer, softball and occasionally other sports live on KWVA 88.1 FM, GoDucks.com and PAC-12.com through a partnership with the University of Oregon athletic department. Additionally, we’re at almost every other Oregon athletic event to add content to our website and talk shows. Plus, we broadcast football and boys and girls basketball games for South Eugene High School on ihigh.com with select games going on the radio. We’re basically everywhere, and each of these events can now be discussed more in-depth on the airwaves of KWVA, which is pretty cool. We’ve even got a few other things in the works, so stay tuned.

And now, because everybody wants to be remembered in the Oscar speech…

Thanks to KWVA General Manager Charlotte Nisser for her continued support of the sports department. Without her leadership, all of KWVA would be nothing.

Thanks to current (and past) student staff, particularly News Director Luisa Andersen and Programming Director Brian Shimer for making this expansion a reality.

Thanks to Ryan Therrell and David Georgieff for working with us at every athletic event and making our voices come across the interwebs. It doesn’t matter how good the broadcast is if no one can hear it.

Thanks to all the volunteers who made it possible for this expansion to occur. We couldn’t do it without you, team (seriously).

Thank you to the listeners. If there’s no audience, we’re just the crazy kids who argue over nothing (sometimes we do).

And a special thanks goes out to former Sports Director Colin Deaver. Without his drive, vision and leadership as long as his Kevin Durant arms, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

I hear the music playing, so if I left anybody out, I’m sorry. Thank you to everyone. Really. Keep listening and keep the dial tuned to KWVA Sports. We’re just getting started.

#QuackSmack2

-Joey McMurry

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-Joey McMurry