Amanda Smith
Lantern Staff
A sophomore in the radio program has made history after being nominated for a national award. Zebadiah Campbell, who also goes by Zeb and Soup, is the host of one of four college radio shows around the world nominated in the CBI (College Broadcasters, Inc.) competition under the “Best Regularly Scheduled Program Audio” category.
“It’s surreal,” Campbell said. “I’ve gotten[Kansas Association of Broadcasters] KAB awards at the state level, it’s just I’ve never done anything on a big, national level.”
Campbell’s radio show, “That One Morning Show”, that listeners can tune into on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on 88.1 The Grizz, features both music and commentary with a range of topics from celebrity birthdays to odd facts about death that Campbell described in one word: crazy.
“[The show covers] just any and everything that’s weird and odd that would catch your attention,” he said.
Campbell’s show enters the competition as the only two-year institution alongside the prestigious University of California-Berkeley, Marshall University and Goshen College.
According to Professor of Mass Communications Keith West, That One Morning Show is the first radio show from a two-year college to be nominated for such a reward, at least in the last nine years, to his knowledge.
“It’s indicative that we’ve got a lot of really good students here at Butler,” West said. “And one of the reasons that we have a number of students that are outside of Butler county, is because we have this program here and it is unique in the state of Kansas and it is unique in this part of the country.”
Campbell began his broadcasting career at 15 years old, beginning at a local radio station where he covered obituaries –“stuff like that just to kind of tie the odds and ins that people didn’t want to do,” he said. Now at Butler, he is majoring in Mass Communications.
Aside from his school-related duties, Campbell also works as a news anchor for KNSS on Sunday evenings and can be heard advertising for Butler on radio commercials.
“You just got to start somewhere,” Campbell said. “I started in radio when I was 15 and it just kind of blossomed into this. I was going to go into music, but then Butler had offered me the scholarship for Mass Communications, and it just opened the doors for endless possibilities.”
The winners of the CBI competition will be announced at the National Student Electronic Media Convention in Seattle on Thursday, Oct. 25 through Saturday, Oct. 27.
