Radio Free Hillsdale’s “The Loft” won first place for Best Comedy show in the college-radio equivalent of the Academy Awards.
“The Loft” is a weekly comedy variety show hosted by junior Rachel Kookogey, senior Caleb Ramette, and sophomore Nick Treglia and produced by freshman Josh Camp. The show, as Kookogey put it, “covers anything we find interesting or funny.”
Familiar segments from the show include its iconic opening segment, “Wacky World,” where a host will read a bizarre or funny article; the “Florida Man,” a game in which the hosts must determine which one of three headlines featuring a Florida man are fake, is also popular among listeners.
The show was entered into the 2020 Intercollegiate Broadcasting Services Awards by Scot Bertram, the general manager of WRFH. Bertram submitted nine minutes worth of the show’s best clips that the hosts put together.
Usually, finalists attend a summit in New York City where they participate in various radio broadcasting panels and receive awards. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the event was made virtual this year. In place of the summit, Bertram hosted the students at his house for dinner and the award ceremony.
“We were hyped,” Treglia said. “On the ride home from the digital screening we were playing ‘We Are the Champions’ and DJ Khaled’s ‘All I Do Is Win.’”
Kookogey, a finalist last year for a sportscast, said she was surprised by the results.
“Going into this, I was honored that we were finalists,” she said. ”But I honestly didn’t think we were going to win first place.”
Treglia agreed, saying the group’s first show was not well-received.
“Our pilot show was so horrible last year we started calling ourselves the ‘Project Bootstrap of Radio Free Hillsdale.’ It’s amazing to see where we are at now. Last year, we spent several chaotic hours in the recording booth struggling to make a pilot we could put on air. But now, we bring strong, entertaining content in our show,” Treglia said.
Kookogey noted the irony in “The Loft” receiving an IBS award after a satirical conversation with Treglia.
“Last year when I was a finalist, I went to the library and saw Nick there. I told him I was headed to New York in March for the awards, and he said, ‘No fair! Can you imagine ‘The Loft’ traipsing around New York and becoming an award-winning show?’ And so that was the event where we decided we wanted to pursue this seriously. We worked on improving the quality of our segments and getting feedback,” she said.
“The Loft” faced difficulties in its first season, since students did not return to campus after spring break last year due to the pandemic. But despite the challenges, the group was able to pick up where it left off.
“What was amazing was that when we came back to campus in the fall, we just got into the groove,” Ramette said. “Our best content was easily the Halloween Harbor Basement segment. We recorded ourselves stumbling around, acting like weird things happen down in the basement of the Harbor, an off-campus house. But the punchline is the fact that there’s not a ghost.”
Treglia credited the team’s chemistry as the reason for the show’s success.
“Our show plays off each other’s personalities and we built a program that only goes up from here,” he said. “Even though we won the award, we’ll still be back in the studio recording because I think it’s something each one of us genuinely enjoys doing.”
Scot Bertram said it’s an honor for any program to win an award at IBS.
“‘The Loft’ brought together four students from different classes with great chemistry to succeed in creating a comedy program with genuine humor,” Bertram said.