Introducing the VIP on WERG

Hi, my name is Amy Benkovich and I am the Specialty Show Producer here at WERG. I am also the co-host and co-creator of The VIP on WERG. The other half of the VIP is Nicolis “Nic” Franz, he is the Productions Director at the station, and one of my greatest friends.

The VIP is a talk show in which we discuss everything about entertainment and media- from movies, to music and television shows. We have discussed things like cartoons, horror movies, Panic! At the Disco and even book to movie adaptations.

The VIP was created out of Nic and I’s PM drive show from last semester in which he discussed different things that we loved. Nic and I quickly realized that we had a lot of common interests and shared a love and passion for movies, music and television shows. So, that’s when we came up with the genius idea for a talk show. There are other talk shows on WERG, like the Prime Time Sports Guys, but why not dedicate a show to everything entertainment?

Nic and I decided to come up with the time clock and a pitch for our Operations manager Chet and our General Manager Molly so that we could have the show the following semester. The show got approved and we were on our way to having our very own talk show!

The summer, however, posed some problems since I was so far away. Nic lives here in Erie and I live in San Diego, so trying to help him over the summer was a challenge that made our first show a little too close for comfort. But like any good duo, Nic and I got right to work and put our plan in action the minute that I returned to Erie. We wrote and voiced a 1-minute promo and a 30-second promo and came up with a schedule for every show.

The VIP had its first ever show on September 10th of this year. Nic and I felt successful, it was ours, something that we created. Every show we try to get a special guest from around the campus, and for this show in particular we had Camryn Grey, who is the Social Media Director for WERG.

We spoke about our summer, and the things we watched and listened to over break. Our first show was success and we felt accomplished. As the time went on though, we felt like there was something missing.

We found that something with help from Brian Bowersox, our Training Director. He suggested to pull the portable whiteboards from the classrooms and write out our talk breaks and what we wanted to discuss every hour. This was implemented into our Halloween show, and since then we have produced the new and improved VIP!

Our next show will be on Monday November 19th, and we will be talking everything Disney. I mean, who doesn’t love Disney! And we may even have some really good music and guests. But you will just have to tune in to find out at 90.5 WERG on Monday nights from 6-9pm to listen to the entertainment talk show the VIP on WERG!