From KDPS to KXNO

On a typical day, Sean Roberts gets up around 4:30 a.m., gets to his first job at KXNO radio station between 5:15 or 5:30 a.m. and works on the morning show from 6 to 8 a.m. After the show, he goes to his second job at Great Western Bank until 5:30 p.m., and some nights he might have to cover a game and work on his podcast.

Some nights Roberts doesn’t even get home until 10 p.m.

For most people, this would sound like a schedule from hell. For Roberts, it is ideal.

“I am lucky enough to work in two careers that I enjoy,” Roberts said.

But not necessarily the two careers he initially had in mind.

“I wanted to be a major league baseball player, or I wanted to get into radio,” Roberts said. “I grew up listening to sports radio since I was a little kid, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with entertaining people and being able to talk not only about sports but anything about life.”

Roberts is a 2012 Grand View communications graduate. He grew up in a northwest suburb of Chicago where he became fascinated by radio and baseball.

In addition to working at a bank, he also works at KXNO where he runs the soundboard for “The Morning Rush with Travis and Heather” and hosts a podcast called “The 23/7 Podcast” that he does with other GV alumni.

Roberts began playing college baseball immediately after high school.

“I went to a junior college my first two years out of high school and played college baseball,” Roberts said. “When I was looking for other schools, I was getting recruited by these schools in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and a couple of schools here in Iowa.”

It wasn’t just that GV was close to home. It also had radio classes that specifically interested Roberts.

While he was riding back home with his mom after touring the buildings and talking to the baseball coach, he turned to her and told her he wanted to go to GV.

To get to where he is now, Roberts got some help from one of his professors.

“I had to have an internship to graduate, and Mr. (Stephen) Winzenburg told me to email so and so. I went in for an interview, and a few days later, got an email back saying they were going to bring me in for the summer,” Roberts said. “Out of all of the interns, I was the only background radio guy, and I lucked out.”

Roberts stayed at the station all day producing and editing content that would go on the radio the next day. After finishing his internship, he went on to work part time for KXNO.

Before long, Roberts was working at Menards and for the station. Later on, he was asked to produce the morning show at KXNO, which he started on October 10, 2014.

Around the time he was about to leave and take on another bank job, he pitched the idea for a podcast to his boss.

“I told my boss the idea awhile before I got the green light for it, and me and him got to talking,” Roberts said. “He said ’Corporate wants more original content for their iHeartRadio app. I thought about your podcast; what are your thoughts?’”

Roberts said he knew this was something that he really wanted to do.

“This was it. I’ve worked too hard and done too much in my career to throw everything away,” Roberts said.

If he finds any spare time, Roberts enjoys working out, playing volleyball, softball, golf and in a wood-bat baseball league in the summer.

Roberts said he is fortunate to be able to do what he does.

“Whatever I can do to continue with this career in radio, I will do,” Roberts said.

Roberts said he isn’t happy with the recent changes in the communications department at Grand View and that he was sad to hear the station that gave him his start in radio, Grand View’s KDPS, would go off the air after this semester.

“I am upset because a lot of people took a lot of pride in that radio station, and I would say it’s been a successful program,” Roberts said.

KDPS has received several awards during its time at GV, and it has recently lost funding for on-air streaming due to university budget cuts.

“There are a lot of people from Grand View who are working in the media world,” Roberts said. “I feel like a lot of kids are going to miss out on a lot of experience and possible opportunity out of it, and it could hurt them as far as possibly getting an internship for a job because I was able to put on my resume that I had on-air experience.”

The 23/7 Podcast can be found on the iHeartRadio app, which is available to download for free on iPhone and Android devices. A new episode comes out every Thursday.

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