“Skynote” airs 7-9 p.m. on Tuesdays on “The Meamea Show.”
By Aly Miranda
sac-ranger@alamo.edu
“Skynote,” a podcast on the celestial lights in the San Antonio and South Texas skies, is broadcast weekly on the radio show of radio-television-broadcast sophomore Meagan Halbardier on college radio station KSYM 90.1 FM.
The show is written by Bob Kelley, academic program coordinator of Scobee Planetarium, who records the five-minute podcast weekly at the station in Longwith Radio, Television and Film Building.
Halbardier’s “The Meamea Show” airs 7-9 p.m. on Tuesday.
“It comes from ‘Firefly’, the TV series,” Halbardier said Nov. 1. “On the show, there’s a term of endearment titled ‘meimei’ and that means little sister, and it’s supposed to be cute.”
Halbardier, 22, said her younger sister calls her “meamea” because Halbardier is shorter than she is, and because her name is Meagan.
Halbardier talks about “geeky and nerdy things” on her show, such as comic books, books, movies and TV shows. On Nov. 1, she talked about the movie series, “The Hunger Games.”
“What I do is an intro and then ‘Skynote’ comes in after a break of music,” Halbardier said. “And then I do another little blurb about the topic of the night and then another music break. And then another little blurb of whatever we’re talking about, and that goes into hour eight, and then it just repeats.”
The kind of music Halbardier plays falls under alternative/pop rock.
“The songs that have the potential to be top 40 are the kind of songs I play,” Halbardier said. “I don’t know most things about music, and I do have my music director pick most of the songs out for me.”
“When “Skynote” airs, the first segment starts at 7:20 p.m. and the second at 8:20 p.m.
“Bob writes it all since he’s professional astronomer here, and I help produce and edit it down to this short little podcast,” Halbardier said.
Kelley has been “volunteered” by Richard Varner, director of Scobee education center. Varner had been contacted by Halbardier, Kelly said.
“I supply the narration and voice talent, and together we put this project together for our audiences,” Kelley said. “It’s a way to bring a new feature to KSYM as well as advertise the planetarium is available. Believe it or not, after 50 plus years of operation, we still have a large number of people in San Antonio who ask, ‘We have a planetarium?’ So that’s what ‘Skynote’ is about.”
The planetarium is available through college classes, 6:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and at 9 p.m. Friday nights for the general public and for students in grades pre-K through 12, Monday-Friday.
“We run three shows a day for the school groups,” Kelley said. “College classes also come to the planetarium. They can be astronomy classes, ASL classes, college orientation sessions, college enrichment classes.”
Kelley said the planetarium also gets visits from out-of-town groups.
“Some of our school groups will include senior citizen homes and scout groups,” Kelley said. “We also can give private shows to state hospitals or students with special needs. We just want to make sure that everybody enjoys the environment.”
For information on KSYM, contact general manager John Onderdonk, RTVB professor, at 210-486-1366 or program director James “Hot Mustard” Velten at 210-486-1371.
For information on the planetarium, contact 210-486-0100.
