Arts & Culture
Joy Cardin hosts her morning talk show on Wisconsin Public Radio, “The Joy Ride” from the UW-SP campus with guest Bob Williams.
Popular talk show “The Joy Ride” cruises through Stevens Point campus
The Pointer
lgern177@uwsp.edu
Wisconsin Public Radio Talk Show Host and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point alumna Joy Cardin broadcasted her show, “The Joy Ride,” live from UW-SP in the Dreyfus University Center last Friday, Oct. 24.
After the broadcast, Cardin also had a meeting with the UW-SP media organizations in which she shared insights about her career in the television and radio industries.
Cardin said her career was first shaped by her education at UW-SP. As a communication major, she said she received a broad liberal arts education that, along with working at the student radio station 90FM and her internship at Channel 7 in Wausau, left her well-equipped for the professional world.
“I hosted my first calling show at UW-SP...called ‘Two-Way Radio,’” said Cardin. “It was supposed to be a call-in show, and I say ‘supposed to be’ because no one really did. That prepared me very well for hosting my own talk show.”
After graduation, Cardin continued to work at Channel 7 in Wausau, where she was offered a job as an editor. Cardin said that while the job was a great first experience, she felt television posed some limitations.
“Sometimes you just didn’t do a story because it didn’t have the visual,” she added. “So maybe some issue on budgeting was important but it didn’t get done because it didn’t have a fun visual way to spice it up.”
She said her gender also posed some limitations, though it was not a hindrance to her overall career.
“I remember after doing what I thought would be this magnificent story … on some great issue that was going to change everyone’s life, people would say, ‘wow you really look tired, can you do anything about those rings under your eyes?’ or, ‘I really don’t like your hair that way.’ There was a lot of comment on what you look like rather than what you reported on,” she said. “I don’t think I’d call it a roadblock, though.”
These frustrations led her to more aggressively pursue a career in radio. In 1986, Cardin applied and was chosen for a position with WPR in Green Bay as a morning edition host and reporter. Eventually, she became WPR talk show director, which paved the way for her current position as a talk show host.
Her show focuses broadly on current affairs, mainly political in nature, that affect the public. Each topic is chosen by Cardin and her producers, all of whom discuss the angle of the next show and the guests.
Some past well-known featured guests have included the governor and presidential candidates like Bill Richardson and Ralph Nader.
“We try to bring in a wide variety of guests that bring different viewpoints
on the issue, like healthcare, environment or energy,” Cardin said. “We try to focus on the public policy issues that are being debated on the campaign trail and not so much the polls and horse race.”
Now, Cardin says she thinks her current position is one she can grow with, and that through it she hopes to engage even more listeners in the future.
“I think it is a profession worth loving,” she said. “You can help inform people and help them make informed choices as voters. I don’t know if you can change the world, but you can change part of the world with your reporting.”
