Ex-Grad excels at KFM

We’ve recently met up with Chris Beukman, an ex-graduate from our 2009 diploma course intake, who’s now the full time production engineer at Cape Town’s biggest radio station, Kfm.
So I sat down with Chris to chat and find out what he really does and how this all happened so fast.

While he was studying here at Cape Audio College, Chris was able to grab the opportunity of visiting the Kfm head quarters, getting a good look at the workings of the station and meeting the right people to know as a budding sound engineer.
Shortly after completing his course at Cape Audio, a friend told Chris about an available position at Kfm. Chris quickly jumped at the chance and after a long and rigorous interview process found himself happily in an internship working for national radio. I end this with an interview with Chris to give you a little more incite into what he does and how he’s made it there.

Chris Beukman in his studio at Kfm

Interview
Question: How did this all start?

Answer: Well it kind of started with our Radio Project at Cape Audio, where the students with the top ten projects were taken on a workshop to Kfm where we were given a talk by Primedia’s Senior Production Engineer, Terrence Adendorff, who was then working under Production at Kfm, before being taken on a tour of the facilities.

That’s how I got to meet Terrence and how I initially thought I had a good idea of what goes on in keeping a radio station on air. Then soon after graduation a friend mine, actually also a Cape Audio College graduate but from a few years back, told me Kfm needed an engineer, so I jumped at it!

Question: How did you find the interview process?

Answer: At first I was just happy to get an interview, but it wasn’t long before they gave me a test run and i was working on some ads while they watched me for speed and method. I’m just glad they were happy with me because by March in my first year of “the real world” i had an internship at Kfm, and 3 months later I was given my full time contract.

Question: What exactly do you do now?

Answer: From 9-5 I am the Production Engineer where I mainly work with clients doing the average 30 second radio ads, as well as doing some of the station promos and editing sets for the DJ’s. I also do freelance work for Kfm where I work as technical assistant, running the desk when we are getting live feeds from somewhere else in the country. After hours I also freelance as Programming assistant/Technical producer.

Question: What is the most important thing you learned at Cape Audio College?

Answer: I learnt to be responsible for myself, and that, to me, was the most important lesson of all. Like with any new job it’s easy to not be sure about exactly whats going on, although you quickly learn the ropes, you need to make sure you are always busy being useful.