Jake and Steve Show

The Jake and Steve Show is a morning radio show hosted by Jake Bennett and Steve Cummings on WVUA-FM 90.7 The Capstone at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It features two students, Jake Bennett and Steve Cummings, and several regular visitors including Nana, the grandmother of Steve Cummings, and David Dearman, their agent. The show format is mostly morning talk radio, with some current rock music thrown in during the breaks. [Battito, Alexandra. "New Rock morning hosts keep laughs coming," Crimson White, March 08 2006 [http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/08/440e7b872362b?in_archive=1] ]

how Topics

In the American morning radio show tradition, there is a constant flow of new topic ideas addressed by the show. Many mornings, the primary content is based in current events, either locally or nationally. There are also frequent bits relating to the topics of Star Wars, nerds, and television. Some regular pieces of the program include "You Don't Know Jack," a segment dedicated to singing the praises of Jack Bauer, the lead character in a popular television series called "24", and "Your Moment of Chuck," a segment espousing the virtues of a former world champion martial artist and current television phenomenon named Chuck Norris.

how Mission

Ultimately, the goal of The Jake and Steve Show is to create a venue through which to edutain their primarily-college-aged audience. They work to promote academic success, self-reflection, and exploration by taking advantage of the media's influence on young adults. This is particularly effective on a college campus because they, as college students, are able to relate to their intended audience and identify purposeful, meaningful, and intentional means by which to deliver their edutainment.

Criticism

Since many residents of Tuscaloosa must arise early to sally forth and earn their daily bread, and some of these residents have a deep and abiding love for good radio, there exists a small minority of the listening audience that fails to grasp the sarcasm related to the show's delivery, and has voiced disdain for the show. [Crimson White forum posting [http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/08/440e7b872362b?in_archive=1] ] Because college radio is a mass media communication channel, available to all, regardless of their education level, some of this criticism is to be expected, and is to some degree reasonable. The show has publicly recognized that not everyone will understand their intricate format of simultaneous education and entertainment (coupled with copious amounts of intellectual and sarcastic wit), and has even welcomed civil discourse regarding their program and its format. So far, despite repeated invitations, there have been no souls brave enough to openly discuss the show's content directly with the hosts. There has been a small amount of unorganized vandalism to the shows Wikipedia page, but still no detractors will openly come forward.

Other critics have noted that much of the show's humor derives from other sources; the hosts don't write the jokes in "You Don't Know Jack" [Random Jack Bauer Facts website [http://www.notrly.com/jackbauer/index.php?topthirty] ] and "Your Moment of Chuck," [Chuck Norris Facts website [http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/] ] and even the latter's name is taken from "The Daily Show." Celebrity voices on the show are often imitations of imitations, as in the case of Bennett's Samuel L. Jackson, which copies not Jackson, but Dave Chappelle's imitation of Jackson. Often, too, the show will talk about things that are funny without "being" funny; witness 2006's Fifty Funniest Movies list, as well as the regular quotations from many of those movies. These critics, however, have failed to notice that the hosts do not surf the web on air as much as they used to, as well as the fact that Jake and Steve are still the best game in town.

Links

[http://jakeandsteveshow.ua.edu Official Website of The Jake and Steve Show]

Notes