Interview with Jill Sluss
Q99 Radio, Roanoke
by: Kristen Elstein

            Planet Blacksburg recently sat down with Jill Sluss from the Roanoke radio station Q99.

            Sluss is a Roanoke College alumnus with a degree in sociology with a communications concentration.  She now works as a promotions director at Q99.

            Sluss’ pride in her work was obvious when she talked about the opportunities she has had to help people in need on a day-to-day basis. 

The following is a selection from a recent interview with Sluss:

Q: What does your job entail?

Sluss: It entails basically just event planning and special contests in charge of every contest that we do, or every time we do an event I’m in charge of that as well.

Q: So what is your schedule like day-to-day?

Sluss: Basically the good thing about the job is that there is really no day-to-day, it changes every day.  From being on location at a client’s event, having a meeting with a client, about what events they have coming up or if they don’t what they want to do.  Or around here dealing with lots and lots of paperwork or dealing with how the events are going to be planned.  And if we’re doing a contest, getting the promotional outline to the client and making sure that they’re happy with the promotion.  So it really just changes from day to day and that’s really one of the things I like about it.  I never get bored at all.

Q: Do you think your major in sociology helped you prepare for working with people better than a major in communication by itself?

Sluss: You know that’s a good question.  If I had it to over again, I believe I would go somewhere such as Tech and get a communications degree ‘cause I was just so interested in it at the time and we were so limited as to what we could learn.  You know, such as a fun TV class, we never had a class in radio at all.  So it was pretty much limited to public speaking, public relations, and things like that.  Sociology did help me in learning how to deal with various types of people which is ideal for different types of charities where there are all different levels of people there.  But like I said I would want to get a communications degree.

Q: They did not offer it at Roanoke College at all?

Sluss: They did not.  The only thing that was offered with communications was the concentration which is basically [what would be] a minor at another school.

Q: How did you decide to go into the communications field and to work in radio?

Sluss: Right.  I actually took, well, it was a beginning communications class.  We had a speaker come in who was the public relations director for an insurance company in town and she talked about internships, about how important they were if you want to get a job in communication after school.  So I talked to her and she gave me a list of contacts.  One of them happened to be Channel 7 and I started there interning and from there I went four other places as well and just as much experience as I could.  And I think that that kind of made up for my education, the book education that I didn’t get at school.

Q: Can you tell me about your internships?

Sluss: Sure.  I went from Channel 7 in the promotion and programming departments to News Channel 10 in, of course, the news department.  WVRA which was the public TV station, then to Leisure magazine which publishes different magazines such as the Roanoker magazine then finally where I am now, pretty much, Q99 radio in the promotions department.

Q:  How would you say working for radio differs from working for a television station?

Sluss:  Radio is much more involved in the community, at least at the stations that I’ve been involved in.  And also, we just do a lot more and it’s different in putting promos together of course because it’s all written whereas TV you have to have the visual effects as well.  I really like radio better. 

Q:  What promotion that you have done would you say has been your biggest success?

Sluss: I would say working with the Pack the Bus promotion that we do every August.  We went to 14 different stops within our listening area and we collected school supplies for children.  We had various school buses come out to wherever we were—like if we were in Roanoke City, a Roanoke City bus would come—and we actually literally packed the supplies that the public donated on the school bus.  So we received more than $40,000 worth of items, it was certainly greater than that, that’s just a ballpark figure that we could pull out to use.  But we got that for needy children in our area and it makes you feel really good to give back to the community.

Q: Do you think the skills you need to communicate with and work with the public are something anybody can have if they work for it, or do they have to have a knack for that?

Sluss:  I think truly you do need to have a knack for it.  I’ve seen some people try for it, based on the assistants I’ve had in the past few years, some people are just excellent at doing that and some people aren’t really.  You have to be somewhat outgoing to do it I think, it really does help.

Q:  What traits do you have other than being outgoing that you think help?

Sluss: Well in addition to that I think you have to be an organized person and you have to have a lot of diligence and come in on a day to day basis and say, “OK, this is what I have to do today,” and to have some sort of a plan for doing that.  And like we were talking about with the public relations field, just being able to talk to various groups.  Like I was saying, with a charity there are all kinds of people as well.

Q:  Are you ever on the broadcast itself, or are you completely behind the scenes?

Sluss:  Behind the scenes.  I’ve been interviewed a couple times on the air but I really just prefer to stay behind the scenes and do all that type of work instead.

Q:  Do you feel like it’s pretty challenging to be on the radio live?

Sluss:  Definitely, yes.  That’s very competitive.

Q:  Is the field that you’re in pretty hard to get into?

Sluss:  You know, it didn’t used to be at all.  But lately I’ve seen it get very competitive.  To give you an example, we had roughly five or six people last year who interned here from time to time, they all wanted to go into promotions, you know that’s what they decided they want to do.  And back when I was in school, really, promotions was not a well-known thing.  Now it seems like people have realized it’s something they really want to do and try to go for.

Q:  Do you have any guesses as to why that might be?

Sluss:  I don’t know, I really don’t.  Maybe the classes are more geared towards promotions.  I don’t know if Virginia Tech has a certain class in promotions or not .

Q:  Can you give me some examples of some of the charities you are working with currently?

Sluss:  Sure.  Let’s see here, well we have the Salvation Army today.  In fact there’s a promotion we’re going to do in December called A Dollar Makes a Difference.  We are working with a society called CHIP which is Child Health is a Partnership, the Red Cross, and more.

Q:  And do you see these making a difference?

Sluss:  Oh, absolutely.  Another example is with the Salvation Army, I talked with them today about a promotion we always do in December.  That’s where we ask listeners to send in one dollar and the money all goes to the Angels, the Forgotten Angels, that’s what we call them on the Christmas trees in the mall.  Or that’s where, you know, parents have the opportunity to write the sizes of their kids’ clothing and shoes, or maybe a special toy that their kid really wants.  Of course, this is for families that can’t afford it.  We usually raise roughly $10,000 for that program.  So it’s really nice to see that big change there that you’re doing in the community.

Q:  Do you feel like people in the community are pretty supportive and willing to help?

Sluss:  We are always just amazed at how much people do support what we do...With the hurricane promotion we did with the Red Cross, our five stations raised roughly $525,000…That money mostly came from just little businesses and it’s just amazing.

Q:  What are these five stations?

Sluss:  Our five stations are Q99, K92, Star Country, VIBE 100 and WFIR which is our news talk station.

Q:  How are these stations all related?

Sluss:  We’re all owned by one person, Leonard Wheeler.

Q:  So are these stations competitive with one another?

Sluss:  Well we are competitive but at the same time we work together, it’s really an odd relationship but it just works for us.

Q:  Thank you very much for your time.

Sluss:  Oh you’re welcome, I was glad to come and talk to you.