POPopolis is your one-stop pop culture destination for trending topics, new music, and local events in Toronto. There’s a city of entertainment out there; through conversations, games, and interviews, POPopolis brings you everything that you need to know about pop culture, right to your ears.
POPopolis was created as a collective in conjunction with SpiritLive, a 24/7 streaming radio station produced by the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University. Collectives bring together students who are interested in learning about radio with a more experienced student peer to develop and produce a live radio show over two semesters. Using my radio broadcasting skills from my diploma and the brilliant ideas of our collective, we created POPopolis. Developing with SpiritLive required a more structured approach at content creation as well as key differentiation from other shows in the genre, even on the same station. As such, POPopolis was made up of various segments, each headed by a different member of our collective.
As the executive producer, I organized my co-hosts and created a structure for the show, ensuring everything was ready before our weekly time-slot. Additionally, I developed our game segment, POP Quiz. Inspired by my favourite podcast, SciShow Tangents, I created some sort of trivia game each week for my co-hosts to compete in, win points, and eventually win the season at the end of the semester. POP Quiz along with our community vox pop segment, local focus, and very different interests among the four of us made POPopolis unique and fun. We managed to create a longstanding show from a group of strangers that ran for over 20 shows.
POPopolis
Produced by Brooke McCarthy for SpiritLive
Hosted by Evie Bhasin, Maria Hogan, Brooke McCarthy, and Ellie Zapata
Graphics by Maria Hogan
Production photos by Ellie Zapata