Tuesday, March 11, 1997 | 5:09 a.m.
The easiest part of Mike O'Brian's job? Co-hosting a morning radio show.
"All you do is talk," O'Brian, half of the morning show team on KXPT 97.1-FM, told several local middle and high school students who recently toured the station on South Decatur Boulevard.
The idea was to familiarize the teens, who will be junior radio broadcasters for the upcoming Greater Las Vegas Inner-City Games, with what really goes on behind the microphones at their favorite local radio stations.
"A lot of people say, 'You just play the music and you talk,' and I really take offense to that," O'Brian said, "only because there's so much more to a radio station, especially a successful one."
Like producing shows and dealing with the public. A couple of the tasks the junior broadcasters will likely perform during their five-month stint covering the Games, which begin in April.
In its second year in Las Vegas, the Inner City Games provides kids, ages 7 through 17, the chance to participate in athletic and educational events including soccer, martial arts and track and field.
The 19 junior broadcasters were chosen from 15 area schools, via an essay-writing and on-camera audition process.
Last year's broadcasters "... got a real good taste of what broadcasting ... is all about, be it radio or television," said Jeannine Barneby, registration director for the Games.
"I think it's just a real education. I think anybody would like to learn how a TV camera works, how big a TV studio really is," she said. "This opens doors that really wouldn't be opened for some of these kids."
Ten teens will be trained in broadcast news writing at local television stations and the remaining nine will learn about production and operations at a handful of local radio stations. They'll all file tapped reports throughout the games.
The audition was a real nail-bitter for Rita Debesai. "I didn't really think I was gonna make it," the Gibson Middle School eighth-grader said. "I was nervous on TV, so I'm glad I (was chosen for) radio."
But not Clark High School sophomore Lynsey Coffman. Last year, she spent a day touring a local television station and hoped to go back there with the Inner City Games.
TV, she said, "is a lot more hectic" than radio. "I think it's because they're under such a tight schedule. With radio, you get to laugh a lot."
No need to tell O'Brian that. "It's kind of cool," he says.
But also, a lot of hard work. "That's the easy part, going into the (studio) ... where (co-host) Lark (Williams) and I sit, because you get to shut door and nobody can bother you. It's when you come outside the door, how you handle everything else that is the exciting part."
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