Renee Urbanc and Jaimee Mackey are intern­ing at a place where they don’t do any work.

Both Urbanc and Mackey applied for intern­ships at CMT in Nashville, for the spring 2010 semes­ter, and both received posi­tions. Urbanc works in the Music Strategy Department and Mackey works in the Production Management Department.

The rea­son nei­ther of these two does any work is because they don’t look at this intern­ship as work, they look at it as some­thing they love. It’s an unpaid intern­ship, but they don’t mind.

“I actu­ally look for­ward to going to work,” said Urbanc. “How many peo­ple can say that?”

There is actual work involved, of course. Mackey works help­ing to pro­duce the shows that air on CMT. She didn’t know much about pro­duc­tion before she went to Nashville, but she has learned a lot about this side of the music industry.

“I will never watch TV the same again,” said Mackey. “You don’t real­ize how much work goes into the pro­duc­tion of shows.”

Mackey also said that most of the time she doesn’t know what she will be doing. She is some­times sit­ting in on meet­ings, prepar­ing paper­work, or out of the office at shoots or other locations.

Urbanc does research to deter­mine which songs are ris­ing in pop­u­lar­ity and which ones are falling on the charts. She said the videos shown on CMT every­day and how many times they are played is based on the research her depart­ment does.

“I work on CMT Pure and the Top 20 Video Countdown,” said Urbanc. “My depart­ment also plans artist media days, which are days when artists come into the office to pro­mote themselves.”

Lori Armstrong, admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant in the music indus­try man­age­ment pro­gram, said, “Renee and Jaimee are two of our most out­stand­ing stu­dents and they rep­re­sent the pro­gram amaz­ingly out in the field and here on cam­pus. We actively encour­aged them to apply to CMT and they obvi­ously saw their potential.”

Urbanc wanted an intern­ship at CMT because she grew up lis­ten­ing to coun­try music. She said coun­try music speaks to her and she feels like it’s a part of her.

“I can’t really explain it besides say­ing that it just feels right; like I’m at home,” said Urbanc.

Mackey wanted the intern­ship for a dif­fer­ent rea­son and said, “It’s not because I am a coun­try music fan, that’s for sure.”

Mackey was in Nashville for a con­ven­tion and fell in love with the city, which made her want to find an intern­ship there.

Both of them agree that the expe­ri­ence has been chal­leng­ing at times. Sometimes they work long hours, but both agree that the expe­ri­ence they are tak­ing away from the intern­ship is well worth it.

“The work is extremely chal­leng­ing and inter­est­ing at times,” said Urbanc. “There’s so much more to putting a video on tele­vi­sion than I ever could have imagined.”

Urbanc said she has learned how impor­tant work­ing together in this indus­try is because most of the time no task can be com­pleted with­out at least three peo­ple help­ing. She also said stay­ing up-to-date with what’s hap­pen­ing in the enter­tain­ment world is crit­i­cal because it all can affect album sales or video plays.

“I’ve also learned that net­work­ing is as impor­tant as our pro­fes­sors tell us it is and it’s not as easy as it seems,” said Urbanc. “You can tell some­one your name and have a con­ver­sa­tion with them, but that doesn’t mean you’ve net­worked because you need to give them a rea­son to remem­ber your name, not just tell it to them.”

Urbanc said CMT is a place of busi­ness and artists don’t just come in and “hang out” at the CMT office. Despite this fact, both have had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­act with celebrities.

“My best moment at CMT was hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to work with the Crossroads show fea­tur­ing John Mayer and Keith Urban,” said Mackey.

When asked what they hope to take away from this expe­ri­ence, they said just that, expe­ri­ence. They also hope to walk away with a bet­ter idea of what they want to do in the music indus­try after they grad­u­ate and have a lot of con­tacts that will hope­fully help them in the future.

Armstrong said the expe­ri­ence Urbanc and Mackey will get out of this intern­ship is more ben­e­fi­cial than a whole semes­ter of course­work. Music indus­try man­age­ment stu­dents are required to do two intern­ships so this will also help them in their next internship.

“Working here has proved to me that set­ting your goals high pays off,” said Urbanc. “When I started in the MIM pro­gram, I told my mom I would be work­ing in Nashville in a few semes­ters, hope­fully at CMT, and look where I am now. You can do any­thing you set your mind to.” n