Seneca College RED 2019 - 25

Brewing radio success

PHOTO: JOANNE RATAJCZAK

Mocha Frap is co-host of popular Toronto morning show

IF YOU GOOGLED HIM, you'd probably land on Starbucks'
website - because his name sounds like a beverage.
In fact, Mocha Frap does order mocha drinks from
Starbucks, making for an interesting conversation
when baristas ask him for a name to write on the cup.
"It's a lot of back and forth before they either give
up or just aren't bothered with me," says the co-host
of the popular Roz & Mocha Show on KiSS 92.5.
While Mocha has enjoyed a 20-year career, radio
didn't come to him easily in the beginning. It took him
two tries to pass the then-required entrance test to
Seneca and enrol in the Broadcasting-Radio program.
And when he contacted radio stations in Toronto about
unpaid internship opportunities after his first year, no
one emailed him back.
"I was kind of hurt," he recalled. "I'd known I wanted to be in radio since I was 16 years old. That was my
only focus in life."
Luckily, Mocha had also contacted stations in the
United States and one of them called him for an interview. He hopped on the bus to New York City for the
weekend and scored an unpaid internship in Manhattan. For more than three months that summer, he
stayed with his uncle in Queens.

"I was doing everything and anything, including promotions, and I soaked up a lot of information," he said
about the internship. "You think you know what radio is
all about until you work there and you see the different
departments that work together to help support the
final product that makes it on the air."
Mocha returned to his second year at Seneca with
more knowledge and experience than his classmates,
but he didn't just sit back and relax. Before graduating
in 1999, he was introduced to the program director of
KiSS through a friend from Seneca who was working
there at the time.
Due to his persistence in following up with people,
Mocha was eventually called upon to operate the system overnight. For three months, he covered the nightshift at KiSS, spent his days at Seneca and worked
weekends at The Bay.
Mocha actually began working full time for KiSS
prior to graduation and since that time has worked in
Calgary and Kitchener - covering every on-air shift
around the clock - before returning to Toronto in 2009.
"I love music, I love the people I work with and I love
my job," he said. "It's the most fun you can ever have
and a lot of what I learned, I learned while at Seneca."

I'd known I
wanted to be
in radio since
I was 16 years old.
That was my
only focus in life.

RED

2019

Seneca College RED 2019

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