The Last DJs

Local college radio stations fight to be heard in a homogenized age

by Emily Rippe

published January 9th 2008

The date: Oct. 1, 1920. The time: 8 to 8:30 p.m. EST. The first song: “Tell Me Little Gypsy” by John Steel.

Broadcast out of Union College in Schenectady, New York, WRUC is credited as the first college station in the nation.

College radio has been around for 88 years. And though radio enthusiasts remained persistent over time to get their voices and music heard on the air, their efforts have always been against the odds.

And in the Lake Erie West region, college-based stations have encountered quite a bit of static.

Station to station

College radio stations are primarily funded by their universities. But what happens when a college can’t afford the rising costs of radio expenses, or doesn’t see the value in operating such a station?

Local university stations know this story a little too well.

WCBN 88.3 FM is broadcast out of University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, yet the university doesn’t offer a radio broadcasting program. The student and faculty operated station is the only means for would-be disc jockeys and programmers to learn the aural arts. As for adequate funding, the WCBN FM staff has learned not to rely on school officials to make room for their station in the budget.

The Bowling Green State University stations are whistling the same tune. According to Dave Moody, faculty advisor of BGSU’s two stations — WBGU FM and WFAL AM — the stations’ budgets were cut in half this year. WBGU FM had nearly $23,000 to work with last year, now it’s down to a mere $10,000.

“College radio isn’t dying,” Moody said. “But for it to remain viable, universities need to be financially supportive.”

Having been involved in radio since his college days, Moody is sympathetic to the needs of current students interested in pursuing a career in radio – a career he believes is very pertinent in a digital era. According to Moody, there is still a lot of potential for college radio because it offers diverse programming that cannot be heard any where else.

Stephen Merrill, program director for WBGU FM finds the lack of support appalling. “An arbitrary student body entity gets to decide how much money you get, without even understanding the issues college radio is facing,” Merrill said. “Obviously, the system is flawed.”

In order to make up for these deficits, college radio stations take the initiative by organizing annual fund drives, finding their own means of advertising and relying heavily on the trustworthy listener for support. The money earned from the fundraisers pays for the station’s renovations, sends students to different music festivals and ensures better programming for the listener.

“Many of our resources come from listeners, community members, friends and family,” said Brendt Riox, the general manager for WCBN FM. “We’re never disappointed by the support of the community. It’s a reminder that what we’re doing is important.”

Stations in the greater Toledo area such as WBGU FM, WCBN FM, WFAL AM and WXUT 88.3 FM have been hanging in tight at their current dial spots for more than 20 years.

The staff and students behind them believe wholeheartedly in providing unique, alternative and diverse programming to the surrounding community.

The University of Toledo’s radio station shares its call letters with Scott High School during the day, when jazz can be heard from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. During the evenings and on weekends, WXUT FM provides a variety of shows, playing everything from country, rap, and rock. One of WXUT’s weekly programs is a talk show praising the efforts of pro wrestling called “Capture Suplex Radio (CSR). Christopher Daher and his four co-hosts on CSR all come from different backgrounds and they study different subjects in school.

“But we have one thing in common,” Daher said. “We all love pro wrestling; it turned us into one big family.”

But WXUT is not the only college station in the vicinity that offers innovative radio programming. U of M’s WCBN FM takes special pride in being one of the only ‘true freeform stations in the nation.’ According to Riox, the University of Michigan’s station allows its DJs to play whatever they want, and there is no rotation schedule or regulations such as a playlist — the reason you hear the same song at least five times every hour on the corporate owned Top 40 stations. This freedom allows Riox to be a true radio artist, including hosting a weekly half hour show of improvised cartoon voices on a program he calls, The Show and Tell Machine, which he proudly states is “safe for all ages.”

“I wouldn’t be able to do that on any other station,” Riox said,. “Given that freedom, I had to make something of it.”

Moving south, WFAL AM in Bowling Green plays a mixture of popular and local music, which is a slightly different format preferred by the other college stations. According to operations manager Matt Gortner, the AM station was ranked the third best college station in the nation in 1995.

“It’s our goal to get back in the top five,” Gortner said.

Gortner says that while WFAL AM DJS are not ashamed of playing music they like, even if it is being played on top 40 stations, their sister station offers the more familiar underground college station sound. WBGU FM’s volunteer DJs play everything from Industrial/Gothic/Experimental shows to folk, hip hop, and world music. The station even provides listeners with alternative political talk shows.

Jay Lafayette, along with his two Canadian co-hosts Peter Jaworski and Terrence Watson can be heard on their unique talk show, “Political Animals” every week on WBGU FM.

“A lot of talk radio is right-oriented,” Lafayette said. “We identify as a libertarian talk show, for lack of a better word.”

But what does that mean for the listener?

“We don’t talk about war. We don’t talk about political scandals,” Lafayette said. “We bash on the government - all government, which is standard libertarian line - but most of the time we focus on issues concerning civil liberties.”

Yet, despite the freedom and eclectic nature of college stations, program directors still must contend with two forces that have been putting the squeeze on independent radio for years — corporate-owned stations and the Internet.

Tuning out, tuning in

Like many music lovers, Bowling Green State University student Eric Crumrine only listens to the radio in his car, preferring the local Clear Channel-owned KissFM station to the independent college stations because the songs are familiar and fun to sing along to. Once he gets into his house, he listens to the same familiar music on Web sites like Yahoo! Music.

There is a reason, besides corporate conglomeration, why Top 40 radio stations are successful — pop music is popular. Though college radio stations strive to offer an alternative to the same old programming, they immediately alienate a large percentage of their would-be listeners.

“I never know what to expect,“ Crumrine said. “And half the time I never know what [independent/ college stations] are playing.”

But BGSU journalism professor Jim Foust claims there’s another big reason why radio audiences keep getting smaller and smaller.

“[Commercial radio] just sucks,” Foust said. “It’s the sameness of it. It’s the lameness of it. It used to be where you could drive across the country and get a sense of what individual communities were like, and now it’s the same conservative talk hosts and the same crappy music everywhere you go.”

Thanks to the Internet, the world has reached a technological point where desired music is available at your fingertips. If a listener is dissatisfied with what they hear because they are unfamiliar with it, or simply do not like what they are hearing, they can browse myriad channels of music online.

“Really, iTunes has a bigger library than you do in your studio,” Merrill said. “You don’t have the content that people have on their computers.”

So what would motivate the occasional independent radio listener to become an avid radio listener when they literally have the choice to hear their favorite bands any time they please?

“Mix it up a little bit. Play independent stuff., but play popular stuff of the genre too,” Crumrine said. “That way it’s not completely all new.”

Merrill is currently working on his master’s thesis, concerning college radio’s relevance in a digital era. Through his research, Merrill has come to a few imperative conclusions for online radio station operators.

1. College stations need to understand their audience. Merrill divides the online college station’s audience into three categories: students, community members within a 15-20 mile radius and alumni.
2. The programming on college stations online needs to be tailored to the known audience. Simply put, this means including the surrounding community into the shows. “Radio really needs to tap into the local culture that it serves,” Merrill said. “They need to keep in mind the audience that can’t reach the channel clearly because of interference from other channels.” Independent radio fans feel the same way. “It’s a shame when stations lose that local community flavor,” Faust said. “It just becomes cookie cutter, homogenized radio.”
3. Radio personalities need to be interesting. Merrill stressed the importance of deejays having personalities. People enjoy listening to deejays who are witty and offer unique perspectives.

This advice might not keep college radio from going under, especially if the money continues to diminish but one thing is for sure, radio constantly struggles to keep people interested in its programming both on the air and on the Internet; all stations can do, independent and commercial alike, is try to better understand what music lovers want. As Riox, put it, “The fact that [independent radio] is such a dying breed means that the existing stations are hanging in tight and sticking together. It’s going to be that mutual support which keeps them going.”

Yet, while video may be credited with killing the radio star, the Internet may just be the tool to resurrect them.

Untangling the Net

The Internet has already been identified as one of the challenges facing radio today. However, some innovative stations are using the Web to their advantage. Terrestrial college stations broadcast only at 1,000 watts, giving them an approximate 20-mile radius for reaching listeners. In order to keep up with the times and reach a broader audience, all of the local college stations simultaneously host their programming on a streaming Webcast, which is essentially Internet-based radio.

“Political Animals” broadcasts on WBGU FM.com, and is also streamed live from a Canadian magazine Web site, the Western Standard. (westernstandard.ca) This provides for both local and world-wide listeners.

Miami University near Cincinnati operated WOXY FM from 1983 to 2004, when the owners decided to sell their spot on the FM dial.

Bryan J. Miller currently lives in San Francisco, Calif. He went to college at Michigan University in the early 90s, where he worked as an intern for WOXY FM, commonly known to its fans as 97X: Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll. Today he is the general manager of WOXY.com.

“Everything essentially stayed the same,” Miller said. “We trimmed down the staff, but we still have live deejays everyday.”

The major difference?

“Going online-only made [WOXY] become a little more adventurous,” Miller said. Instead of putting one or two songs on a CD into rotation, the deejays at the online station can play most or all of any particular album.

The staff at WOXY.com also face a different type of cost concern then regular radio stations that do not rely solely on their Internet presence.

“The barrier of entry is basically nothing,” Miller said. “Then costs go up as each listener tunes in, requiring an extra stream of bandwidth. We also have to pay music royalties, which are a huge, huge cost.”

And while Miller spends his days working out the monetary and technical kinks for WOXY.com, he couldn’t be more satisfied with the owners’ decision to sell the once FM radio station.

“For us, after broadcasting for 21 years, we hit a mark for listeners in Cincinnati,” Miller said. “It made huge sense because we could offer what we were doing to a bigger audience across the country.”

For now, WBGU, WCBN,WFAL and WXUT continue to provide a completely hands-on experience for those interested in learning the ins and outs of running a radio station, while at the same time providing listeners with an alternative choice to mainstream music on the radio and the Internet. But will they eventually go Internet-only, and follow in the steps of “The Future of Rock and Roll”?