While the work of radio stations using terrestrial transmitters is a typical discussion topic on Radio Survivor, for this episode we find ourselves examining music and talk beamed down from satellites orbiting the earth. Satellite radio as we know it began in the 1990s, with its major players launching satellite radio services in the early 2000s. Brian Fauteux, Associate Professor of Popular Music and Media Studies at University of Alberta joins us on the show to discuss the fascinating history and relevance of satellite radio to both radio culture and the music industry. Brian is the author of the new book, “Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age,” released in 2025.

Show Notes:

• Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age (UC Press)
• Brian Fauteux
• SiriusXM
• HBCU channel on SiriusXM
• Aquarium Drunkard
• Sirius XMU
• Behind the Scenes of XMU’s “Student Exchange Program” (SpinningIndie)
• Matthew Lasar on “Radio 2.0” (Radio Survivor)
• Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium by Matthew Lasar
• Flashback Radio Survivor articles by Brian Fauteux circa 2014-2016! (Radio Survivor)

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Eric Klein
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #344 – Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As we chatted over lunch in the dining hall at Bowdoin College on a late August afternoon, Mason Daugherty, one of the Station Managers of college radio station WBOR-FM, said quick “hellos” to friends who he hadn’t seen in months. The verdant campus in Brunswick, Maine was coming to life, as students were beginning to arrive for orientation training and athletic activities. Daugherty had been there all summer, working at a job nearby and tending to the radio station at the small liberal arts college. Time was of the essence for my visit, as this fall is WBOR’s final semester in its home in the Dudley Coe basement.

WBOR’s Cozy Basement Home in Dudley Coe

Tucked away in the back of Dudley Coe, WBOR is accessed by descending a short set of concrete steps. As the front door opens, a soft glow emanates from a variety of sources, including string lighting, a shaded swing arm lamp, a pink neon sign, audio equipment, and a red, yellow, and green traffic light perched on a shelf. The typical college-issued harsh overhead fluorescent bulbs have been turned off and the subdued lighting sets the tone as both an inviting and relaxing space. A lounge area is outfitted with comfy chairs, an area rug, coffee table, and customized throw pillows with a cassette tape-themed WBOR logo.

The station walls are covered with posters, flyers, stickers, and handwritten notes and drawings from DJs past and present. While some of these musings were clearly scribbled for shock value (“I love boobs”), others hint at the intellectual pursuits of their authors. From existential crises (“You can send me to college, but you can’t make me think”) to short stories-in-the-making (“I feel like my mom doing heroin in the 90s”), to bittersweet love notes memorializing Bowdoin and WBOR (“Goodbye WBOR I mean Dudley Coe the only non sterile space on campus here’s to everything that has disappeared but meant everything at a time”); the prose on all the station spaces would take hours to fully document.

Music and Ephemera at WBOR

Decorative beads hang from a doorway that leads from the lounge into a room bordered by music. Vinyl records and CDs are stashed in shelves and drawers throughout the station, while fake flowers, plastic figurines, a lava lap, and other ephemera add to the funky atmosphere. There’s an Apples in Stereo painting by prolific artist Steve Keene (a college radio staple!) in one of the studios and a metal cabinet in the bathroom is like a 1990s (and earlier) time capsule, covered with a faded Del Rubio Triplets album cover and stickers from Buffalo Daughter, Komeda, Superchunk, Spiritualized and other bands of the era.

Modern Technology in the College Radio Station Studio

The large broadcast studio has a vintage “on-air” light hanging over the entrance and I was told by Mason that it is an antique from the station’s early days. Inside the studio are modern additions, including an interface that Mason had designed, allowing DJs to easily play through a series of station announcements. Computer monitors display station information, text messages from listeners, and playlist details. An LED sign perched behind the mixing board shows the date and time, but can also be configured to show details from EAS tests and alerts. While doing their live programs from this studio, DJs can play music from turntables, CD players and digital sources.

Evidence of the Past in Funky WBOR Space

Adding to the funkiness of the WBOR space is the building’s back story. Dudley Coe used to be the home of the Bowdoin infirmary and there are still remnants and reminders of those days, including a metal circuit breaker box with the word X-Ray stenciled on it in black ink. Apparently there’s also dumb waiter running through the building and claw foot bathtubs. Most of the organizations that were more recently housed in Dudley Coe have moved out, leaving WBOR alone in the basement.

Books and other items from the long-gone print shop are scattered throughout the adjoining rooms, alongside dust and cobwebs. When leaving the coziness of WBOR’s corner of the basement, the unoccupied rooms feel creepy in comparison and lend credence to rumors that the building is haunted. In spite of that, a handful of professors are using the upstairs rooms as temporary offices before the building gets demolished.

WBOR’s Impending Move

When January comes, the station’s operations are scheduled to be moved across campus to Coles Tower, once the tallest building in Maine. WBOR’s antenna is already atop the 16-story residence hall. The new first-floor space is radically smaller than the existing WBOR digs. Carved out of a former TV studio (which also operated as an interview room) the new WBOR will have only a few distinct rooms. A long entryway leads to an open area with wooden shelving for vinyl records on one wall and there’s already a copy of the 12″ of Prince and the Revolution’s “Another Lonely Christmas” sitting on the largely empty shelf. A window and doorway occupy the opposite wall, which leads to the studio. There are also a few small nooks, but the full layout is very much TBD. Mason anticipated not bringing much from the old space, telling me that they would likely digitize the CDs and then store them off-site.

Work to Save Radio History and Capture WBOR’s Past and Present

In anticipation of the move, WBOR has already started bringing historical items, like paperwork, zines, program guides, and posters, to Bowdoin College’s Special Collections so that this material will be preserved. The challenge, as Mason pointed out, is documenting everything scrawled on the walls and ceilings throughout WBOR. One idea is to do a 3D capture, so that people could potential walk through the station virtually in the future. Some short videos have already been shot, including a TikTok shot by Mason that went viral, garnering over a million views.

While I’m saddened by WBOR’s impending move, it’s encouraging that WBOR and Bowdoin College are working to save station materials. This was apparent to me during my visit to the library’s Special Collections and Archives, where I spent an afternoon combing through boxes and files full of radio station-related goodies. Carefully stored in archival boxes were WBOR ‘zines, playlists, DJ log books, posters, manuals, memos, FCC paperwork, stickers, flyers, reels, carts, and more — all capturing a history dating back to the 1950s for WBOR and back to the 1940s for broadcast radio activities on campus.

Storied History of College Radio at Bowdoin

Originally, students and faculty led radio projects under the banner of BOTA, for Bowdoin on the Air. While productions were recorded on campus, the broadcasts aired on other local stations. By 1950, Bowdoin was testing out its own AM signal, officially launching WBOA (for “Bowdoin-on-air”) in May, 1951 over 820 AM. A few months before launch, WBOA sent delegates to a regional college radio conference hosted by the Smith College Radio station WCSR. This event brought together station representatives from the east coast and was a sign of the growing number of collaborative endeavors by college radio stations in the 1940s and 1950s.

An FM frequency was added in 1956 and that marks the beginning of WBOR (for “Bowdoin-on-radio”) 91.1 FM. According to WBOR’s history timeline, “Most Bowdoin students didn’t own an FM radios during this period, so station management built and installed illegal Heathkit FM tuners and miniature AM transmitters in each campus dorm and fraternity house. The station transmitted on 640 kHz, which was then a CONELRAD frequency (used to broadcast emergency warning information in the event of a nuclear attack on the US).”

WBOR in 2024: Active and Thriving Radio Station

Today, WBOR is a very active group at Bowdoin, with around 200 participants, which is more than 10% of the student body. During the academic year, the makeup of WBOR is around 85% students, with community members (including faculty and staff – even deans!) comprising the remainder. The station has a freeform programming philosophy and it’s possible to tune in and hear shows that play wildly different music genres back to back. Some of the programs in spring 2024 included “Unspoken Guitar Heroes,” “Pink Finger: Riot Grrl Radio,” Your Dad’s CDs,” “PopRocks,” “La Bruja Azul,” “Coastal Classical,” “If It Sounds Country, That’s What it Is,” and more. Other shows were devoted to The Pixies, jazz, and other more esoteric themes, including one that sought inspiration from an episode of the Simpsons.

Getting ready to begin senior year, Mason remained upbeat about the station’s move, reasoning that it would be impossible to take everything with them, while also pointing out some of the benefits of the new space, including greater accessibility (no stairs) and more windows. Less hidden from view, it will be located in a building that houses dorm rooms and meeting spaces.

Thanks to WBOR + More Radio Station Tours

Thanks to Mason Daugherty for the wonderful tour of WBOR. And many thanks to everyone in Bowdoin College Library’s George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives for all of their help before, during and after my visit to their reading room.

This is my 174th radio station tour report and my 116th college radio station recap. View all my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives.

The post Radio Station Visit #174: WBOR at Bowdoin College appeared first on Radio Survivor.

We travel back to the 1980s, when the show, The Famous Computer Cafe, initially launched over the radio in southern California. With a focus on home computers, computer news, and more, the program had a fascinating roster of guests, including Timothy Leary, Donny Osmond, Bill Gates, and so many others. Although it was assumed that all the recordings of the show were lost; recently 53 episodes were found and digitized. Computer historian and archivist Kay Savetz spearheaded this project and joins us on Radio Survivor, alongside one of the creators and hosts of The Famous Computer Cafe, Ellen Fields.

Show Notes:

• Listen to The Famous Computer Cafe on Archive.org
• The Famous Computer Cafe ads and ephemera on Archive.org
• Interviews with The Famous Computer Cafe founders on ANTIC: The Atari 8-bit Podcast
• Digitizing “The Famous Computer Cafe” Radio Show (GoFundMe)
• The PBS television show The Computer Chronicles (Wikipedia)
• Episode of “The Famous Computer Cafe” that mentions computer ads (at about the 4 minute mark) in New York taxi cabs
• Timothy Leary episode of “The Famous Computer Cafe”
• COMDEX was a computer trade show in Las Vegas from 1979 to 2003 (Wikipedia)
• “Resurfacing Women’s Contributions in Podcasting History” (Radio Survivor #135)
• The Famous Computer Cafe collection at Stanford University Libraries

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Eric Klein
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #342 – The Famous Computer Cafe appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Williams College student Josh Picoult arrived on campus with a fascination for both history and radio. Four years later, he’s about to graduate after completing his undergraduate thesis on the history of college radio station WCFM, where he’s also the general manager. On this edition of Radio Survivor, we are joined by Josh, who talks us through some of the big ideas from his thesis: Gas Pipes, Gigahertz, and Grunge: Broadcasting at Williams College, 1940-1998. Josh also shares details about the current state of radio on campus.

Show Notes:

• Williams College radio station WCFM 91.9 FM in Williamstown, Massachusetts
• Podcast #89 – How to Preserve Radio History (guest Laura Schnitker)
• Podcast #158 – Surveying Community Radio’s Deep Archives (guest Laura Schnitker)
• Jennifer’s radio station tours
• Radio Station Field Trip #100 – WPRB at Princeton University

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #340 – College Radio History at Williams College appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this edition of the show, we explore public radio history, specifically the origins of public radio in the United States, including the important role played by college and university-based stations. Josh Shepperd joins to talk about his new book, Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting, which examines the intersections between the media reform movement, public broadcasting, educational technology and communications policy and research. Josh is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and is Director of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress.

Show Notes:

• Josh Shepperd’s website at University of Colorado Boulder
• Radio Preservation Task Force of the Library of Congress
• Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (affiliate link on Amazon)
• Association of College and University Broadcasting Stations (ACUBS) evolved into the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB)
• Unlocking the Airwaves collection of NAEB materials
• Robert McChesney’s book: Telcommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (affiliate link on Amazon)
• What is Low Power FM? (page on Radio Survivor)
• Podcast #333 – Low Power FM for Dummies (LPFM window opens Dec. 6, 2023)
• Prometheus Radio Project
• Common Frequency

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #336 – Educational Radio and the Beginnings of Public Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The phrase “The neighbors complain,” circles around what appears to be a black WPIR pirate flag. This imagery on the website for college radio station WPIR Pratt Radio alludes to rumors and half-truths about student radio’s legacy and mysterious history on the Brooklyn, New York campus of the Pratt Institute. As is the case at many college radio stations, the concept of history is largely focused on the past few years. And with the COVID disruption, even that institutional memory has mostly been erased.

WPIR Pratt Radio in 2023

However, the 2022-2023 academic year shaped up to be a pivotal moment, with in-person classes happening once again and mask mandates loosening. After a few shaky years, WPIR Pratt Radio is back in action, broadcasting online from a spiffy new studio (as of February, 2023) in the recently renovated Chapel Hall. In spring, 2023, WPIR had 28 shows airing on its internet stream, as well as over speakers in the Student Union building.

Flyers, posters, 45rpm records, and other ephemera from the old station space (which was just down the hall and was WPIR’s home circa 2006-2023) adorn the walls of the two-room studio and a basket is filled with Polaroid photos of station members from the past. Formerly home to an interfaith lounge, the new WPIR space is divided in half by a window. The furthest room functions as a radio booth, where show hosts sit to do their programs.

WPIR’s Whimsical Communication System During Live Shows

The front room is where a “runner” sits, transmitting each live show to the internet stream. Initially station board members played that role, but now every show host is required to also “run” another program. A large collection of colorful, hand-drawn, whimsical signs featuring tips and inspirational messages sits on the counter. These signs are used as props by the show runner, as a way to communicate words of encouragement to the DJ or host. Messages include suggestions like, “The mic isn’t picking up your voice. Speak closer,” as well as praise, such as “This song slaps.”

At the time of my visit, DJs at WPIR only played digital music. However, inside a metal cabinet is a small collection of CDs, cassettes, LPs and 7″ inch records, along with cables and miscellaneous audio equipment. A stack of cover-less vintage records also sits in the studio. While these items hint at a longer station history, it’s difficult to discern the station’s precise trajectory over the past few decades.

WPIR Pratt’s Early College Radio Days over AM Carrier Current

Originally an AM carrier current station dating back to 1966, WPIR broadcast nightly at 600kc on AM from the first floor of the Willoughby dorm at Pratt, according to a 1971 residence hall handbook. These transmissions could eventually be heard across multiple dorms on campus. Although it was unlicensed carrier current, WPIR was seen as an important communications tool. A letter in student newspaper The Prattler, following student activism efforts and turmoil in 1969, states, “The utilization of radio, WPIR, posters and flyers through quantity and quality, can also aid in securing an informal, involved student body.”

1970s Scene at WPIR Pratt Radio

By the 1970s, WPIR DJs were spinning records on a variety of music shows. One such show was a late night rhythm and blues program hosted by future music industry professional Karen L. Glover, who post-graduation was editor of Black Beat magazine and a music supervisor for films. Other examples of music genres being played in this era can be found in a list of stolen WPIR records during the 1974-1975 academic year. A 1975 article in Drum, a publication by the Black Students Union of Pratt, digs into “PIR Piracy: The Missing Black Records at WPIR,” and mentions that 37 records (mostly featuring Black artists) went missing between September and April. On the list were albums from jazz musician Ramsey Lewis, soul singer Minnie Riperton, funk rock band Labelle, comedian Franklin Ajaye, and artist Carl Douglas (specifically, his disco release “Kung Fu Fighting”).

1980s Equipment Theft and Revival

WPIR continued as a campus-only broadcaster into the 1980s. According to a 1991 article in The Prattler, “in the early 80’s WPIR was a ‘pirate’ station, broadcasting without the schools [sic] or the FCC’s permission. Then all the equipment was stolen.” The article states that in 1984 a freshman, Janell Genovese, “started it back up from scratch,” overseeing WPIR until 1989, when she passed the job on to Daniel Fries.

WPIR’s Foray into Unlicensed FM Broadcasts

Fries was very interested in taking WPIR to the FM airwaves over very low power. After finding a frequency, he began broadcasts on the far left side of the dial (he thinks 87.9 FM) in November, 1990. Several months later, on April 1, 1991, the FCC sent a letter to higher ups at Pratt, asking that WPIR cease their FM transmissions or risk a $100,000 fine.

At the time, Fries told The Prattler that he was surprised because he had “counseled” with “representatives” who had “deemed the broadcast of WPIR, if low power, unlicensable.” I reached out to Fries and he made some clarifications, explaining that he’d spoken with a consultant as well as with engineers on campus. “We determined that at a very low power we could limit the range pretty easily…I was counseled that under a certain power output it was considered legal without a license,” he said, adding that the plan was to operate legal low power unlicensed broadcasts, complying with FCC’s Part 15 rules. These same regulations under Part 15 are what allow for legal, unlicensed campus-only AM carrier current broadcasts.

A former WPIR staffer wrote a more colorful account some years later on the station’s website, saying that, “…the short-lived glory days were perhaps 3-4 months, where we were heard all over the 5 boroughs. We had a great time anyhow, promoting shows – including bands like Fishbone, They Might Be Giants (Pratt alumni themselves), Swirlies, 24-7 Spies, and so on.” However, Fries maintains that those FM broadcasts were much more limited, with “maybe a mile radius” from Pratt’s Brooklyn campus.

WPIR’s Return to AM

After shutting down its low power FM broadcasts, WPIR planned to go back to AM carrier current and increase awareness of the station on campus. The Prattler noted, “Not many people at Pratt know that this institute has a radio station. Even less know its recent history.”

A former staffer spoke of efforts to continue broadcasting after this setback, writing about this history on the WPIR website (circa 2007), “My wife (the then GM) and I tried to resurrect the station as a campus-only ‘leaky cable’ system, which uses a low-power signal that radiates perhaps 100 feet max from the cable – so it’d be run around campus, down hallways, up elevator shafts, and so on. Never worked out too well, as I couldn’t get the damned cable across Willoughby Avenue! Some sort of hoo-ha permitting that sort of thing, so we gave up.” A 1994 yearbook mentions a return to AM following the whole FCC debacle.

WPIR Transitions Online in the 2000s

The station’s pirate radio past is immortalized in some of the station’s branding, as evidenced by a pirate flag with WPIR call letters hanging in the current studio. With its forays into AM and FM broadcasting behind them, Pratt Radio shifted to internet streaming somewhere between 2001 and 2004 and even introduced podcasts as early as 2006.

WPIR Pratt Radio’s Post-COVID Revival

To current students (as was the case decades ago!), the history of Pratt Radio is very murky. And in the shadow of COVID, just getting WPIR up and running again has been the main focus of their attention. When I met up with four WPIR board members in late March, 2023 they spoke of their work to bring the station back to life. All sophomores at the time (a fifth board member was a senior), they had not experienced Pratt Radio pre-COVID, so much of what they knew about the station came from conversations with upperclassmen and their advisor as well as from digging into past postings on Instagram.

2020 WPIR Frozen in Time

Since WPIR was inactive for a bit, current station participants also had to do some sleuthing in order to get back on social media. However, the station’s wonderfully designed tumblr site remains inaccessible and is frozen in time. One page shows the Spring 2020 schedule, packed with 53 shows, hosted by students, faculty/staff, and alumni. It’s easy to imagine the enthusiasm that everyone had when that schedule was posted at the start of 2020, but of course everything changed that March of 2020. By fall, 2020 shows were being done remotely, with some hosts recording programs using the voice memo app on their phones.

Bringing WPIR Pratt Radio Back in 2022-2023 School Year

As we chatted in the quiet studio (except for a constant hum of construction and periodic banging noises from a sculpture class upstairs) in March, 2023 during a mid-day break in programming, I learned more about what brought this group of people together to help bring back college radio on campus. Lili Leoung Tat described the situation at WPIR in the 2021-2022 school year, telling me that “it was kind of dead” and that “there wasn’t really anyone running it.” In fall 2022, she was part of the group that brought the station back from the “ground up.” Around 45 people signed up to be part of WPIR that semester, with 21 shows making it to “air.” By the spring, the number of shows had increased to 28.

The Allure of College Radio for WPIR’s Student Leaders

Amazingly, this small group of students, new to radio, quickly revived the dormant WPIR. Interestingly, several had relatives, including cousins and parents who had worked in college radio or radio in general. WPIR board member Arzu Oran reflected back on an older cousin who had done college radio, saying “he always seemed so cool,” adding that this was part of her desire to join a college radio station, “especially at an art school” like Pratt.

Coincidentally, fellow board member Eve Mikkelson also had an older cousin who did college radio. She was partially drawn to Pratt Radio because she thought it would be the “perfect way to meet a bunch of people.” The newest board member (she was a week into her term when we all meet in March), Mikkelson talked about how much she enjoys doing her show, “Brooklyn Buzz,” which highlights Brooklyn artists. “Getting to curate what you play and what you say, it’s just a really nice form of expression,” she explained, adding, “You’re picking all your favorite things and you’re getting to share it with as many people as possible.”

Similarly, Oran, who hosts “Kraving Kibbeh,” spoke philosophically about the experience of listening to music “actively,” without distractions. She finds herself doing that much more while participating in college radio at WPIR, where she is more likely to listen to music “fully.” She said, “It feels so nice to actively listen” to both her own program as well as other shows on WPIR.

Building Community at Pratt Institute

In addition to the joy of “doing” radio, the participants at WPIR talked about the satisfaction that they felt in contributing to campus life. “I really like that we’re leaving a mark on the campus, because we’re helping to relaunch the Pratt radio station,” said board member Colin Coffey. He continued, “Hopefully we’ll keep thriving after we graduate…it’s just a nice community that we’ve built.” Leoung Tat agreed, adding that the station community is also building connections with other groups. She mentioned that several clubs have reached out to collaborate with WPIR. One organization, Queer Pratt, inquired about having DJs spin at an event and the student book club asked WPIR to curate playlists for their meetings.

Fall 2023 Shows at WPIR Pratt Radio

WPIR is up and running again this semester, with all four of the board members who I met in the spring still active on the Pratt Radio Board. When I tuned in to the stream in mid-October, 2023, there were 25 shows on the fall schedule running from about noon to 10pm. The broad range of programs include “Eli’s Experimental Hour,” “Jesus Wept,” “Evil Hour,” “Show Tunes Swag,” “Tuning into the 2000s,” “Clowns, Cowboys & Punks,” and more. An edition of “Nocturnal Emissions” that I caught featured bands with under 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, which I thought was an interesting way to feature more underground artists.

Thanks to WPIR Pratt Radio + More Radio Station Tours

Thanks to WPIR Pratt Radio for the wonderful visit. Also many thanks to WPIR advisor and Associate Director for the Student Union Alexander Ullman for taking time to speak with me. Additional appreciation goes to Brendan Enright, Project Archivist at the Pratt Institute for research assistance and for digging up some vital materials in the archives. And, finally, thanks to WPIR alum Daniel Fries for sharing his memories with me, helping to shed light on the station’s pirate radio rumors.

This is my 173rd radio station tour report and my 115th college radio station recap. View all my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives. Stay tuned for additional tours from my spring and summer travels.

The post Radio Station Visit #173: College Radio Station WPIR Pratt Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

With killer views from the 7th floor of a building in the heart of New York City, it’s no surprise that DJs at The School of Visual Arts’ (SVA) college radio station WSVA joke about wanting to live at the station. “I would love to have this as my apartment,” said Michelle Mullin, WSVA’s Manager of Operations. Similarly, alumnus Jacob Gardner, who uses they/he pronouns, admitted to napping at the station, especially since their apartment was in another borough. Beyond WSVA being a lovely space physically, the station also feels welcoming to its participants. “There’s actual life in this place,” explained Alice Katok, the station’s Manager of Production, contrasting it with the closet-like conditions of her apartment. Especially after a few isolating years of COVID, it’s clear that students are gravitating to college radio station WSVA in order to be part of a community of like-minded music enthusiasts.

WSVA Punk Show and Community Connections

And that community is growing beyond the walls of WSVA. The station hosted a sold-out punk show in February, 2023 (its first in recent memory) and 70 people showed up. Mullin was impressed by the turn out, saying that she’d never seen more than 30 people at a school event in her time at SVA. Although it was restricted to SVA-affiliated people, they even got some RSVPs from people who aren’t connected with the school. This outside interest was gratifying to WSVA and a sign to them that they are on an upswing.

Katok mentioned that they’ve also been getting communication from more artists and have had to turn down requests from bands to play. Additionally, WSVA has heard from folks at nearby colleges and college radio stations at FIT, Hunter College, NYU, and the New School about possibly collaborating on events. Mullin said that she feels “lucky” that WSVA has so much creative freedom; in part because the station is internet-only.

College Radio Station WSVA Feels Like an Art School

These days, WSVA is buzzing with activity. Gardner said that there were 40 shows in spring 2023 as well as a record number of listeners on the online station’s stream. And, specific attempts to make the station “more accessible” and “less cliquey” are paying off. “I tell everyone I know, you can come here, you don’t have to have a show,” Mullin remarked, adding, “I love coming in…and seeing 10 people in here.” Gardner explained that WSVA is “supposed to be a space that everybody can enjoy,” and pointed out that the station really “feels like an art school.” And it’s true. There’s art everywhere, including random paintings, sculpture projects, drawings on the walls, and a shared notebook packed with sketches. The WSVA Sketchbook was a new addition in February, 2023. Additionally, a “doodle challenge” on the wall of WSVA encourages DJs to “draw your favorite album from memory.”

Looking Back at WSVA During COVID

This creative, in-person energy is quite the contrast to the past few years during COVID. WSVA was completely shut down in spring 2020. By the summer, they had created a virtual studio over Discord and test ran a station on Twitch, where they even held a dance party. By fall, 2020 WSVA was running shows over Twitch. For Gardner, it served as their only social interaction, which they characterized as “commiseration” during an especially challenging time for students.

By fall, 2021, WSVA was back in its 7th floor studio, although work had to be done to spruce it up after it had been sitting idle for over a year. In-person shows resumed in October, 2021, with around 36 programs on the schedule. “I think people were just excited to do anything,” recalled Katok about this reawakening on campus. There were still restrictions in place, with only 3 people allowed in WSVA at a time in fall, 2021. “I was here typically alone,” Katok said.

WSVA Re-Energized in 2022-2023 School Year

However, by the 2022-2023 academic year. WSVA was even more energized, which was quite palpable when I visited in late March, 2023. “I’ve definitely noticed a shift this year,” remarked Katok, adding, “more people are curious” about the radio station. Along with that, WSVA is attracting more attention. Gardner joked that when they started at the school, the radio station was like the “Bigfoot of SVA,” with students not realizing that WSVA even existed. Another positive shift was that some younger staff members were in place this spring, with many of them still in leadership positions in fall, 2023. Having continuity is helpful, especially with the disruption during COVID.

College Radio Station WSVA’s Lively Space

The lively WSVA space is covered with flyers from past events, as well as promotional posters and stickers from prior eras of the station. The on-air studio is sweetly outfitted with a nice leather couch and matching chair, a cute floral armchair, and multi-colored plastic crates full of vinyl records. A red pitchfork is propped in one corner and posters and flyers cover the walls. A handful of CDs sit in the station window, which faces the entryway to the station. Another studio currently serves more like a storage area, but seems like it may have functioned as a production studio or news studio in the past.

These days, WSVA DJs are playing a wide range of genres. The folks who I met up with mentioned playing folk, mid-western emo, 1950s doo-wop, and hardcore. And by this fall, the 37 shows on the schedule included “Love Letter to an LP,” “Emo to the Extremo,” “Fiona’s iPod Shuffle,” “Into the Pit,” “Anti Wave,” “Girlie & Pop,” and more.

Although the WSVA crew recognizes the freedom that affords them as an internet-only college radio station; they also expressed some wistfulness about not having a spot on the terrestrial dial. We chatted about the station formerly being on AM, but not much was known about that time.

The Mysterious History of College Radio Station WSVA

Part of the challenge is that there is no written WSVA history. And the “about us” section of WSVA’s website circa January 2008 is comically spot-on when articulating this lack of a detailed station history. According to the post, “WSVA was founded…well, we actually don’t know when. I’m assuming it was some time in the late 80s or early 90s. Then it was shut down for a while and opened up again sometime in the late 90s. Again, we don’t know exactly when this was.”

Early Days of WSVA: 1980s

While WSVA’s “history is shrouded in mystery,” according to Gardner, there are little kernels of details around the station. Formerly a carrier current radio station at 590 AM, WSVA is rumored to have started in 1970. Throughout the 1980s, the college radio station broadcast over carrier current and into various spaces on campus. Events included a “Battle of the Bands” in spring 1986, with participants selected based on demo tapes. At the time, the station used the branding “WSVA 590 Rock 59.”

One featured program was “Overtones,” which played progressive jazz fusion and new age music. Other shows included the “heavy music” oriented “16 Tons” as well the “Rockin’ Rob Show,” which played new wave music, rock, rap, comedy and interviews. By spring, 1987, it seemed that WSVA’s space had been reduced, with it now occupying only a portion of the 7th floor lounge that was its home. An article SVA’s student newspaper Canvas states, “Our sound can be heard in the incredible shrinking seventh floor lounge Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Fridays 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. We can also be heard in the cafeteria every day from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and soon-to-be in the afternoons as well.”

1980s Programming

Additionally, a new show in spring 1987 was an on-air classifieds-type program, “The Bulletin Board,” which aired at 3:30pm every day. WSVA also offered to buy records from anyone on campus that spring. A local music show, “Homegrown,” began in fall 1986 and by spring, 1987 it had received material from a variety of bands, including The Crunge, Me and My Bro, Norman Bates and the Showerheads, Sidney and the Homewreckers, and the Rescue. In fall, 1987, the station was airing music (including a classical show), hourly newscasts, talk shows, and a comedy show within its mix of programming.

An October, 1989 account in Canvas reported on delays in broadcasting that fall due to an explosion in Gramercy Park and a New York Telephone strike. With new equipment, the station was gearing up to broadcast from 7am to 5pm on weekdays into four SVA buildings: Sloane House and lounges at East 21st Street, East 23rd Street, and West 21st Street.

Early 2000s at College Radio Station WSVA

Posters and stickers at WSVA from the internet era include the spot on the AM dial, suggesting that carrier current persisted into at least the early 2000s. Photographer Noah Kalina was Music Director at WSVA in the early 2000s and posted an anecdote about what the station was like during that time. While at the station he compiled charts to send to the industry publication, CMJ. Coincidentally, years later, he shot a CMJ cover featuring the musician Sia.

On his website, Kalina reflects back on his time at WSVA:

WSVA is a radio station nobody at the school even knew existed. It only broadcast in the school cafeteria which was 3 blocks away and they never had the volume up loud enough to hear it. We basically sat around the station all day making up the music charts we had to send in to CMJ. We would also field calls from all of the music publicists further perpetuating the myth that we were a legitimate radio station. This insured that the station could continue to receive tons and tons of promo CD’s and we could keep our jobs.

There was absolutely no authority so we basically made it up as we went along. It was the best job anybody in college could ever ask for, not to mention it was two flights above the darkrooms. How or why we ever got paid will always remain a mystery.

Judging by the look of the current website (we never had a website) not much has changed. It does however seem like they are doing a really fancy itunes stream. I am so proud of them.

Noah Kalina

Over email, Kalina shared more reminiscences with me, as well as some photos that he took of the station during his time there from 2000 to 2001. He explained that even though WSVA was piped into the cafeteria, it was an underused space, limiting their audience even further. He added, “They said it was in the dorms too, but it wasn’t.” As far as the music of the era, he mentioned, “…we basically had Radiohead KID A on repeat non-stop so that album marks that time for me. Fall/Winter 2000. Unforgettable.” He also recalled that a major renovation took place at WSVA in late April, 2001; which he captured in photos before the work has been completed.

Early Streaming at WSVA Limited to the Campus

While its unclear when internet broadcasting started for WSVA, it does seem that it was initially limited to campus networks. Vintage stickers posted at the radio station include a URL for Pipeline, which likely provided an intranet for the campus, seemingly between 2001 and 2008ish. In 2005, a comment on WSVA’s LiveJournal site said, “SVA should invest in a WSVA server for some sort of podcasting system, allowing for listeners outside of the campus! That’s what I think. Any ideas on implementing such a system?” A post on the station’s website four years later, in fall 2009, indicated that these broadcasts were still “limited to our school’s network.”

By spring 2011, WSVA could be heard streaming “via the magical internet, so listeners are able to tune in all across the world.” Some of these shows from this era were also posted as podcasts as well. Although I’m unsure about when carrier current broadcasting ended for WSVA, it appears that by 2013, the station was only streaming online. They also installed a webcam in 2013 and a few videos can be found on YouTube circa 2017. Also in the early 2000s, there were at least two different ‘zines produced by WSVA, including one called STATIC, and later a webzine called Xzyqunity.

Lore from WSVA’s Past

Mullin, Katok and Gardner were interested to learn more about WSVA’s past and have made attempts at research. Gardner found some recordings of shows circa 2017 and they have had requests from station alumni looking for even earlier archives. Gardner said that they are proud of WSVA alumni like musician Mike Krol. An interview with him is on the current WSVA website and Krol shares some memories of his time at the radio station in the early 2000s.

Rumors of a 1990 Kurt Cobain visit to the station are unverified, but there’s also SVA chatter about artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring (who attended SVA) hanging out in the school cafeteria. A friend of mine, John Devecka, who worked for carrier current equipment manufacturer LPB, recalled visiting WSVA circa 1995-1996 and seeing Keith Haring graffiti in the building’s stairwell. Devecka was there to test the carrier current system as well as to explore the possibility of installing radiating cable FM. Unfortunately with the layout of the building, it was found to be too expensive to shift to FM at that time.

While this mysterious history is alluring, today’s WSVA participants also worry about this lack of awareness of the station’s past. “I don’t want this place to be lost in history,” Katok explained. Mullin added that some of her professors seemed completely unaware of WSVA’s existence; although she noted, “We’ve been alive this whole time.”

During our chat in the spring, Gardner mentioned that WSVA had hoped to do a ‘zine again; so I was excited to see a post calling for writers and ‘zine contributors on the WSVA Instagram in October, 2023. Especially thrilling for me is that history will be part of that ‘zine. The post says, “We want to document the history of the radio station, as well as feature the works of our DJs who make WSVA possible.” I can’t wait to see the finished ‘zine and wish WSVA luck in sleuthing out more stories from its 50+ year history.

Thanks to WSVA + More Radio Station Tours

Thanks to everyone at WSVA for the warm welcome and fun visit in March, 2023. I’m also very grateful to Beth Kleber, Head of Archives for the School of Visual Arts Archives for help in locating WSVA material from the 1980s. More thanks to Noah Kalina for sharing memories and photos from his time at WSVA in the early 2000s.

This is my 172nd radio station tour report and my 114th college radio station recap. View all my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives. Stay tuned for additional tours from my spring and summer travels.

The post Radio Station Visit #172: College Radio Station WSVA at The School of Visual Arts appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Happy World College Radio Day! October 6, 2023 marks the 13th annual College Radio Day. As part of the festivities at Radio Survivor, we did a special episode of the podcast/radio show: College Radio’s Hidden Early History. On the show, I talk about the role that radio clubs played in germinating some of the first student-run college radio stations. One such club, at my alma mater Haverford College, launched broadcast AM radio station WABQ in 1923. On October 9, 1923, a couple of months before WABQ hit the airwaves, a headline in Haverford’s student newspaper announced, “Broadcasting Station Nears Completion.” Clearly the radio club had high aspirations, with the article pointing out that, “Members of the club feel confident that Haverford will be very definitely on the Radio Map when the station opens up.” As one of the first student-led radio stations, WABQ deserves a place in radio history, even though its time on the radio dial was brief.

After a few years, Haverford College’s WABQ license was sold (by the students in the club), and broadcasting did not return to campus until carrier current stations (WHAV, later renamed WHRC) were built in the early 1940s. These limited broadcasts could only be heard in the dorms on AM radios or over speakers in the dining center at Haverford College (and later Bryn Mawr College too). As a carrier current station, WHRC persisted for around 50 years, until various technological issues caused it to morph into an internet radio station. WHRC died and was reborn several times; most recently returning in fall, 2022. This week, I posted an article about the folks who brought radio back to Haverford College, amid the myriad challenges of the pandemic. As with student leaders of the past, the current managers of WHRC are a huge source of inspiration to me. College radio is such a special place and it warms my heart that new generations of students continue to build radio stations and form new radio communities.

Photo credit: J. Waits photo of Haverford News article from October 9, 1923. Thanks to Haverford College’s Special Collections for preserving student newspapers, including this issue.

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World College Radio Day takes place on October 6, 2023 and in honor of that, we dig into the early history of college radio on our latest episode of the show. Jennifer Waits walks us through her research about college radio in the 1920s and earlier, sharing details from a paper that she presented this past spring at the Radio Preservation Task Force Conference at the Library of Congress. In that paper, she argues that we should be broadening our definitions of what college radio is, pointing out examples of radio clubs, radio experiments, and amateur radio activities that mirror the activities of future “broadcast” stations.

Jennifer recounts stories from more than 100 years ago, pointing out the incredible contributions that students have made to radio history. Along the way, we hear tales about early student radio practitioners at places like Haverford College, Union College, Harvard University, and Columbia University. Jennifer also asks for listeners to share details that they may have about very early college radio (1920s and earlier) at other schools.

Show Notes:

• College Radio Day
• World College Radio Day is October 6
• College radio history resources on Radio Survivor’s “About College Radio” page
• College Radio Watch: College Radio is Older Than You Think
• Radio Preservation Task Force
• 2023 Radio Preservation Task Force Conference
• Jennifer’s radio station tours
• College radio history on Radio Survivor
• Union College (WRUC) radio tour
• Making Waves: Race, radio and the legacy of Wendell King (Union College)
• From Wireless Experiments to Streaming: The Secret History and Changing Role of College Radio at Haverford College, 1923-2014
• Haverford on the Radio (Jennifer’s piece in Haverford Magazine)
• WHRC – Haverford College Radio Tours from 2009 and from 2014
• College Radio Revival at Haverford College’s WHRC
• California Historical Radio Society
• The Gas Pipe Networks is 80
• Tour of Brown University radio station BSR
• Lee De Forest
• Podcast #333 – Low Power FM for Dummies

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein, and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein
• Photo: Jennifer Waits’ photo of a photo of the Union College Radio Club. Courtesy of Special Collections, Schaffer Library, Union College (RG-08-006-015)

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Tucked away on the 3rd floor of the Campus Center at Brown University is a college radio station with a fascinating history. BSR (Brown Student and Community Radio) currently broadcasts online and over 101.1 FM in Providence, Rhode Island, with call letters WBRU-LP, but it is the descendant of likely the first AM carrier current college radio station in the United States: The Brown Network. Because of this rich history, I was eager to visit and sleuth out snippets from BSR’s past.

Walking into BSR on a Friday afternoon at the start of spring break in March 2023, I found myself in a large open room with CD-filled shelving, a bright orange couch, upholstered chairs with an abstract pattern in lemon yellow and white, and tables stacked with music-filled mail bins. A window looks into the broadcast studio and across the hall from that is a jam-packed office containing files and ephemera. Vintage black and white photos hang on the wall above the entry way and a decades old LPB broadcast console is prominently displayed in front of the studio window.

Josie Bleakley, one of three BSR Station Managers, was excited to show me various artifacts, including boxes of early photos and bins full of cassettes and mix tapes from local bands. Last year she started working on a project to archive and digitize some of this material. With about 20,000 pieces of music in the library, the project is “daunting,” but she explained that some of the music from local artists is not online, making the very DIY cassettes at BSR an important piece of Providence music history. A couple that she pulled out of a bin were especially charming. One had a handmade sleeve crafted from furry fabric and another, by the band Thieves, featured a screen printed design on a cloth bag.

Recent History at BSR

Bleakley became even more “fascinated” with radio history, especially BSR’s history, during a radio history class with Professor of American Studies Susan Smulyan at Brown. During the week focusing on college radio, the class met at BSR, learning about the history of radio on campus. For a class project, Bleakley created an update about the more recent years of the radio station, interviewing people who had been involved with BSR through COVID. “It feels like watching the history of radio unfolding,” she added, as we talked about the ups and downs of the station, including recent challenges.

Arriving at Brown in fall 2019, Bleakley learned about BSR during the fall Activities Fair the first week of freshman year and joined the station right away. Having just moved across the country for college, she found herself drawn to the promise of a community of liked-minded music fans. By March 2020 she had started her radio training and was gearing up to go on the air. But everything changed when the school and the station was shut down at the start of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the station closure also put a halt on some planned studio repairs, which were delayed even further with supply-chain issues. So, for a time, the BSR studio was both inaccessible and unusable.

Returning to In-person Radio after COVID

By fall, 2020 Bleakley returned to campus along with maybe 1000 students. BSR had been running automated programming, playing a mix of music without DJs. By the 2021-2022 school year, DJs could do remotes shows. BSR was operating with a smaller group of DJs and leaders and with the studio still not functioning, it was difficult to recruit participants.

Finally, in fall 2022, with the BSR studio operational again (repairs were completed in September, 2022), the station saw a “big uptick” in interest. Bleakley added that a lot of first and second year students are involved now and training is ongoing for many open shifts, noting that a “silver lining” to the shutdown was that now BSR is even more accessible. Additionally, non-student community members are now allowed to come back to BSR, bringing with them their “historical knowledge” of the station. “Anyone who wants to be involved can be,” she said, contrasting that with her experience as a first year student, when there was more competition and more hurdles to getting on the air. At that time, in 2019, one had to start out with an internet-only show the first semester, before being given an opportunity to broadcast over FM.

The changes in the station culture in just a few years are remarkable. Looking back on when she started at BSR in 2019, Bleakley recalled that it was “lively” and “active,” but that she also felt out of her depth as far as music, radio, and programming. Less exclusive of a place now, since they are rebuilding their community, the current BSR is reflective of what she thinks college radio should be all about: a station for “all of the students.”

History of BSR and College Radio at Brown University

Brown University has a storied relationship with wireless communication (read more about that on the Rhode Island Radio website) and college radio, with student-led campus radio efforts beginning in 1936. This early carrier current radio station helped to spawn countless campus-only AM stations all over the United States, leading to the growth of college radio. Eventually splitting into two separate radio stations; Brown’s student broadcasting work continues today with WBRU and BSR.

First launched in 1936 from a dorm room, the Brown Network broadcast to residence halls and other campus buildings using wires and building infrastructure to facilitate transmission. A 1941 Providence Journal article explained that the Brown Network “uses the electric light system of the university for distributing its programs. Wires from a four-watt transmitter are strung through steam tunnels and connected to the lighting system by condensers.” The AM station broadcast from the top floor of Faunce House by this time.

Beginnings of Carrier Current College Radio

The Brown Network’s student founders enthusiastically spread the word about campus radio, inspiring others to build carrier current stations at colleges all over the country. In 1940, they helped to launch the college radio organization, Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) in order to build a broader college radio community. IBS still exists today and continues to hold annual conventions in New York City.

I’m always interested to hear details about women’s roles in college radio in the early 20th century and was pleased to learn that women were active participants in radio at Brown. According to a history of the station, “Pembroke women had first joined the Brown Network as announcers and administrators in 1939, when broadcasting on the Pembroke College campus began. Determined to stay afloat during World War II, the Brown Network allowed Pembrokers to join in full force as programmers, news announcers, engineers, and business managers.” Louis Bloch writes in Gas Pipe Networks: A History of College Radio 1936-1946, that “Jean Bruce ’40 was in charge of the thirty Pembroke women working on the Brown Network.”

WBRU-FM Launches; WBRU-AM Remains on Carrier Current

The Brown Network referred to itself as BUBC (Brown University Broadcasting Company) until 1945, when it changed its call letters to WBRU. In 1966, an FM signal was secured and WBRU-FM was born as a commercial station. WBRU-AM continued as a carrier current campus radio station, but seemed to have an increasingly lower profile. “By the 1970s, WBRU-AM was known for original music and entertainment programming. The 1980s Brain Bowl quiz show stood out for its free-form style. But as the FM market grew competitive, WBRU-AM became a low priority for staffers. Buildings renovated with steel and concrete made the weak AM signal virtually inaudible,” according to a history of the station.

WBRU-AM Rebrands as Brown Student Radio; Heads to FM and Online

WBRU-AM apparently struggled in the 1980s and was revitalized by the mid 1990s, with a station history explaining that in 1994 “…outgoing managers at WBRU-AM handed leadership to a group of freshmen determined to revive the defunct station,” which students viewed “as an outlet for less commercial music.” By the following year, WBRU-AM had signed an agreement to broadcast sports over Wheeler School station WELH 88.1 FM and rebranded itself as Brown Student Radio (BSR). Within a few years it had acquired more airtime and was broadcasting on 88.1 FM on weeknights beginning in November, 1997.

In 2011, BSR lost its lease of airtime on 88.1 FM, but continued as an internet-only station. Then, a few years later, BSR took advantage of the low power FM opportunity and applied for a license of its own. Meanwhile, WBRU-FM ended up selling its 95.5 FM license to a Christian broadcasting group in 2017. By 2018, BSR had returned to the FM airwaves with its new LPFM license for WBRU-LP at 101.1 FM. In an interesting twist, some of the old WBRU-FM’s programming (notably 360 Degrees Experience in Sound, focusing on R&B, hip hop, Afrobeats, reggae and more) now airs over BSR’s low power signal.

2023 and Beyond

Flashing forward to today, Bleakley is thrilled to have the station back in a physical space after the challenges of the pandemic and emphasized the importance of community for college radio. She also explained that college radio has always been about making connections and that she was inspired by BSR’s history, particularly learning about the time when radio was the main form of connection. Contrasting that with podcasts, she described conversations they had during her radio history class about the “universal connecting appeal” of radio at Brown, with everyone in their dorm rooms tuning in to the station at the same time in its early years. Nostalgic for those “gas pipe network” days of carrier current radio, she said that it would be “so fun” to once again broadcast to campus in that manner.

One challenge with that gas pipe fantasy is that most students don’t have radios. Acknowledging this, she was also plotting ways to get portable radios into more people’s hands. As we poked around the station, she showed me a crystal radio that she’d recently built on a field trip to the New England Wireless and Steam Museum; again hearkening back to radio’s early DIY days.

Vinyl records in the broadcast studio are another sign of radio and station history. Although not as commonly used these days at BSR, Bleakley remarked that a current DJ is interested in doing an all-vinyl show. With around 20 DJs this spring, at the time of my visit, BSR was in the midst of a recruitment period for various positions at the station. Shows on the schedule include Tanvi’s Tunes (“local indie rock to 80’s british feminist punk”), “Crushed Little Songs,” “Spoiler Alert Radio” (“Conversations on the craft of filmmaking”), “The Beat Surrender,” “Trending Globally,” “Donne del Mondo” (“Global music by women, celebrating musical women of the world”), “Cook Out!” (“Charlie and Laurie share their whimsy and fun with the masses”), and more.

Thanks to BSR + More Radio Station Tours

Thanks so much to Josie Bleakley for showing me around BSR and talking to me about the station’s past and present activities. This is my 170th radio station tour report and my 112th college radio station recap. You can see all my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives. Very soon I will be posting more tours from my East Coast travels.

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The clock tower on the campus of John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio, has been unoccupied for more than 14,000 days (over 38 years), though once housed the school’s radio station. The station returns this coming Tuesday, March 28, for a six hour broadcast beginning at 6 PM EDT.

WJCU 88.7 FM will host 100 alumni and former on-air personalities for the special “Turn Back the Clock” event. Also joining will be University Heights mayor Dylan Brennan. The sound will recall eras past with retro imaging and throwback music.

The program will begin with an hour of 1960s music, with the decade advancing each hour. Hosts include WJCU DJs Zachary ‘DJ Z13’ Sinutko, Emily Davala, Collin Kennedy, and Daunte Horton of “808s & Mixtape”s alongside Joe and Lauren Gumney of “Old Rock vs New Rock.”

Founded in 1989 as WABU-FM with a 10-watt class D signal on 88.9 FM, the station became WUJC later the year, moving to 88.7 FM where it now broadcasts with 2.5 kilowatts of power. The current call letter WJCU were adopted in 1998.

WJCU’s “Turn Back the Clock” can be heard on-air in the Cleveland metro area and online.

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High school radio station KBPS AM in Portland, Oregon is celebrating a very special anniversary this week: 100 years on the air. It’s an accomplishment that few radio stations can lay claim to. And it’s especially remarkable that this particular radio station has always been a student-focused educational radio station. It’s very likely the longest-running high school radio station in the United States, having launched in 1923.

I was lucky to visit KBPS in 2015 and even before that trip was enamored with its incredible history. Festivities for the 100th are ongoing, with a special live broadcast on KBPS AM 1450 (and KBPS.AM) at 9am on Thursday, March 23, 2023. Alumni are invited to join live on the air or by sending in audio. Details can be found on the KBPS website.

Additionally, KBPS is having a public open house on Thursday, April 20 and Friday, April 21st at 100th Tech Show. Visitors are invited to come by the station at the Benson Polytechnic High School, Marshall Campus in Portland, Oregon for live broadcasts, studio tours, and more. Historical memorabilia will be on display.

KBPS’ license is held by the Portland Public School District. According to the station’s website, “On March 23, 1923, the student body of Benson was licensed by the federal government to operate a radio station using 200 watts of power at 834 kilocycles. The first call letters of the station were KFIF. The station made its formal debut on the air and was officially dedicated in early May of 1923, between the hours of 9:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., on the opening night of the 5th annual Benson Tech Show. In spring of 1930, the call letters changed from KFIF to KBPS, for Benson Polytechnic High School.”

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To say that my visit to college radio station WRUC 89.7 FM at Union College in Schenectady, New York was eagerly anticipated is an understatement. Rumored to be the “first” commercial college radio station, its predecessor stations have a fascinating history, making Union College an important stop for every college radio historian. Lucky for me, my trip to the school in November, 2022 included a visit to Special Collections and Archives at Union College’s Schaffer Library, which contains an enviable array of materials documenting the early days of student radio in the 1920s and beyond.

Snapshot of WRUC’s History

Like many college radio stations circa 2023, WRUC has had quite the journey, with many twists and turns along the way as far as its role on campus and its method of transmission. Currently broadcasting over 89.7 FM, WRUC has been a licensed FM station since 1975. Prior to that, student radio at Union College was transmitted by carrier current (starting in 1941, with call letters WRUC eventually adopted). But the early radio activities at Union College, beginning with experiments and amateur broadcasts, are especially fascinating and worthy of a much longer article.

Union College Radio Club Began in 1915

Radio experiments were happening at Union College since radio’s earliest days and the first campus Radio Club began in 1915, according to “Radio Broadcasting at Union College: A Brief History,” written by Rowan Wakefield in 1959. But what happened in 1920 is an important part of WRUC’s long-time branding as “first” in the nation. Its current website states, that WRUC “is the first commercial college radio station in the country.” While this specific claim has been debated (the first licensed broadcast station at Union was called WRL and was very short-lived), the early radio activities by students at Union College are impressive and worthy of more attention by radio scholars.

Union College Radio Club’s First Music Concert over Radio in 1920

As was the case with other early broadcasters, Union College’s Radio Club began with experiments over amateur radio. Significantly, on October 14, 1920, students in the club broadcast a short concert of music over the radio. In a piece previewing this event a few days prior, the student newspaper wrote:

If for the next week you hear noise a thunder every time you try to phone, you know the electric jazz experts are tuning up. And they are some jazz experts with high powers spark discharges. Starting next Thursday night, the radio club will give a concert via radio…This will be a weekly habit. If at some future time you have a dance on hand and your jazz artists fail you, call up 2 A D D tell them your trouble and if you’ve got a hairpin, a wire, a coil or two and a phone you will have al the music you wish via radio. (Concordiensis, October 12, 1920)

Following the successful first radio concert, headlines in the Concordiensis proclaimed, “Aerial Concert is First in Collegiate History” and “Ethereal Recitals Will be Given Weekly in Future.” An accompanying article states, “Transmitting the music from a phonograph into the receiver of a wireless telephone and then to amateur radio operators within a radius of 50 miles, members of the Union College Radio Club Thursday night gave what is believed to be the first wireless musical concert of an American college organization.” The paper reported that “vocal and instrumental records” were played.

The Role of Radio Prodigy Wendell W. King

Another notable aspect of this early broadcast is that the amateur station call letters used, 2ADD, were those of radio prodigy Wendell W. King, who started his own amateur station at the age of 12 and was “the first black student to attend Union for a significant length of time,” according to an article in the Encyclopedia of Union College History. The article points out that, “King had been involved with amateur radio since 1911 and may have been the most technically proficient student connected with early Union radio; he had already been president of the Troy Amateur Radio Club, had served in the Army Signals Corps, and had worked for the radio section of General Electric.” A profile of King in Union College Magazine outlines his achievements and also his “complicated time on campus.”

Experimental Station 2XQ and Continued Music Broadcasts

The Radio Club at Union College continued to do regular Thursday night music broadcasts over amateur radio and over its experimental station 2XQ (which it received a license for in 1919) and received letters from listeners who wrote in to report that they had heard and were enjoying the transmissions. In addition to those weekly broadcasts, the club did various “stunts,” including outfitting a baby carriage with a radio set. Radio Church services were also broadcast, including hymns played over a phonograph and “songs by a college quartet,” according to a report in the Schenectady Gazette on May 12, 1921. Another accomplishment in May 1921 was “the wireless transmission of the junior ‘prom’ music…which was the signal for hundreds of dances in this section of the country,” wrote the Schenectady Gazette. In advance of the prom, the Union College student newspaper Concordiensis reported that “The music of Ford Dabney’s Syncopated Orchestra of Ziegfield Midnight Frolic fame will be heard as far west as Nebraska and by ships far out at sea.” The event was an overnight affair, going from 10:30pm until 6am.

It’s difficult to ascertain if this was the first Radio Club on a college campus to regularly play music over the radio. Other stations had broadcast music over wireless prior to that time, but it’s unclear if this was happening with undergraduate students at the helm, as was the case at Union College. One very early example of music broadcasts over amateur radio took place at The Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless, which launched in San Jose, California in 1909. John Schneider writes, “Once [Doc] Herrold realized he had an audience of eager radio experimenters, he began to entertain them. He would discuss news items and read clippings from the newspaper, or play records from his phonograph. This got to be a more and more important part of the school’s operations, and regular programs were heard from the station as early as 1910.”

Broadcast Station WRL

In addition to these early broadcasts, Union College was one of the first colleges to obtain a limited commercial license to operate a broadcast station. The license for WRL was issued in March, 1922 and was held by Union College until 1924. Only a few other stations operating at colleges or universities obtained this type of broadcast license earlier, including University of Minnesota, and University of Wisconsin (both in January, 1922). After the WRL license expired, students at Union College did not run a broadcast station until launching an AM carrier current station in 1941.

100 Years Later: The State of WRUC in the 2020s

While the history of WRUC has been documented and celebrated, the station’s present state was more nebulous to me prior to my visit. The program schedule on the website was out of date and the internet stream was down. Social media had also been fairly quiet. So, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. As it turns out, WRUC has had challenges similar to those faced by many college radio stations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While visiting the WRUC archives with me, WRUC’s Senior General Manager Maya Gempler traced the station’s recent history, telling me that when she joined WRUC in fall, 2019, it was “fairly active,” with maybe 30 shows as well as a presence on campus through live events. Everything changed as students were sent home at the end of winter term in 2020, with WRUC “dying off” in the spring 2020 trimester. With no remote access capabilities, the programming that ran over WRUC during that time was whatever students had left running on automation.

Returning to the WRUC Studios in Fall 2020

By fall, 2020, most students were back on campus at Union College, but Gempler explained that it was a strange “weird, lonely, isolating experience,” with many school events online rather than in person due to COVID. WRUC worked with the campus Health and Safety office to come up with protocols for using the station and instituted some new rules that limited the number of people in the studio, instituted spacing between shows, and also required DJs to clean before and after their shows. Those requirements continued through that academic year.

Struggles in the 2021-2022 School Year

At WRUC, it was a return to more normal operations in fall 2021, but Gempler said that the number of participants had dwindled to only three people on the executive board and maybe 10 to 15 shows. By the winter of 2022, technical issues completely shut the station down from February through June, with no shows running for a big chunk of the spring. Although WRUC continued to do live events, Gempler explained that WRUC’s presence on campus was greatly diminished.

New Equipment and Optimism at WRUC in Fall 2022

After new equipment was set up in the summer of 2022, WRUC was able to return in the fall with 42 shows on the schedule, much like in the time before COVID. While the FM broadcast returned, issues with the internet stream remained, meaning that the primary way to hear the station was over terrestrial radio. I asked how most students listened to WRUC these days and Gempler said that they didn’t really know and that it’s been “frustrating” to not have the stream working. Junior General Manager Sadie Hill said that people in the local air listen over 89.7 FM and added that she also has friends with car radios who listen terrestrially.

Gempler explained that WRUC’s student DJs seem more interested in the “experience” of having a show rather than worrying about who is listening. One way that students can and do listen to WRUC is through speakers that pipe the station’s audio in to the Reamer Campus Center. WRUC’s main studio is dubbed the “fishbowl,” and has windows facing a bustling section of the Campus Center. DJs have the option of turning the speakers on or off, depending on their comfort level with having their programs broadcast to the fellow students who are visible from the booth. Some students also broadcast their shows over social media, like Instagram Live.

WRUC’s Two Studios

At the time of my visit, most WRUC shows were music-based, with a handful of sports shows as well. Gempler was pushing for more talk programming and told me that there were a lot of great ideas floating around for possible shows. Worried for a time that WRUC could disappear during the pandemic, she was feeling more optimistic when we spoke, saying she was excited about the station’s future. One possibility was a complete renovation of studio spaces. During my visit, WRUC was only broadcasting from its “fishbowl” studio, although it also had another space upstairs, which was not functional at the time. Some of the big dreams for WRUC include both live broadcasting and recording studios so that students could record podcasts, produce music, and broadcast live music.

WRUC’s upstairs studio has been around for decades and was eerily similar to my own college radio station’s layout from the 1980s (although built maybe 20 years earlier). A record room was long gone and I was sad to hear that at one point WRUC may have had upwards of 100,000 albums. Around the time of the “CD revolution,” when “vinyl was not a thing,” the records were in bad shape, according to Matt Milless, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, Campus & Community Engagement at Union College.

The fragmented studio space is an interesting challenge at WRUC. Milless revealed that the “fishbowl” studio (which used to be an information desk where students could also rent videos and DVDs) was taken over by WRUC many years ago in order to have a stronger campus presence. He explained that he put in that studio in order to help “spark interest” in WRUC. He said that during some years students were enthusiastic about being seen while doing their shows, whereas other prefer to have more privacy. In reflecting on that time, he said, “we were trying to save radio.”

Growing Student Interest for WRUC

And it would seem that in the 2022-2023 school year, there’s a renewed energy around saving WRUC. The station’s Junior General Manager Sadie Hill said that the station’s executive board is “very passionate about making WRUC cool again.” And it’s a very good sign that during a Club Fair prior to my visit in the fall, around 200 people signed up to join the station, with around 30 to 40 shows making it to the WRUC schedule as a result. The range of shows includes a sports talk program focused on football and music shows that play indie rock, Bollywood music, and more. Union College president David Harris even came on the air in fall 2022 to do show where he picked out music alongside a member of the station’s executive board. The show was broadcast as well as transmitted over the president’s account on Instagram Live.

Passionate about college radio before she even arrived at Union College, Hill revealed, “I’ve always wanted to do college radio” and shared that her dad had a midnight radio show in the past. Influenced by him, she plays a lot of older music and classic rock on her WRUC show. Hill also does theme shows, ranging from songs about colors to a show about female rock stars. She expressed pride in Union College’s long radio history and also was enthusiastic about the opportunities and freedom available to students at WRUC today, saying, “the rule is no dead air.” She said that she appreciates the way that WRUC DJs express themselves through music, even if the station is “playing to nowhere.”

Like many in college, radio Hill said the thing that she loves about WRUC is “mostly the people,” adding that she felt like she was brought into the community and has developed friendships as a result. Similarly, WRUC’s Senior General Manager Maya Gempler shared, “I love that it involves students from so many different areas on campus,” including people from a variety of majors. She added that it’s inspiring that WRUC provides space for people to get together and get involved.

Thanks to WRUC + More Radio Station Tours

Thanks to everyone at WRUC and to the staff of Special Collections at Schaffer Library, Union College for the wonderful visit. I’ll have more to share about the early days of radio experiments at Union College in future posts and in some upcoming conference presentations. This is my 168th radio station tour report and my 110th college radio station recap. View all my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives. And watch this space for additional tours from my travels in New York state.

The post Radio Station Visit #168: Union College Radio Station WRUC appeared first on Radio Survivor.

College radio stations are generally very welcoming spaces, so much so that I often have to tear myself away at the end of a visit. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s WRPI 91.5 FM in Troy, New York had that effect on me. It had it all: comfy couches, the requisite Leo Blais sign, shelves of vinyl records, a meticulously organized engineering room, and a historical timeline (with photos!) on the wall.

WRPI felt like home, as it has a lot of the things that I love about college radio and college radio stations. But, as is the case whenever I tour stations, what really left a lasting impression on me were the people and the passion that they have for their station.

College Radio Reviving after COVID-19 Restrictions Ease

Lemon (Program Director) and Mei (On-Campus PR Manager) were my tour guides at WRPI during my November, 2022 visit. Both juniors, they were freshmen at Rensselaer during the 2020-2021 school year; a very strange time to be beginning college during the height of a pandemic. As I saw with all of my stations tours this past fall, college radio stations like WRPI had to make serious adjustments in 2020 and are still adapting as COVID-19 restrictions loosen. It’s apparent that the social aspects of college radio and college radio spaces are especially appealing now, since gathering with peers was severely limited for many students over the past few years.

First-year students are often introduced to WRPI during an orientation event called Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond (NRB). The station is one of the student clubs that invites students to come by for a half day or a day for a closer look at what they do. This past fall, WRPI had students go through a series of rotations to check out the technology, the live room, and the on-air studio. Mei explained that they showed the entire broadcasting set-up, with students exploring “every corner” of the station. It’s a huge recruitment tool for WRPI, with 70 to 80 students expressing interest in WRPI during the last session. Around 40 people stuck around until the end of the day and they were even given the chance to play music and talk over the air. “It’s a way to get people hooked,” Lemon added.

The Allure of WRPI for Students

Lemon outlined many of the attributes of WRPI that are a draw for students, pointing out the old equipment that they can work with and repair, the opportunity to broadcast to a 75 mile radius, the ability to mix music and bring in live bands, and the lounge area which is a “great place to hang out.” Mei said that the lounge stays open through the last show of the day, with many people opting to linger at the station all day.

It’s reassuring that interest is again high for WRPI, since during COVID they were unable to invite people into the station during orientation or in general. Membership numbers declined and participants couldn’t socialize in the same way as before. Mei described how there were even “X” marks on the couch, indicating the 6 feet of distance that people were supposed to maintain between each other.

While WRPI is student-run and student-focused, the station also has a smaller percentage of show hosts and DJs from the broader community on the air. Another impact of COVID was that these folks were generally not allowed on campus due to the school’s policy at the time that non-students or anyone not in the school’s COVID-19 testing pool was restricted from coming to campus. Those restrictions were relaxed in 2022. Lemon said that during fall semester 2022, WRPI got the OK to bring community show hosts back on-air, with most having returned by my November visit. With fewer hosts between 2020 and 2022, WRPI relied more heavily on their automation system, which is filled with thousands of albums (somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 per my tour guides). A current project, which will take a few semesters, is digitizing the station’s CD collection, adding the music to the automation system.

Large Library of Vinyl Records and CDs

In addition to the digitized music, WRPI has a large library of physical music, including vinyl records and CDs. Lemon said that students will play “vinyls,” but mainly use Spotify. Community DJs are more likely to play CDs, but CDs are generally the least played form of media at the station. The most popular methods for playing music at WRPI is from digital or computer-based sources, followed by vinyl records.

As we toured through the station, there were shelves and shelves of records, spread across numerous libraries. In the midst of reorganizing the rooms and the music collection, WRPI is retooling a former “genre room” to a space for CDs and material by local artists. That library used to house material with a “concrete” genre, but interpretations of genres have changed at the station, so the functionality of that room has been questioned of late. Another room is labeled VLTEB, an acronym for the charmingly named Vinyl Library Two: Electric Boogaloo.

Programming Variety

As far as programming, WRPI plays a mix of music shows, talk shows and sports (including hockey). The long-time LGBT show Homo Radio has been on the air since 1992, featuring “news, interviews, event listings, a concert calendar, music by gay-friendly artists” and more, per its website. As far as music, Lemon said that WRPI is a “niche station,” and Top 40 music isn’t generally played. Lemon’s show last fall, “The Lemonheads,” focused on 1970s rock and they also co-hosted “Music from the Decades” with friends. Mei played KPOP and JROCK on her show, “Candy Shop.”

As we glanced at a posted show schedule together, another staffer pointed out his show, “The Ungodly Hour,” which has to be one of the best show names ever. Other programs played indie pop, radio dramas, spoken word, R&B, hip-hop, electronic dance music, and more. I was intrigued by the wonderfully spooky description of a midnight show called “The Devil’s Hour.” Hosted by DJ Selene, the program schedule states, “At this hour, the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest. Spirits make their way into our world, where they travel through the radio waves and enter the minds of mortals…”

During my visit the station’s powerful 10,000 watt FM transmitter was down. It was being shut off between 8am and 5pm for several months while it was being repainted. The webstream was still running and daytime FM broadcasts came back in January, 2023. As is frequently the case in college radio, the engineering team was busy with many projects. Jose, the Chief Engineer, showed me around the immaculately organized engineering room, which seemed quite fitting for a tech-oriented school’s radio station.

Student Radio at Rensselaer Dates Back to the 1920s

One of the things that prompted my visit to WRPI was my interest in the station’s long and intriguing history. Licensed as an FM station since 1957, WRPI is the descendant of campus radio activities dating back to the 1920s. Rensselaer-owned WHAZ launched over AM in September, 1922. At the time, a news account in The Knickerbocker Press described it as “the most powerful station operated at any educational institution in the country.”

A bulletin published by Rensselaer in 1922 states the rationale and purpose for this initial station:

Realizing its obligation to supply technically trained men for this work, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has, from time to time, found it necessary to make additions to its radio laboratory equipment. The latest addition is a radio telephone broadcasting equipment of the best type known to the art, which has been installed on the third floor of the Russell Sage Laboratory. It was designed primarily to give practical instruction in the operation of apparatus, the theory of which is studied in the classroom…

Popular interest in radio broadcasting has created a demand for diversified programs, and it is felt that engineering schools which require this type of apparatus for teaching purposes can assist in satisfying the demand of the public for broadcast entertainment by supplying programs of an educational nature. For this reason, this station, known by the call letters W H A Z, will broadcast every Monday evening at 8.15, Eastern Standard time, program. consisting of musical selections and addresses by men prominent in all fields of human activity.

Incredibly, AM station WHAZ was owned by Rensselaer until 1967, when it was sold to station WPOW. In the intervening years, a variety of radio activities were happening on campus. The WRPI website outlines this history. As far as the 1920s, “In 1924, a group called Campus Review was formed, devoted to broadcasting college-oriented entertainment and radio to the Troy area. Campus Review was initially responsible for programming a half hour of WHAZ’s six-hours-a-week schedule on Monday night,” according to the WRPI website.

Radio Expansion in the 1940s

By the 1940s, radio activities had expanded and an engineering student organized the “Rensselaer Broadcasting Association” in 1947. According to WRPI, “The RBA took over the remainder of WHAZ’s schedule, working with Campus Review and using talent drawn completely from the RPI community. Later that year, the Radio Club started an experimental AM radio station began broadcasting from the Russell Sage labs, under their call sign W2SZ. Its signal only covered the Quadrangle (then the freshman dorms), but with WHAZ only broadcasting once a week, W2SZ became the first campus station to truly get the attention of the RPI community. Soon students were referring to it, informally, as WRPI.”

In 1948, several radio groups on campus merged to form the Radio Counsel and a few years later, in 1951, it “was divided into an amateur radio group, which still convenes as W2SZ to this day, and a broadcast group.” Broadcasting over 640 AM as WRPI, this campus-only station sent programming out, “using small transmitters scattered throughout campus” and “claimed a listenership of 85% of all those listening to radio sets on campus,” according to WRPI’s website.

WRPI FM Era from 1957 to Today

At WRPI today, one can peruse a timeline of historical tidbits by decade, starting with the 1950s (WRPI launched over FM in 1957) and 1960s. A collage of photos, newspaper clippings, vintage program guides, and stickers; the timeline goes up through the 2010s. Mei and Lemon said that they hoped to extend the display to the 2020s.

As I concluded my WRPI visit, Program Director Lemon and On-Campus PR Manager Mei shared with me why the station is such a special place for them on campus. Mei explained, “It felt so easy to be here compared to any other places that I’ve been…being a woman in STEM.” She added that she also feels welcome at WRPI as a member of the LGBT community, remarking, “It’s nice to see yourself represented.” Lemon concurred, saying that “especially at an engineering school. It’s a majority cis-het men… It’s so nice to have this community where you can be authentic. You can be yourself. Not have to try to like mask, hide, anything like that.” Mei pointed out that WRPI is intentional about creating a positive environment and has safer space policies to ensure that people feel “welcome, appreciated and not put down.”

Thanks to WRPI + More Radio Station Tours

Thanks to everyone at WRPI for the fun visit. This is my 167th radio station tour report and my 109th college radio station recap. View all my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives. And watch this space for additional tours from my travels in New York state.

The post Radio Station Visit #167: College Radio Station WRPI at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Radio Survivors return with a new episode! For this edition, recorded in July, 2022, our guest is Lori Emerson, Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab (the MAL). She’s also an Associate Professor in the English Department and Director of the Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance Program at University of Colorado at Boulder.

Lori joins us to chat about her current research into “other networks” and her work at the Media Archaeology Lab, which she started in 2009. Full of media from the past (computers, phones, radios, recording devices, books and more), the MAL “is a place for cross-disciplinary, experimental research, teaching, and creative practice using one of the largest collections in the world of still functioning media.” In our discussion, we also explore technology history, talk about Lori’s recent broadcasting experiments, and learn about the ways that experimental poetry is connected with vintage computers.

Show Notes:

• Lori Emerson‘s website
• Other Networks exploration on Lori’s website
• Media Archaeology Lab website
• Lori Emerson’s Twitter
• Sarah Grant, “Plant Nodes” 
• Danja Vasiliev, “Netless“
• Emulated versions of bpNichol’s “First Screening” (1982-83, written in Apple Basic for Apple IIe)
• One Laptop Per Child Mesh Network Wiki
• libi striegl and Lori Emerson article “Anarchive as technique in the Media Archaeology Lab | building a one Laptop Per Child mesh network” (PDF download, requires Academia.edu registration)

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #328: Media Archaeology and Other Networks appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s program, we turn our attention to the history of industrial music – not the noisy music genre – but music played in industrial settings for workers. A variety of services offered (and still offer) background music for workplaces. Muzak and the RCA Plant Broadcasting System are just a few of the products that were sold to companies in the hopes of increasing morale and/or efficiency. Our guest, Alix Hui is associate professor of History at Mississippi State University and has been studying the history of industrial music systems, as well as background music generally.

Show Notes:

• Alexandra Hui profile at Mississippi State University website
• Alix’s paper at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference: “Laboring Sound: Industrial Music Systems, Worker Morale, and Pan-Aural Listening”
• Walter Van Dyke Bingham, industrial psychologist (Wikipedia)
• Muzak history (Wikipedia)
• Mood Media website
• Attention K-Mart Shoppers: K-Mart radio/audio collection on Archive.org
• Muzak to Get Mutated To: E-Z Listening with DEVO (article on Dangerous Minds)
• Scholar Emily Thompson

The post Podcast #327: Industrial Music Systems and Workplace Broadcasts appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On the show this week, we explore one of our favorite topics: college radio history. Our guest, Andreas Preuss, just completed a multi-faceted project about student radio station WRAS at Georgia State University in Atlanta for his master’s thesis: Left of the Dial: Right on the Music: 50 Years of Georgia State FM Radio. We dig into various aspects of the station’s past, as well as Preuss’ interesting path to this project, having worked in college radio in the past as well as in commercial media for decades.

Show Notes:

• College radio station WRAS-FM at Georgia State University
• Left of the Dial: Right on the Music: 50 Years of Georgia State FM Radio (MA thesis)
• From R.E.M. to GPB, A Student Documents the Bittersweet History of College Radio Powerhouse WRAS (Saporta Report)
• Radio Survivor coverage of WRAS/GPB programming takeover and protests circa 2014-2015
• Tulane University radio station WTUL-FM in New Orleans
• Shortwave radio station WRNO (Wikipedia)
• WRNO Worldwide website
• Vanderbilt University’s college radio station WRVU
• Katherine Rye Jewell website
• Podcast #244: Exploring the So-Called ‘Golden Age’ of College Radio (with guest Katherine Jewell)
• Podcast #164: College Radio and the Culture Wars (with guest Katherine Jewell)
• WPRB-FM at Princeton University
• College Radio Watch: WPRB Launches History Site
• Jennifer Waits’ 2012 field trip report from visit to WRAS-FM
• Jennifer Waits’ 2016 field trip report from visit to WRPB-FM

The post Podcast #322 – College Radio History at WRAS appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Thanks to Twitter, I learned about a UK ‘zine recently scanned and uploaded to the Internet Archive: “Radio Is my Bomb: a DIY Manual for Pirates.”

Published in 1987, it’s a fascinating document of the 1970s and 80s free radio in the UK and elsewhere, though principally focused on western Europe. Amusingly, the entry on the USA briefly describes the (fully licensed) Pacifica Network, noting that the community radio movement here was then about 60 stations strong. But, then concludes, “we have no information on any pirate stations in the USA.”

Alongside reports on stations and activity in different regions, there is an extensive how-to section, including a primer on radio electronics, with transmitter and antenna schematics.

What stands out is the free radio ethos espoused throughout, but especially in the introduction. It sounds no less fresh today, despite being 34 years old.

“Of course there have been radio pirates since radio was discovered,” the authors observe, “Marconi himself became the 1st pirate, when the authorities prevented him fully using his own discovery.” They go on to decry commercial radio, as well as “traditional pirate radio DJs, who tend to be all the same white sexist macho morons, preening their egos and spewing forth inane chatter in the hope of getting a fat career in the legal media.” No doubt, they have the last generation pirates – broadcasting stations like Radio Caroline – in their sights, noting that many indeed went on to long careers at the BBC and commercial radio after first sticking it to the man.

But their shots at the dinosaurs of pirate radio have a purpose beyond mere mockery. They advocate a radically more inclusive approach.

“We’d like instead to put everyone on air! To reclaim the airwaves from the parasites who infest it. We’d like to see ethnic radio, women’s radio, tenants, unions, anarchists, community groups, old people, prisoners, pacifists, urban gorillas, local info, gays, straights and of course every possible variety of musical entertainment.”

Moreover, they advocate for what something pretty close to what would become known in the US as micropower radio in the 90s, calculating evidence for its feasibility.

“We’d prefer radio chaos to the ‘aural diahorrea’ we have right now! But in fact chaos has nothing to do with it. For a start there’s plenty of room, ‘Free The Airwaves’ have calculated there’s room for 471 one mile FM pirates in London alone without interfering with anyone… We’re talking about cooperation, not chaos and competition. About open access radio, where all kinds of people can share facilities and put out occasional shows or info as they wish. We’re talking about frequency sharing, about community defence, about each ethnic group having proqrammes in their own language, etc.”

If this description also reminds you of low-power FM, it’s not a coincidence. The explosion of “micropower” community-oriented pirate radio in the 1990s helped put pressure on the FCC to create an LPFM service designed to be accessible to small community organizations.

Covering then-recent history of the pirate scenes in the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, West Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, El Salvador and Bolivia, “Radio Is My Bomb” is a near-encyclopedia of the movement in the 70s and 80s. While French, Italian and Dutch pirate radio are comparatively more well documented and widely cited, I was much less aware of scenes in, say, Belgium and Denmark.

I also appreciate the inclusion of Japan’s “mini TX boom,” briefly discussing the rise of “mini-FM,” as evangelized by theorist Tetsuo Kogawa. “Mini-FM” is similar to Part 15 in the US, using very low-powered transmitters that are officially legal for broadcasting without a license, due to their extremely small output and broadcast radius. However, in a dense city like Tokyo their tiny footprints still reach a sizable population, and can be used to stimulate community interaction, as with Kogawa’s “Radio Party.”

I’d love to have a print copy of “Radio Is My Bomb.” Still, thanks to a pseudonymous uploader and the Internet Archive, everyone can have a virtual copy that reminds us that the movement for freer airwaves filled with far more voices is not new, and does not end.

The post “Radio Is my Bomb” ‘Zine Is a Still-Relevant Snapshot of Free Radio in the 1980s appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s show, we return to the topic of hip-hop on the radio. While on Radio Survivor, we typically focus on non-commercial radio, like college and community stations; in this episode we look at why certain types of commercial radio stations were important to the growth in popularity of hip-hop music. Our guest, Amy Coddington, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Amherst College and is writing a book about the history of hip-hop on commercial radio.

Show Notes:

• Amy Coddington’s website
• Podcast #145: Hip-Hop Radio Archive with guest Ryan MacMichael
• Podcast #152: The Longest Running Hip-Hop Radio Show in the World? with guest DJ A-L
• Community radio station KGNU is home to The Eclipse Show
• Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant
• Backstory on “Walk this Way” from the Atlantic: “How Aerosmith and Run-DMC Begrudgingly Made a Masterpiece”
• Power 106 Los Angeles radio station
• Jason Tanz wrote the book: Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America
• Public Enemy’s “Rebel without a Pause” in the HipHop Archive and Research Institute
• Chuck D
• Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract
• Amber Ruffin on rap lyrics being cut from radio edits of songs
• Snoop Dog
• Hot 97 radio station in New York
• Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight (1979)
• Blondie’s Rapture (1980)
• Wham’s Wham! Rap (1982)
• Influential DJ Frankie Crocker of radio station WBLS
• The Pharcyde

The post Podcast # 320 – How Hip-Hop Made it to Top 40 Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On the show this week we explore a pivotal period for radio news in the 1930s and learn why the Lindbergh kidnapping changed everything. Travel back in time with us. It’s March 1932 and a horrible crime has just occurred, the kidnapping of the 20-month-old son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Imagine that you were living in the United States in 1932 and wanted to follow breaking news about this story. If it were 2021, the answer might be Twitter or the internet. But in the early 1930s, it was obviously a very different media landscape, largely consisting of print journalism, news reels, and radio. Our guest, Thomas Doherty joins us to provide historical context and shed light on radio’s role in the media frenzy surrounding the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and subsequent trial and why it was a turning point for how breaking news was covered. Thomas Doherty, Professor of American Studies at Brandeis, is the author of Little Lindy is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century.

Show Notes:

• Thomas Doherty faculty page at Brandeis University
• Little Lindy is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century
• Lindbergh Kidnapping (FBI website)
• Wikipedia entry for journalist and writer Adela Rogers St. Johns
• Women Film Pioneers Project article about Adela Rogers St. Johns
• Canon 35: Cameras, Courts and Confusion
• The March of Time radio program (Wikipedia)
• Testimony of Anne Morrow Lindberg
• 25 Years after O.J Simpson’s Chase, L.A. is Still Obsessed with Police Pursuits (New York Times)

The post Podcast #314 – Radio and the Lindbergh Kidnapping appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Efforts are underway to preserve the records of community radio personality Mae Brussell. Brussell hosted several discussion shows in the 1970s and 1980s at community stations in Carmel and Pacific Grove, California. “Dialogue Conspiracy” and “World Watchers International” focused on a variety of subjects, most notably the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Watergate. She became so popular that she began distributing tapes of her programs to an extensive mailing list. For a while you could listen to Brussell’s programs on YouTube, but unfortunately they have been removed from the database. You can still audit them at Worldwatchers Archive.

Probably the best known assessment of Mae Brussell’s influence can be found in the excellent Slate podcast Slow Burn. Episode six focuses on Brussell’s theories and conclusions. While the host Leon Neyfakh takes pains to distance himself from Brussell’s ideas, he concedes that “the stuff that she and other conspiracy theorists wrote about Watergate wasn’t that much less plausible than what really happened.” 

I share this line of sympathy. As I wrote in a 2017 Radio Survivor post:

“Brussell was, to my mind, a meta-conspiracyist, endlessly linking seemingly discrete events to each other. But her stream-of-consciousness commentaries, and her dialogues and quarrels with other conspiracy researchers, reminds me of what a remarkable era community radio narrated its way through in the 1970s and 1980s.  From Watergate to Contragate, from the release of the Pentagon Papers to the full disclosure of the CIA’s MKULTRA LSD program, who, following all of this, wouldn’t come to at least a few draconian conclusions?”

Perhaps the most fond recollection came in 2018 from the pen of Monterey Bay reporter Joe Livernois:

“Mae Brussell was the Queen of Conspiracy, the Doyenne of Intrigue. And she was perhaps one of the most enigmatic characters from Monterey County to ever rise to national prominence. She was that voice on the radio — delivering inconvenient truth in straight incontrovertible monotone late on a Sunday night. But she was also the exemplar of maternal domesticity, driving her five kids to dance recitals and music lessons, cooking dinner every night and incubating a devotion to art and music that still sustains her surviving brood.”

Mae Brussell died in 1988, and her fans have struggled to preserve her records ever since. As Livernois observes, one admirer was going to do it but didn’t, then people started blaming each other for the lack of progress. You get the picture. Bottom line: I think that it is crucial that Brussell’s tapes and correspondence find a sustainable home. She was a unique and fascinating voice in the assassination conspiracy discussions of the 1970s and 1980s and in the post-1960s counterculture. She was also, of course, a significant actor in the history of community radio. 

Several weeks ago stage technician and artist Lewis Rhames contacted me about the campaign to get her records properly stored, which is called the Mae Brussell Project. Rhames is acting as the administrator of the endeavor. Her daughter Barbara Brussell has penned a public appeal for help:

“Mae Brussell’s research library includes thousands of documents, photographs, newspaper clippings and notes totaling approximately 40 file cabinets, hundreds of books (many rare and out-of-print), plus extensive handwritten cross-reference and analysis by Ms. Brussell on such topics as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal, and the roles of characters like Jimmy Hoffa in the developing dominance of the military industrial complex.

Upon Mrs. Brussell’s passing, her library was moved by family members to a safe location. Several attempts have been made to inventory and archive the materials, each faltering due to age and health concerns of those involved.

The library is now under threat of loss or destruction. Its location is not secure for long-term storage. The loving family members who saved these intellectual treasures are now quite mature, facing their own life challenges, and want only to know that their decades of effort and loyalty were not wasted.

THE MAE BRUSSELL PROJECT seeks to preserve the library and make its contents available to the public.

The project has two phases: preservation of the physical library, and the scanning and publishing of the information. Requirements include:

1. Transportation, one 40-foot trailer or comparable alternative, plus labor, for initial relocation (3 days)

2. Location, 3000 square feet of secure warehouse or office space with scanning equipment, near San Jose or Monterey (one year minimum, ongoing)

3. Technician, one full-time administrator whose duties include management of the facility, digitization of the materials, development of websites and social media presence, and coordination of funding and volunteer resources (ongoing).”

If you think that you might be able to help with this effort, please contact me at matthew@radiosurvivor.com. I will forward your messages to the principals of the Mae Brussell Project. Watch this space for updates on more ways to stay informed about the campaign.

The post Campaign on to preserve Mae Brussell’s library appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Shortly after its 26th birthday, we revisit this interview celebrating a quarter-century of the MP3.

On July 14, 1995 the file extension .MP3 was chosen and set in place for an audio format that would go on to change music. Artist, scholar and curator John Kannenberg marks the 25th anniversary of this event with an online exhibit, “MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition” at his Museum of Portable Sound.

John joins this episode to explain why it’s important to observe this anniversary, and to recount some of the milestones in MP3’s history. From the somewhat apocryphal story of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” as the first MP3, to the introduction of the iPod, he helps us understand the role of MP3 in delivering us into the fully digital music universe we now inhabit.

We also dive into his singular museum, which exists on a single iPhone 4s, with a printed catalog to guide the visitor. Because of COVID-19 John is now available to provide guided online tours of the many sound artifacts that Museum of Portable Sound has in its archives. Either way, it’s about experiencing sound directly and purely, without distraction. (And we are here for the love of Radio and Sound.)

Show Notes:

• MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition
• The Museum of Portable Sound
• Atlas Obscura: A Loopy Library of Sounds Features Sprinklers, Sirens, and Freud’s Toilet
• The Diamond Rio was one of the first MP3 players, garnering a lawsuit from the recording industry
• 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)
• Minidisc.org
• Podcast #255 – ‘Geek of the Week’ and the Beginning of Internet Radio
• Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio
• Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting

The post Podcast #308 – Marking a Quarter-Century of MP3 (Replay) appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s show, we take a trip back in time to look at radio in the 1940s and 1950s. During this post-war period, women’s roles were shifting in the workplace and in popular media. Television arrived on the scene, bringing with it some, but not all, of the programming that people knew and loved from radio. Battles were also brewing over radio content, including violence, sex, and portrayals of family life. Our guest, scholar Catherine Martin, has been poring over FCC complaint letters from this period and explains what all the fuss was about. She is Visiting Assistant Professor in Media Studies in Denison University’s Department of Communication.

Show Notes:

• Catherine Martin’s article Eliminating “Blood and Thunder” from Containment Culture: Audience Efforts to Censor Postwar Radio Programming in the Run-up to Television (U.S. Studies Online)
• Radio Preservation Task Force, a project of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress
• Jennifer Stoever’s book, The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening
• Podcast #132: Sounding Out on the Cultural Politics of Sound & Listening
• The Television Code: Regulating the Screen to Safeguard the Industry by Deborah Jaramillo
• Guiding Light is one of the longest running soap operas on radio and television, airing in some form from 1937 to 2009
• Mr. and Mrs. North radio show episodes on the Internet Archive
• The Adventures of the Thin Man
• Podcast #14: Matthew Lasar Chats about Mae West
• Should NBC Finally Apologize to Mae West?
• Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio
• Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media
• DuMont Television Network
• Honey West was a television crime drama series that aired 1965-66
• Podcast #135 – Resurfacing Women’s Contributions in Podcasting History with guest Jennifer Wang
• Podcast #289 – Celebrating Women in Sound with guests Jennifer Wang and Jennifer Stoever
• Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination by Susan Douglas
• George RR Martin talks about censorship on TV in the 90’s

Image Credit: Stockton Helffrich, “Memo from Stockton Helffrich to John Cleary,” February 2, 1955, Folder 112; Box 349; National Broadcasting Company Records, 1921-1976, Wisconsin Historical Society.

The post Podcast #307 – Battling over Violence, Sex and Women’s Roles on Postwar Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

What are the odds that a popular television series would feature your college radio station as a backdrop for two episodes? That’s exactly what Jennifer found, when HBO’s “Mare of Easttown” employed a set that accurately recreates Haverford College’s station as a location for the limited-run drama. Jennifer talked with the show’s production designer to get the behind-the-scenes scoop.

Paul recently experienced his own radio coincidence when he by chance discovered a storefront radio museum in the small Oregon city of Sutherlin. Although it was closed, the proprietor of the Radio Days Museum saw him outside and invited him in for a quick tour of the radio memorabilia collection. Paul also shares an orchestrated soundwalk he enjoyed down the road in Jacksonville, Oregon.

Show Notes:

• Creating Haverford College Radio on Mare of Easttown
• Podcast #298 – College Radio at the End of the Academic Covid Year
• HBO series “Mare of Easttown”
• Jennifer’s Radio Station Tours
• Radio Days Museum in Sutherlin, Oregon
• Britt Fest’s Ellen Reid Soundwalk
• Podcast #246 – Radio in the Movies
• An Even Bigger Songs about Radio Spotify Playlist
• Podcast #297 – Radio Studies and Sound Work
• California Historical Radio Society
• “On the Radio” Exhibit at San Francisco Airport Celebrates Radio History
• Podcast #138 – Radio History on Display at the San Francisco Airport
• Radio History Imprisoned at Cork’s Radio Museum Experience

The post Podcast #306 – Radio Coincidences, from Easttown to Sutherlin appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Border radio is one of our favorite topics at Radio Survivor and on this week’s episode we dig into the history of radio broadcasting on the northern border of Mexico. Scholar Sonia Robles shares the stories of some of the lesser-known, small broadcasters whose histories are often overshadowed by the wild tales of higher power border blaster stations. Robles is the author of Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950 and Assistant Professor of History at University of Delaware. This episode was originally broadcast in August, 2020. To hear the original, longer version click here.

Show Notes:

• Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950
• Podcast # 212 – Border Radio in North America
• DX Adventures at 1700
• Confirmations of 1700 (AM)
• Podcast #184 – Hidden Women’s Radio History in Uruguay
• Podcast #186 – African-American Preachers on Wax
• Podcast #252 – Exploring the Seeds of Public Radio in Educational Radio Archives
• Podcast #250 – Aimee Semple McPherson and the Early History of Radio Evangelists

The post Podcast #305 – Radio History on the Northern Border of Mexico appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As we wrap up Pride Month, our podcast discussion turns to queer spaces and queer community on the radio and in podcasting, specifically lesbian broadcasters in Canada. Our guest, Stacey Copeland is a media producer and Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication in Vancouver, Canada. Stacey has been researching the history of lesbian radio shows, including The Lesbian Show and Dykes on Mics. Community radio played an important role in welcoming gay and lesbian programming, with shows airing on stations like Vancouver Co-op Radio and campus-community radio station CKUT. Bringing the conversation to 2021, we also talk about connections between these early shows and current-day queer podcasts.

Show Notes:

• Stacey Copeland‘s website
• SpokenWeb podcast
• Amplify Podcast Network
• Podcast #284 – SpokenWeb and Literary Sound
• Podcast #275 – Making Scholarly Podcasts Count
• Podcast #297 – Radio Studies and Soundwork with Michele Hilmes
• The Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony
• FemRadio at CJRU
• Vancouver Co-op Radio
• Dykes on Mykes on CKUT
• Listen to The Lesbian Show on Co-op Radio in The Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony
• Pride FM Toronto
• Podcast # 187 – Archiving LGBTQ Radio History
• This Way Out
• The World Soundscape Project was established by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University
• Hildegard Westerkamp is a composer, radio artist, and sound ecologist
• Barry Truax is a composer and acoustic communication researcher
• The Heart podcast
• Procyon Podcast Network
• BC Gay and Lesbian Archives
• Queer FM on CITR
• Country Queers podcast
• Podcast #302 – Feminista Frequencies with Monica De La Torre
• KPFA show Lesbe Friends in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
• Podcast #135 – Resurfacing Women’s Contributions in Podcasting History with Jennifer Hyland Wang
• The ArQuives – Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives
• Mermaid Palace
• Warriors Bards ‘n Brews podcast about Xena: Warrior Princess

Image Credit: Graphic for The Lesbian Show in Vancouver Gay Community Centre Newspaper from City of Vancouver Archives AM1675-S1-F1433

The post Podcast #304 – Lesbian Radio History in Canada appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This week, we take a close look at the history of an influential Spanish language community radio station: KDNA. Located in Washington State, the station launched in 1979 and serves a rural community which includes farm workers and immigrants. Our guest, Monica De La Torre, is Assistant Professor at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University and is the author of a forthcoming book about KDNA called Feminista Frequencies: Community Building through Radio in the Yakima Valley.

Show Notes:

• Monica De La Torre
• Feminista Frequencies: Community Building through Radio in the Yakima Valley
• Chicana Radio Activists and the Sounds of Chicana Feminisms on SoundingOut!
• Looking Back on the Lesser-known Histories of Chicano Public Radio on Current
• KDNA radio station
• Soul Rebel Radio on KPFK in Los Angeles
• Bilingual community radio station KBBF-FM in Santa Rosa, California
• KRAB Archive for Seattle community radio station KRAB-FM (1962-1984)
• Womxn Who Rock collective
• KRZA community radio station

Related Episodes:

• Podcast #260: Radio History on the Northern Border of Mexico with guest Sonia Robles (1930-1950)
• Podcast #184: Hidden Women’s Radio History in Uruguay with guest Christine Ehrick (Radio Femenina, founded in 1935)
• Podcast #134: The KRAB-FM Archives
• Podcast #72: Pete Tridish Celebrates an LPFM Success Story (KPCN-LP, run by Oregon’s farmworkers union)

The post Podcast #302 – Feminista Frequencies appeared first on Radio Survivor.

From 1961 to 1976 WRVR-FM broadcast a progressive slate of social justice and jazz programming from the Riverside Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Beginning in 2018 those archives are being digitized and transcribed by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, and on June 17 they’re asking volunteers to help correct those transcriptions in a “Transcript-A-Thon” event.

We welcome guests Vincent Kelley, Archivist at The Riverside Church Archives, and Ryn Marchese, Engagement and Use Manager for the American Archives of Public Broadcasting, to dig into the history of WRVR and its deep archive of truly historical audio. IN 1964 it was the first radio station to win a Peabody for its entire programming, which included coverage of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama. Among the famous figures who appeared on air are Pete Seeger, Malcolm X, Bob Dylan, Indira Gandhi, Aldous Huxley and Margaret Mead, while Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his pivotal “Beyond Vietnam” speech at the Riverside Church over WRVR-FM on April 4, 1967.

Show Notes:

• The WRVR-FM (Riverside Radio) Collection at the American Archives of Public Broadcasting
• The Riverside Church in the City of New York
• Join the Transcript-a-thon on June 17 at 1:00pm EDT
• WRVR Fix-IT+ Transcript Editor
• Press release about us recovering the original recording of Beyond Vietnam
• From the archive:
  • The Homosexual: A New Minority
  • Changing Attitudes Towards Women
• Podcast #250 – Aimee Semple McPherson and the Early History of Radio Evangelists
• Podcast #186 – African-American Preachers on Wax

The post Podcast #301 – Digitizing & Transcribing the Archives of NYC Progressive Church Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Renowned radio scholar Michele Hilmes is Professor Emerita, Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been a long time proponent of the importance of studying radio and sound, which have often been neglected in the broader field of media studies. She joins us on the show to discuss radio studies, her call for new terminology surrounding audio works, and the growing interest in sound studies.

Show Notes:

• Michele Hilmes website at University of Wisconsin
• Michele Hilmes piece Soundwork: Something to Work With in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture
• Radio Preservation Task Force
• Podcast #135: Resurfacing Women’s Contributions in Podcasting History
• Podcast #167: Alternative Histories of Podcasting
• The Music Theory of TikTok Sea Shanties – A YouTube essay by Adam Neely
• Podcast #141: How Radio Isn’t Done According to Negativland’s Don Joyce and the archives of Over The Edge
• Have You Heard George’s Podcast?
• Eric realized during the editing process that the best example of the experimental sound documentary format he was struggling to name is probably The Kitchen Sisters.

The post Podcast #297 – Radio Studies and Soundwork appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The documentary “WBCN and the American Revolution” chronicles the founding of Boston’s groundbreaking rock station that combined late-1960s countercultural politics and music in way that influenced freeform radio to come. Directed by journalist and former WBCN employee Bill Lichtenstein, the film will premiere on GBH 2 in the Boston area. It will air nationally on PBS stations this coming fall.

We talked with Bill Lichtenstein about the documentary a year ago on episode #241 of our podcast. We discussed how even though it was a commercial station, WBCN operated more like a community station, such New York’s WBAI, which was also blazing a freeform trail of music and politics.

Ahead of the film’s broadcast debut a group of station alumni will participate in a free online panel this coming Monday, April 26: Celebrate WBCN and the American Revolution. Panelists include:

• Tommy Hadges, WBCN program director and announcer
• Charles Laquidara, WBCN announcer
• Bill Lichtenstein, producer and director of WBCN and The American Revolution
• Eric Jackson, host of GBH’s Eric in the Evening and former WBCN host
• Debbie Ullman, WBCN’s first female announcer
• Moderator: GBH midday host Henry Santoro

The post WBCN Documentary Broadcast Premiere on May 6 – Special Online Panel April 26 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In honor of Women’s History Month, this week’s episode focuses on women in sound. Our guests, Jennifer Hyland Wang and Jenny Stoever, return to the show to discuss sound studies, the cultural politics of listening, the history of women’s voices on the airwaves and on podcasts, as well as broader issues of representation.

Jennifer Hyland Wang is an Adjunct Professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Jenny Stoever is Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University and Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog.

Show Notes:

• Sounding Out!
• The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening, by Jennifer Stoever
• Jennifer Hyland Wang piece “Producing a Radio Housewife: Clara, Lu ‘n’ Em, Gendered Labor, and the Early Days of Radio”
• Podcast #132: Sounding Out on the Cultural Politics of Sound & Listening
• Podcast #135: Resurfacing Women’s Contributions in Podcasting History
• Podcast #186: African-American Preachers on Wax
• Podcast #250: Aimee Semple McPherson and the Early History of Radio Evangelists
• The Read
• Locatora Radio
• Sounding Out! Podcast #63: The Sonic Landscapes of Unwelcome: Women of Color, Sonic Harassment, and Public Space
• Waiting to X-hale
• Unladylike
• Zigzag
• Why Aren’t There More Female Producers? – A Youtube essay by Benn Jordan about women in music production
• https://www.womeninsound.com/
• https://womensaudiomission.org/
• https://sammusmusic.com/
• The episode of the podcast in which a younger person tells the hosts about their thoughts on physical music – Podcast #179 – Don’t Throw Your CDs Away in 2019
• https://www.standforsonicdiversity.com/

The post Podcast #289 – Celebrating Women in Sound appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Happy International Women’s Day! Every day I’m inspired by my female colleagues around the world who are passionate about radio, sound, and audio. From college radio DJs to sound studies scholars to radio historians to engineers to station owners to high school podcasters to teachers and station advisers; it’s a community that enriches our lives so much. In honor of today and of Women’s History Month, I wanted to share some of my favorite Radio Survivor podcast episodes and stories related to women’s contributions to radio and sound:

• Podcast #287: Women’s History Month segment about a new podcast featuring Ladybird Johnson’s audio diaries
• Podcast #184: Hidden Women’s Radio History in Uruguay – I’m excited that this interview with scholar Christine Ehrick is also aired on the radio today during Xray.fm’s Amplify Women broadcast celebrating International Women’s Day.
• Podcast #135: Resurfacing Women’s Contributions in Podcasting History – I love this episode in which scholar Jennifer Hyland Wang shares with us some of the hidden history related to the early days of podcasting and how women played a big part in some of the first podcasts.
• Investigating Some Contenders for the Oldest Women’s College Radio Station – Women were participating in college radio from the very beginning, so it’s especially interesting to take a look at radio at women’s colleges.
• Podcast #132: Sounding Out! on the Cultural Politics of Sound and Listening
• Exploring Second Wave Feminist Radio at the Pacifica Radio Archives
• Podcast #250: Aimee Semple McPherson and the Early History of Radio Evangelists

The post Celebrating Women in Sound on International Women’s Day appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s show we take a look at the ways that Native Americans used sound technology during radio’s earliest days and how that inspired and led to the flourishing Native media landscape, including tribal radio stations. Our guest, Josh Garrett-Davis, is Associate Curator at the Autry Museum and author of a recently completed dissertation: Resounding Voices: Native Americans and Sound Media, 1890-1970.

Show Notes:

• Josh Garrett-Davis website: http://www.joshgarrettdavis.com/
• Autry Museum of the American West website: https://theautry.org/
• Resounding Voices: Native Americans and Sound Media, 1890-1970: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp018910jx50x
• The “Tribal Drum” of Radio: Gathering Together the Archive of American Indian Radio (piece on Sounding Out!) https://soundstudiesblog.com/2015/02/19/the-tribal-drum-of-radio-gathering-together-the-archive-of-american-indian-radio/
• KILI radio, the voice of the Lakota Nation: http://www.kiliradio.org/
• KINI radio: https://www.kiniradio.com/
• Radio Free Alcatraz: https://pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb545701-bb545740
• Native American Activism on the Airwaves with the “Seeing Red” Radio Archive: https://historyhub.history.gov/community/american-indian-records/blog/2020/08/10/native-american-activism-on-the-airwaves-with-the-seeing-red-radio-archive
• More details about the “Indians for Indians Hour”: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/IndiansForIndians.pdf
• Michael Keith’s book, Signals in the Air: Native Broadcasting in America https://www.amazon.com/Signals-Air-Broadcasting-America-Society/dp/0275948765
• Podcast #221: The Intertwined History of the Radio and Recording Industries with guest Kyle Barnett: https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/11/26/podcast-221-the-intertwined-history-of-the-radio-and-recording-industries/
• Podcast #186: African-American Preachers on Wax with guest Lerone Martin https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/03/27/podcast-186-african-american-preachers-on-wax/
• Podcast #190: Radio Spectrum and Transmission Art with guest Amanda Dawn Christie https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/04/24/podcast-190-radio-spectrum-and-transmission-art/
• Podcast #122: The Popular Community Radio Movement in Argentina https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2017/12/26/podcast-122-popular-community-radio-movement-argentina/
• Native Voices over the Airwaves exhibition page at University Libraries at University of Oklahoma https://libraries.ou.edu/content/native-voices-over-airwaves-exhibition-recordings-available-nov-14
• Details about David Goren’s BBC documentary about community radio stations around the world, including one from the Navajo Nation: https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2021/02/15/listen-to-this-bbc-documentary-about-5-community-stations-around-the-world/
• Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295741826/network-sovereignty/
• Podcast #103 – The Popular Community Radio Movement in Argentina – https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2017/08/09/podcast-103-popular-community-radio-movement-argentina/

The post Podcast #286 – Native American Voices on the Air in the Early Days of Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Flirt FM at the National University of Ireland at Galway was one of the first “community of interest” stations to go on the air in that nation. Effectively, this means it was a trailblazing college and community station, hitting the air not long after the state broadcast monopoly began to erode in 1988.

Andrew Ó Baoill founded Flirt FM as an undergraduate student at what was then known as University College Galway. Working together with student government and university officials, they secured a license to broadcast in 1994 and went on the air September 28, 1995. Andrew joins the show this week to recount this history, and establish the station’s place in Irish broadcast history. Also joining is Paula Healy, who has served as Flirt’s station manager since 2005.

Paula coordinated a 25-hour marathon broadcast to celebrate the station’s quarter-century anniversary. She tells us about how the station serves the university and Galway communities, and how they’ve stayed on air during COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantines.

Show Notes:

• Flirt FM
• Flirt FM’s first 5 minutes on air in 1995
• Podcast #258 – Trump Admin Raises the Specter of the Fairness Doctrine
• Jennifer visited Flirt in 2009
• Wireless is Flirt’s show about radio, hosted by John Walsh, one of the co-founders behind the Irish Pirate Radio Archive

The post Podcast #266 – Flirt FM Celebrates 25 Years of College & Community Radio in Ireland appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Border radio is one of our favorite topics at Radio Survivor and on this week’s episode we dig into the history of radio broadcasting on the northern border of Mexico. Scholar Sonia Robles shares the stories of some of the lesser-known, small broadcasters whose histories are often overshadowed by the wild tales of higher power border blaster stations. Robles is the author of Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950 and Assistant Professor of History at University of Delaware.

Show Notes:

• Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950
• Podcast # 212 – Border Radio in North America
• DX Adventures at 1700
• Confirmations of 1700 (AM)
• Podcast #184 – Hidden Women’s Radio History in Uruguay
• Podcast #186 – African-American Preachers on Wax
• Podcast #252 – Exploring the Seeds of Public Radio in Educational Radio Archives
• Podcast #250 – Aimee Semple McPherson and the Early History of Radio Evangelists

The post Podcast #260 – Radio History on the Northern Border of Mexico appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On August 27, 2020, nomadic online radio station Radioee.net is presenting a live, translingual 24-hour broadcast, Wireless, featuring 24 radio stations from all over the world. Taking place on the 100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast in Argentina and the first mass public entertainment broadcast in the world; Wireless launches at midnight Buenos Aires time on August 27, 2020. This date is significant, as it recognizes the inaugural Argentinian broadcast from Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires on the same day back in 1920, which used smuggled Marconi equipment to present a Wagner opera.

Radioee.net founders Stephanie Sherman, Agustina Woodgate and Hernan Woodgate join us on the show to share their plans for this fascinating broadcast featuring radio stations in Buenos Aires, Wuhan, Nigeria, Cuba, Uruguay, New York, and more. On the episode they talk about some of the topics that will be touched upon, from paratelepathy to radio history to acrobatics.

Show Notes:

• Wireless event page
• Radioee.net
• Wavefarm’s Wireless event page
• Radio Station Visit #145: Wave Farm in Acra, New York
• Podcast #151: The Wave Farm Grows Transmission Arts
• Early History of Radio Broadcasting in Argentina (OldRadio.com)
• Elsewhere museum and artist residency in North Carolina
• Agustina Woodgate to Broadcast from Henry Ford’s Abandoned Brazilian Factory (Miami New Times)
• Podcast #195: Telepathy and Radio Mind

The post Podcast #259 – Radioee.net Celebrates 100 Year History of Wireless Communication appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Lorenzo Milam, who passed away on July 19, led a fascinating life, evangelizing and launching numerous community radio stations and also championing the rights of people with disabilities. Like many in the community radio world, he got his start in college radio, although that part of his radio history is rarely told.

Milam’s first foray into radio was at Yale University’s campus only carrier current radio station WYBC 640 AM during the academic year that he was a student there, from 1951 to 1952. In Rebels on the Air, Jesse Walker writes, “When Milam entered Yale in 1951, he ‘heeled’ at its student station. That meant he did a bit of everything: writing news, selling ads, engineering, announcing. The outlet was run like a commercial station…”

This apprenticeship period at WYBC even featured organized challenges, with the reward being membership in the radio station. A student newspaper account at the time went into detail about a five to six week fall “heeling competition” in which “each heeler will have an opportunity to produce, announce, and engineer his own programs and work in either the business, news, public relations, records, sports, or technical departments.”

During the 1951-1952 school year, when Milam was involved with WYBC, the student radio station broadcast from 7am (starting with the wonderfully named morning music show, the “Yawn Club”) to 1am on most days, airing a mix of news, music (“Cavalcade of Jazz,” opera, symphonies, “National Hit Parade,” etc.), and sports shows and specials, including faculty talks, “Yale Sings” (spotlighting the numerous undergraduate singing groups), “The Style Show,” and a program that played music from Broadway musicals.

The October 20, 1951 WYBC schedule included “Heelers’ Hacktime” for the majority of the day, sandwiching the broadcast of a Yale vs. Cornell football game in the afternoon. Perhaps Milam was part of this crew of radio trainees taking the helm of the station on this particular Saturday. A few weeks later, representatives from the station headed to Harvard for a meeting of the Ivy Network, a consortium of campus radio stations that banded together to share programming, including sports broadcasts. The Harvard Crimson reported on the November, 1951 convention, which, “…accepted a contract under which the Ivy stations would broadcast the nationally-heard ‘Philip Morris Play house’ over specially installed telephone lines from the National Broadcasting Co.”

Luckily for us radio historians, WYBC’s publicity department produced a film about the station in the 1950s. Filmed by a member of the class of 1955, it covers a day in the life at the station on a fall Saturday, likely in November, 1952. As I watched This is College Radio (1956) – WYBC Yale Radio & the Ivy (Radio) Network, I could easily imagine Lorenzo Milam in the radio studio a year prior. The college radio time capsule provides a glimpse of the formal and professional nature of student radio station WYBC during a time when many college radio stations, particularly campus-only AM stations, aired commercials.

The film outlines the rigorous training program for Yale’s “most popular extracurricular” activity, which was described in the 1952 yearbook as “the fastest growing and largest organization on campus.” Based on the film, shows were quite structured. The sole program where hosts were able to spin their own records without an accompanying engineer was the evening all-request program, “Stardust,” which was a coveted slot for a senior DJ dubbed the “Starduster.” Perhaps the polar opposite of that show was programming piped in by Muzak, described in a 1952 yearbook entry one of the year’s “significant innovations,” as it allowed WYBC to increase its hours of broadcasting. The service facilitated the airing of “quiet, instrumental music for the studious” during mornings and early afternoons.

Although a non-profit organization, advertising was important for WYBC in the early 1950s, with seven sponsored daily newscasts. In the film, one can spot a poster for cigarettes on the wall of the station (a bit of a Lucky Strike-sponsored 5 o’clock news show is also shown) and schedules during Milam’s stint at WYBC included the aforementioned “Philip Morris Hour” and “Ford Symphony Hall.” A local bottle shop encouraged students to not only pick up some deals on beer and French wine but to also, “Tune in WYBC 11:30 every night for Your Sports Final” in its 1951 ad in the Yale Daily News for Chapel Liquor Shop. For Milam, this buttoned-up experience at WYBC helped him get a gig at a station back home in Florida: WIVY-AM in Jacksonville, where he worked for a year after leaving Yale.

Milam became quite ill with polio and did not return to college radio until he arrived at Haverford College several years later. From 1955 to 1957 he participated in the campus-only radio station WHRC and this is where our collective radio pasts converge, as we share both a radio and a college alma mater.

In the 1950s, when Lorenzo Milam was a DJ there, Haverford College’s student-run AM carrier current station WHRC was located in a small attic space in the Union building on campus. It aired a mix of material, including “good music” from 8pm to 9pm and “…’real music’ like calypso” at 10pm according to a 1956 student yearbook entry. “Panel discussions, drama, and assorted other innovations were rare enough to be known only to participants and their roommates,” the article continues. By the next school year, the station was on an upswing technologically and budget-wise, with a “year’s contract from Lucky Strike with a United-Press teletype as the reward, as well as new favors from the College Radio Corporation in the form of spots that paid real money.” Similar to Yale’s WYBC, as an unlicensed carrier current station, WHRC was also free to seek out these sorts of advertising deals. However, unlike WYBC, the Haverford radio station seemed a bit less structured, smaller in size, and perhaps more ramshackle; although a few years later in 1959, nearby Swarthmore College’s station WSRN was looking to WHRC for inspiration, citing WHRC’s “higher quality” programs.

A number of years back, while I was deep into my research into Haverford College radio history, I connected with Lorenzo Milam to learn more about his time at WHRC in the 1950s. A descriptive writer and excellent story-teller; he regaled me with tales over email about the broken-down college radio operation.

He shared some of the challenges of working at WHRC, telling me a few years ago that it “was a royal pain: I had polio and it was on the top floor of Founders [ed. most accounts actually place the station in Union] but (fortunately) the school installed a side-bar on the stairs up there and I was able to get to do my program every week, even those musty 15″ discs they sent from Radio Diffusion Francaise, with the turntables at our station that were so old they went wow wow wow.”

Milam provided me with even more extensive reminiscences about WHRC in an earlier email correspondence:

The thing I remember most about Haverford radio 1955 – 1957 was how tiny and miserable the studio/control room there at the top of Founder’s Hall.  I also recall how dark the hallways and creepy the stairs and how crappy the dratted turntables. 

They were forever slowing down in the midst of my concerts so the music would rumble down very low in register.  I had to take the turntables apart and squirt solvent on the rubber wheel drives to keep them going and stop them from ratcheting down my disks from 33-1/3 rpm to 22 rpm or so. Since I had worked at a series of awful AM stations in Jacksonville, Florida (my home) I was used to wretched working conditions, but WHRC took the cake. 

Milam goes on to describe the lack of supervision at WHRC, which allowed the student DJs to do and play pretty much whatever they liked. This must have been a huge contrast to the situation at WYBC, with its weeks-long competitive training program. He explained, “It was generalised anarchy.  There was no one to supervise things which was OK, because it meant that we could play anything we wanted — which, for me, meant endless Handel, Lully, Rameau, Mozart, Vivaldi, Soler, and the great Bach Cantatas from Westminister (with Hermann Scherchen) and the wonderful Bach Trio Sonatas for Organ from DGG Archive (Helmet Walcha). I was, as you can see, in my Baroque phase then, a phase I suppose I have never left behind…”

Interesting vintage LPs and 78s were still floating around the station when I was a student decades later and Milam described a few of them, saying, “We also played terribly dull 15″ transcriptions from Radio Diffusion Francaise and some equally dull concerts from Deutsche Weille at WHRC.”

Like so many before and after him at WHRC; Milam recounts the challenges of doing student radio at a campus-only operation, with a very small potential listening audience. Milam shared, “It was all a labor of love because it was a closed circuit transmission system — no one told us that there were FM frequencies free for the asking from the FCC — which meant that the signal barely got up enough steam to [get] out to the dorm rooms and half-way down the Nature Walk before it pooped out.”

In the 1950s, WHRC broadcast to Haverford College’s dorms, the dining hall, and even to nearby Bryn Mawr College over AM carrier current. Since the earliest days of radio at Haverford College in the 1920s (initially a men’s school, it went co-ed in 1980), women from Bryn Mawr College participated in station operations. Additionally, a separate station, WBMC, operated at Bryn Mawr until about 1959 (followed by a brief revival in the early 1960s). Along with its own programming, WBMC aired material from other stations, include Haverford’s. Some of the WHRC shows that ran on WBMC in fall 1955 included “American Adventure,” “Great Music,” “Music Through the Night,” and “The Children’s Hour,” on which the guests were faculty children!

Milam recalled, “It was even more of a labor of love for the students at Bryn Mawr.  The engineers at WHRC also took care of their transmitter and closed-circuit lines (women, in those days, were assumed to be ignorant of the finer workings of AM transmission) and one of the engineers confided in me in early 1956 that something had gone wrong with the wood-burning transmitter over at Bryn Mawr and — for several months — their signal went nowhere beyond their ratty studio speakers.  Every now and again one of the programmers over there would ask Mr. Sparks why she couldn’t hear her own program and he would mumble something about the wiring in her room being at fault.”

A kindred radio historian, Milam also held an interest in Haverford College’s early radio history in the 1920s and its connections with radio advancements beyond the college. He pointed out to me back in 2009 that, “One of my fellow students at Haverford was Lauro Halstead, now an MD in Washington, DC. According to him, his uncle had helped Major Edwin Howard Armstrong not only develop FM, but had helped him to invent the concept of the subcarrier.  Evidently this elder Halstead had built one of the first AM stations in the United States, which was licensed to Haverford College, and rather famous on the east coast where it had some coverage.”

Milam’s referencing WABQ, which launched at Haverford College in 1923 and sadly came to an end in 1927. And, yes, the elder Halstead, William S., was one of the masterminds of this very early licensed student radio station over AM and was also a key participant in the development of FM. His obituary in the New York Times pointed out that in 1950, “Mr. Halstead and a group of associates demonstrated one of the first stereo broadcasts by a single FM station.”

Milam concludes his note to me with, “But if you read REBELS ON THE AIR, it will tell you, and tell you well, how during the 1920s the commercial broadcasters gradually squeezed out the non-commercial stations by leaning on the old Federal Radio Commission to gum up assigned frequency and hours.  The commercial broadcasters could avail themselves of expensive lawyers, thus out-maneuver the educators who never had enough in the till to protect their frequencies from cooption.  I think that is probably why Haverford lost its powerful AM radio station sometime in the 1920s. Now there’s something that would make for a fascinating disquisition.” I couldn’t agree more and I continue to be obsessed with this early era of student-run college radio in the 1920s, as it’s another slice of hidden history.

I’m sad that I won’t be able to catch up with Lorenzo Milam again about our shared WHRC past; but I’m so thankful for these lovely stories and for all that he did for the development and expansion of community radio in the United States.

The post Lorenzo Milam’s College Radio Days appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On July 14, 1995 the file extension .MP3 was chosen and set in place for an audio format that would go on to change music. Artist, scholar and curator John Kannenberg marks the 25th anniversary of this event with an online exhibit, “MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition” at his Museum of Portable Sound.

John joins this episode to explain why it’s important to observe this anniversary, and to recount some of the milestones in MP3’s history. From the somewhat apocryphal story of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” as the first MP3, to the introduction of the iPod, he helps us understand the role of MP3 in delivering us into the fully digital music universe we now inhabit.

We also dive into his singular museum, which exists on a single iPhone 4s, with a printed catalog to guide the visitor. Because of COVID-19 John is now available to provide guided online tours of the many sound artifacts that Museum of Portable Sound has in its archives. Either way, it’s about experiencing sound directly and purely, without distraction. (And we are here for the love of Radio and Sound.)

Show Notes:

• MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition
• The Museum of Portable Sound
• Atlas Obscura: A Loopy Library of Sounds Features Sprinklers, Sirens, and Freud’s Toilet
• The Diamond Rio was one of the first MP3 players, garnering a lawsuit from the recording industry
• 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)
• Minidisc.org
• Podcast #255 – ‘Geek of the Week’ and the Beginning of Internet Radio
• Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio
• Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting

The post Podcast #257 – Marking a Quarter-Century of MP3 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I first learned of Lorenzo Milam because of his groundbreaking book, “Sex and Broadcasting.” Subtitled, “A Handbook on Starting a Radio Station for the Community,” it’s an idiosyncratic journey through the independent media landscape of the late 60s and early 70s. While it does serve as a handbook of sorts, as advertised, it’s a lot more fun and freewheeling than the mundane subtitle suggests.

Published in 1988, I first got my hands on a library copy around 1996, when a few years volunteering at community radio station WEFT-FM in Champaign, IL lit a fire in me to learn all I could about this media form. By then Milam had long retired from radio, and I never was able to meet or correspond with him, despite some furtive attempts around that same time.

When I first heard the name Lorenzo Milam he was referred to as the “Johnny Appleseed of Community Radio,” due to the fact that he helped to found a series of community radio stations, beginning with Seattle’s KRAB-FM in 1961, followed by KBOO-FM in Portland, OR. This loose network would come to be known as the “KRAB Nebula.”

Milam died in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico on July 21 19, aged 86 years. He had left radio by the 1980s. Anyone who has spent a decade or more in community radio can sympathize with how the stress of working with and around dozens of passionate, creative but sometimes ill-mannered broadcasters can wear you down. He went on to publish “The Fessenden Review,” an eclectic literary review, followed by the online “Ralph Magazine,” short for “The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities.”

“Rebels on the Air” author and Reason books editor Jesse Walker wrote a lovely obituary for Milam, calling on his interviews for that book, and the friendship that endured afterward.

ACORN founder Wade Rathke got to know Milam as he founded community station KCHU in Dallas, TX during the mid-70s. He shared some memories on his blog.

Madison, WI community station WORT-FM reports in their eulogy that Milam organized the first community radio conference, called NARK (National Alternative Radio Konvention) in that city in 1975 – less than five months before the station signed on.

It’s hard to imagine a single person who had greater influence on US community radio. My favorite aspect of his legacy is playfulness, and a willingness to experiment. While community radio has an important function to inform and provide a platform for voices still left out of mainstream media, revisiting “Sex and Broadcasting” reminds us that the enterprise should also be fun, and that we should also take the opportunity to thumb our noses at the powerful.

The post R.I.P. Radio Trailblazer Lorenzo Milam appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Carl Malamud is credited with having one of the very first streaming internet talk radio shows, “Geek of the Week,” beginning in 1993. And because it was available for download, too, it’s considered a proto-podcast.

Carl joins us this week to dig into this early history of internet radio, recounting how his efforts quickly snowballed from hosting a weekly interview show with internet trailblazers to conducting live broadcasts of the National Press Club luncheons and Congressional hearings.

Prof. Andrew Bottomley of SUNY Oneonta also joins as our special expert co-host to help us place these achievements in historical perspective. Carl tells us he was always more motivated to “do it for real,” rather than write a policy paper, and that he was also driven by a commitment to openness, to ensure public access to information of civic import. Today he continues working for the cause of public information as the founder and president of Public Resource.

Show Notes:

• Internet Talk Radio and “Geek of the Week” at the Internet Archive
• Wired Magazine, July 1, 1994: Geek of the Week
• Wikipedia: Carl Malamud
• Public.Resource.org
• Internet Radio Is Older Than You Think
• Streaming Media: 25 Years of Internet Radio, Part 1
• Podcast #160 – Marking a Quarter-Century of Internet Radio
• Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio

The post Podcast #255 – ‘Geek of the Week’ and the Beginning of Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Internet radio was born more than 25 years ago, yet, according to Edison Research, only in the last month has the medium garnered just 10% of all broadcast listening time in the US. We might lay at least some blame on the commercial radio industry, which didn’t embrace it until well into the 2000s, long after the college, community and public radio trailblazers.

Prof. Andrew Bottomley returns to the show to help us understand the reasons behind mainstream broadcasters’s delayed acceptance, and explore why college broadcasters were at the forefront. His new book is “Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence,” detailing the first comprehensive history of online streaming audio.

We also discuss the similarities between long-distance listening, a/k/a DXing, and internet radio, and how the societal changes wrought by COVID-19 are affecting online radio and podcasting.

Show Notes:

• University of Michigan Press – Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence
• “Sound Streams” at Amazon
  (Radio Survivor will receive a small affiliate commission if you buy through this link)
• Andrew Bottomley’s website
• Andrew was the guest on: Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting
• Edison Research: Streaming accounts for 10% of broadcast radio’s consumption during covid-19 disruptions

The post Podcast 253 – Sound Streams: Dissecting the History of Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This week, we explore the ancestor of public radio in the United States: educational radio. Our guest, Stephanie Sapienza, helps to bring educational radio archives to life through her work on the multi-institution “Unlocking the Airwaves” project. As Digital Humanities Archivist at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at University of Maryland, Sapienza is working with audio from the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB). She describes the breadth of materials in the collection and its role in public radio history and also shares more about her unique (and entertaining) presentation at the Orphan Film Symposium in which she reported on old time educational radio in an old time radio style.

Show Notes:

• Stephanie Sapienza’s website
• The Orphan’s Radio Hour
• Orphan Film Symposium
• Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)
• Unlocking the Airwaves
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting
• Radio Preservation Task Force website at Library of Congress
• National Association of Educational Broadcasters collection at University of Maryland
• Podcast #192: Saving Radio History with The Radio Preservation Task Force episode with Josh Shepperd

The post Podcast # 252 – Exploring the Seeds of Public Radio in Educational Radio Archives appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One of the biggest celebrities in Los Angeles in the early part of the 20th century was Aimee Semple McPherson. She inspired scandalous headlines and fictional depictions, including the character Sister Molly on the current Showtime series, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. Yet the story that is less frequently told is McPherson’s embrace of radio. She built her own powerful station, KFSG, in Los Angeles in the 1920s, which operated from the grand Angelus Temple, where her Foursquare Church was headquartered.

On this episode, scholar Tona Hangen joins us to shed more light into the radio work of Aimee Semple McPherson and to also provide some context about the early days of Christian radio evangelists in the United States. Hangen is the author of Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America and is Professor of History at Worcester State University.

Show Notes:

• Tona Hangen
• Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America
• Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (Good Reads)
• Penny Dreadful: City of Angels
• Penny Dreadful: City of Angels – Sister Molly Explained (Den of Geek)
• Will Aimee Semple McPherson Win the Low Power FM Sweepstakes (Radio Survivor)
• Old Time Radio and the Power of Faith (Radio Survivor)
• Radio Survivor Podcast #186 – African-American Preachers on Wax
• Foursquare Church
• History of KFSG, Los Angeles (Jeff Miller website)
• There was a musical: Scandalous

The post Podcast #250 – Aimee Semple McPherson and the Early History of Radio Evangelists appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This is the last entry of my diary of thoughts on Walter Benjamin’s radio talks. The anthology of his programs, from which I have been quoting for some time, concludes with an unpublished essay titled “Reflections on Radio.”

“Every child recognizes that it is in the interest of radio to bring anyone before the microphone at any opportunity,” Benjamin wrote in 1930 or 1931, “making the public witness to interviews and conversations in which anyone might have a say.”

“While people in Russia” were capitalizing on this recognition, he continued, “here [Germany] the dull term ‘presentation’ rules, under whose auspices the practitioner confronts the audience almost unchallenged.” In response, audiences resort to “sabotage” in their reactions, he observed, mostly switching off the radio at particularly intolerable moments.

“It is not the remoteness of the subject matter,” Benjamin warned;

“this would often be a reason to listen for a while, uncommitted. It is the voice, the diction, the language—in short, too frequently the technological and formal aspect makes the most interesting shows unbearable, just as in a few cases it can captivate the listener with the most remote material. (There are speakers one listens to even for the weather report).”

All this reminds me of the contemporaneous comments of Bertolt Brecht, who in 1932 famously (at least in media studies circles) critiqued radio as “one-sided when it should be two- . . . “

“It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this principle the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt by the radio to give a truly public character to public occasions is a step in the right direction.”

Yet I can find nothing that Benjamin broadcast during his three or so years as a radio commentator that offered a version of his “public witness” model, much less Brecht’s two-sided proposal. Many of Benjamin’s wonderful talks focused on formal subjects: the history of an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, a visit to a brass factory, a tour of a public market, and reflections on the snarky cracks for which Berliners were famous. He did write radio plays for children. But it is unclear how those carefully scripted dramas created radio “in which anyone might have a say.”

Why this contradiction? Perhaps because while Benjamin hoped for a radio landscape that brought “anyone before the microphone,” he was also apprehensive of it. Like almost no other writer in his time, he saw the future, our present, and also saw its risks. In his famous 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of the Mechanical Reproduction,” he sensed a world emerging in which the great masterpieces of the past could be reproduced and appropriated by ordinary people in infinite ways. He argued that with the expansion of publishing, almost everyone would become an author, even predicting that “the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character.”

But Benjamin also asked whether this revolution would be accompanied by a redistribution of power in society, or would be offered as a sop to the public. “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate,” he warned. “Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.”

I wonder, as I write these words, whether we are living through Walter Benjamin’s nightmare version of the future. Today we can copy everything, download everything, sample everything, and scream to our heart’s content on Twitter. Meanwhile most of the world’s actual property remains safely in the hands of a tiny percentage of the human race. Benjamin must have sensed this possibility as he carefully composed his essays for Radio Frankfurt and Radio Berlin. He certainly predicted its fruition in our time.

Yet his legacy should be understood as so much more than that. What stands out in Walter Benjamin’s radio talks is his intense love of life: of cities, food, urban legends, children, theater, history, philosophy, jokes, open markets, literature, and technology. Using his radio shows as a vehicle, Benjamin took the time to relish and celebrate most of what he saw, smelled, tasted, or heard over the course of each of his days. We would be wise to follow his example over the course of ours, at least as best we can.

The post What did Walter Benjamin think radio was for? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This Tuesday, April 21, at 12 PM EDT I’ll be participating in an online panel on the “History of Internet Radio,” as part of the first World Audio Day virtual conference. I’m really excited to be in the company of excellent co-panelists:

Dom Robinson is UK-based writer and technologist who has written about the 25th anniversary of internet radio in 2018 and discussed the topic with me on podcast #160.

Prof. Andrew Bottomley from SUNY-Oneonta has a book coming out this June entitled, Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence. He guested on podcast #167 to talk about this early history of internet radio and the precursors to podcasting.

Dane Streeter is the Managing Director at Sharpstream in the UK, a leading audio streaming service provider, and a true fan of internet radio.

Rob Glaser is the founder of RealNetworks, one of the first practical streaming media platforms on the internet, and certainly one of the leading technologies from the 1990s through the 2000s.

Live365 is sponsoring the conference, and registration is free for this and other panels on topics like station marketing, studio technology and the “future of podcasting.”

The post Online Panel on the History of Internet Radio Is Part of the World Audio Day Virtual Conference on April 21 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

WBCN in Boston, MA is one of the storied freeform FM stations in American commercial radio history. We’re talking about it because there’s a recent documentary film, entitled “WBCN and the American Revolution,” that dives into its history, and how WBCN’s early days in the late 60s and early 70s are intertwined with the counter culture movement in that city.

Our guest is filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein, who was also on-air at WBCN during its formative years. Though much has been said about cities like San Francisco and New York in this era, the stories of Boston are less prevalent in our common cultural history. The story is interesting because the station functioned much like a community station, more like WBAI in New York, than the typical commercial station of the time.

In particular, under the direction of Danny Schechter, “The News Dissector,” who got his start at the station, WBCN wove politically challenging news and public affairs into its music format, reporting live on the scene from pivotal events of the day.

Show Notes

• “WBCN and the American Revolution” website
• Danny Schechter “The News Dissector” wrote for Media Channel in the 90s and 2000s
• Boston Magazine: WBCN: An Oral History
• One of the Last “Progressive” Rockers (WBCN) Goes Digital-Only
• WBCN and the American Revolution Documentary Collection at the UMass Amherst Libraries

The post Podcast #241 – WBCN and the American Revolution appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In July of 1930 Walter Benjamin broadcast a radio program titled “A Visit to the Brass Works.” The talk, given at Radio Berlin, focused on the impossibility of the task he had assigned himself: adequately describing the Hirsch-Kupfer Brass Works of Germany to his audience.

Who, Benjamin worried out loud, would want to listen to such a monologue? To any listener who had not already turned off his radio, “give me just a few minutes more,” he begged.

But what they heard for about 20 minutes were Benjamin’s doubts that he could pull this performance off.

“The writer or poet has yet to be born,” he confessed, “who is capable of describing a three-high rolling mill or a rolling shear or an extrusion press or a high performance cold rolling mill so that others can imagine them.”

And as difficult as it was to describe these machines from the outside, how could Benjamin explain them from the inside? He could list the raw materials going into the technology, he noted. He could describe the finished products coming out as well. “But you would not see how it was done, and what with the deafening racket of the machines at work, the rolling cranes, the dropping of loads, no one could explain it to you either.”

Then there were all the other questions he could not address for long. “What is brass?” he impatiently asked his listeners. Where did the power come from to fuel the plant’s operations? Who exactly works at the Brass Works? What is its history? To all these questions Benjamin offered detailed answers, all the while apologizing to his listeners for not doing better.

But even if they visited the plant themselves, he warned, they might not even be able to figure the place out. Especially if they had not gotten a good night’s sleep beforehand:

“That is necessary because otherwise you would stumble over the tracks and workpieces that cover the floor of the hall; you would have no eye for the work and instead would constantly look up in case one of the ton blocks, which are being swung through the air by cranes, was about to fall on your head; you would see only an impenetrable linkage, a network that seems to flicker, and not the clear, sharp division of the hall, where every worker has his specific place and every machine has, in a way, its own small office, from which the manager, with his eye on the automatic electricity, pressure, and temperature gauges, directs it.”

Thus did Benjamin’s fans receive an intimate, detailed portrait of the Hirsch-Kupfer works, the painter all the while insisting on the inadequacy of his canvas.

This is the fifth installation of my Walter Benjamin radio diary.

The post Walter Benjamin’s impossible radio visit to a brass factory appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As we enter our second decade of everything-digital-on-demand, the desire for tactile media only seems to grow new buds. By now the vinyl resurgence is old news, and while mainstream publications still gasp or tsk-tsk at the cassette revival, I think we can safely say the tape medium has retaken a beachhead, too.

Today is all about the minidisc. Quite literally, because it’s been declared International Minidisc Day.

Yet, even I, a longtime minidisc user and aficionado, find this new holiday a bit curious. Before I explain, a little history is in order.

Long a format of choice for grassroots and independent radio production, the humble minidisc bridged us from the end of tape days in the early 90s to the full maturation of solid-state digital audio recorders in the mid- to late-2000s. Sony, the format’s originator, imagined the little digital discs as an eventual replacement for the compact cassette. In 1992 this was a plausible proposition, because it offered near-CD quality digital recording in a smaller and more robust package. Sony – and a few other labels – even released several dozen pre-recorded minidiscs to provide an alternative to pre-recorded cassettes, already in steep decline.

But in the days before CD-Rs and iPods it was minidisc’s digital recording capability that was the real attraction. Due to that, MD did become a cassette replacement for millions of people around the world who recorded their own mix minidiscs or just dubbed over their CDs for more convenient listening on the go.

Even In its heyday of the 90s and 2000s minidisc never really took off as a medium for distributing music. I knew plenty of musicians and radio producers recording on the format, but the end products ended up on the radio, on CDs and eventually online.

This might seem odd, since independent musicians and labels distributed on cassettes from the 70s through to today, and once CD-Rs came down in price in the late 90s, they, too, spawned their own music underground. But not minidisc… at least not in the United States.

It’s true minidisc was never as popular in the U.S. as in Japan or the U.K., even though millions of recorders and players were sold here. It’s just that they never reached the kind of per capita penetration of cassettes, CDs or even 8-tracks. It seems to me that running a minidisc-only label even 2003 would have been just too limiting, though I don’t doubt that there must have been some limited or one-off releases.

Coming back to today, Minidisc Day, the funny thing is that the celebration is modeled after Record Store Day, in that record labels are releasing albums on minidisc today. However, unlike Record Store Day, there are no actual brick-and-mortar retail stores participating, as far as I can tell. Instead, small independent labels are selling tiny runs of discs from their Bandcamp or web stores. Quantities seem to run in the tens up to maybe 100 per.

It’s funny because it’s actually kind of a new thing to have a minidisc label, rather than a revival. The labels and releases appear to be dominated by the vaporwave genre, which is itself an extremely post-modern reinterpretation of 1980s and 1990s music, culture and cliches through contemporary musical technology. Clearly there’s a strong harmony between the medium and the message that would make McLuhan smile.

Those 1990s pre-recorded minidisc releases were actually pressed like CDs in factories. All evidence indicates those pressing plants have been offline for nearly two decades. That means today’s minidisc releases have to be recorded onto blank discs, more like cassettes than CDs. Also like cassettes, this is something that an artist or label can do entirely themselves, or can outsource to a few companies that mass produce minidiscs. The advantage of the duplicators is that most will silk-screen art on the disc housing and print up professional looking cases. Those preferring the DIY look can of course just fire up their recorder and inkjet printer.

The International Minidisc Day labels and artists come largely from the UK, where most of those duplication houses also are. As I mentioned before, on a per capita basis minidisc was more popular there than in the U.S. Thus I suspect it has more cultural pull and the nostalgia is more prevalent than across the pond.

Although my minidisc players don’t get much use these days, except to archive old recordings, the whole enterprise of Minidisc Day makes me smile. I’m guessing that a lot of the artists and participants may not even have been alive when minidisc was invented, or even when it was popular(ish). That matters not to me. The point is to have fun and make things. By that score, mission accomplished.

That said, I don’t anticipate Minidisc Day to become even as popular as Cassette Store Day. There were never as many minidisc players as cassette players, and because they haven’t been manufactured in nine years, the number of working units will be in constant decline. Even though decent cassette decks also haven’t been manufactured in at least as long, you can still go to a local discount store or Urban Outfitters and pick up a player.

But I don’t think scale matters for this project. It’s a marriage of early-internet, home to minidisc fan sites, and contemporary internet, which takes for granted the rapid emergence of international memes-turned-movements. Not everything has to, or should scale. God knows that’s the story of most of my hobbies and passions.

¡Viva la minidisc!

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Scholar Jocelyn Robinson says about one-third of Historically Black Colleges and Universities have radio stations. Her mission is to survey them and help preserve their histories and recorded legacies through the HBCU Radio Station Archival Survey Project, which she directs.

On this episode Robinson tells us about this project, and explains why it’s important to preserve this heritage. Her interest in radio was sparked at WYSO-FM in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a station founded by college students which won a grant to digitize and protect its archives which were maintained for decades almost by benign neglect. Robinson created a radio show for WYSO, pulling from this rich store of historical recordings, called “Rediscovered Radio.” The experience prompted her to widen the search to HBCUs.

In this we explore the reasons why relatively few college and university stations have active archival and preservation programs, how station licenses are “an institutional asset” and the cultural shift that has turned us all into documentarians.

Show Notes:

• WYSO’s Rediscovered Radio
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: Saving History at College Radio Stations, One Tape at a Time
• National Recording Preservation Foundation: National Recording Preservation Foundation Distributes $50,000 in 4 Grants for Audio Preservation
• Union College: Making waves: Race, radio and the legacy of Wendell King ‘24
• Black Perspectives: The Race to Preserve African American Radio

Feature image integrates image by @ingoshulz from Unsplash

The post Podcast #232 – Documenting & Preserving Radio at HBCUs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Welcome to 2020! As Matthew Lasar noted this week, this year marks the 100th anniversary of some significant moments in radio history, including KDKA’s first broadcast. While other stations were on the air with regular broadcasts prior to 1920 (shout out to Doc Herrold’s early broadcasts to fellow radio amateurs); KDKA’s debut is a rallying point for history buffs and will certainly be recognized at the next Radio Preservation Task Force Conference at the Library of Congress in October, 2020.

As we celebrate 100+ years of radio, it’s encouraging that audio preservation has become an increasing priority in the past decade. While radio participants and collectors are some of the most important preservationists (how would we find those amazing boxes of tapes if they hadn’t been squirreled away in basements and closets?), the past decade has seen growing institutional interest.

In the United States, the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan was created in 2012 and by 2014, the Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) was developed out of that. In the ensuing years, the RPTF has brought together scholars, archivists, radio stations, collectors, and enthusiasts in order to develop projects to not only save endangered recordings, but also to increase access and use of these materials.

On Radio Survivor we’ve covered not only the Radio Preservation Task Force (of which I’m co-chair of the College, Community & Educational Radio Caucus); but also some more under, the radar archival and preservation projects that aren’t necessarily affiliated with libraries or educational institutions.

Thanks to technology and a DIY ethos, modern archives can even live in the cloud. Radio scholars and fans can surf the web to find recordings from every sort of radio imaginable, including college radio shows, famous rap battles, early episodes of the call-in talk show “Loveline,” and classic Dr. Demento shows. Thanks to the Internet Archive, one can also dig up obscurities that have been uploaded by radio aircheck collectors. That’s where I happened upon some 1970s gems from KFJC (where I volunteer).

On the Radio Survivor show we’ve highlighted quite a few archives and preservation projects, including American Archive of Public Broadcasting, the Hip-Hop Radio Archive, the Queer Radio History Project, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters archive at University of Maryland, the KRAB-FM Archives, and more. When learning about various projects, I’ve also been struck by the creative ways in which archivists are working to encourage radio preservation. A 2018 KEXP-hosted pop-up digitization event is a wonderful example of how archivists from several institutions shared resources and skills in order to help members of the general public digitize treasured tapes. And, as preservationists point out, time is of the essence since many radio recordings are housed on tapes that won’t survive for much longer.

Kudos to the radio stations, archives, libraries, and funders (including “Recordings at Risk” grants through the Council on Library and Information Resources) who have drawn attention to radio preservation in the past decade.

The post Preservation is One of the Most Important Radio Trends of the Decade appeared first on Radio Survivor.

If you are, like me, a total sucker for “one hundred years ago today” anniversary stories, you are going to love this decade when it comes to broadcast radio history. To be fair, the 20-teens had their moments, case in point the Radio Act of 1912. But that decade offered slim pickings compared to the 2020s.

The fun starts in 2020. Many anniversary journalists will focus on the launching of KDKA in Pittsburgh. “Its first broadcast,” write historians Christopher Sterling and John M. Kitross, “held on election night, November 2, 1920, came from a 100 watt transmitter in a tiny makeshift shack atop a Westinghouse manufacturing building.” The Pittsburgh Post fed election returns to the station via a telephone connection. KDKA broadcast the data “to an estimated few thousand listeners, including some people at a Pittsburgh country club, over Westinghouse-supplied speakers.”

Does this mean that KDKA had launched the “first broadcast by a licensed radio station”? I predict that the 2020s will not only see lots of anniversary “first” stories, but plenty of battles over who was really first.

Then there was (get out your hankies folks) the first broadcast radio commercial. The trade news site Campaign US notes that it aired on August 28, 1922 on a station owned by the AT&T corporation: WEAF in New York. The Queensboro Corporation paid for fifty minutes at the rate of a dollar per minute to extol the virtues of an apartment complex in Jackson Heights, Queens.

“Friend,” the sales pitch explained:

“you owe it to yourself and your family to leave the congested city and enjoy what nature intended you to enjoy. Visit our new apartment homes in Hawthorne Court, Jackson Heights, where you may enjoy community life in a friendly environment.”

1922 not only witnessed this heartwarming moment, but also the first worried speech about the potential impact of commercials on radio. Herbert Hoover read the first generation of broadcasters the riot act that year at the First National Radio Conference. “The wireless spoken word has one definite field,” Hoover proclaimed, “and that is for broadcast of certain predetermined material of public interest from central stations. . . .

This material must be limited to news, to education, and to entertainment, and the communication of such commercial matters as are of importance to large groups, of the community at the same time . . . It is therefore primarily a question of broadcasting, and it becomes of primary public interest to say who is to do the broadcasting, under what circumstances, and with what type of material. It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service to be drowned in advertising chatter.”

“Inconceivable”? Isn’t that what Wallace Shawn said in The Princess Bride? Moving right along, on September 13, 1926, a duo of RCA executives announced the creation of the National Broadcasting Company.

Here is my favorite part of the statement:

“The Radio Corporation is not in any sense seeking a monopoly of the air. That would be a liability rather than an asset. It is seeking, however, to provide machinery which will insure a national distribution of national programs, and a wider distribution of programs of the highest quality.”

Fifteen years later the Federal Communications Commission concluded that, contrary to this assertion, NBC was, in fact, monopolizing the airwaves. In 1941 the agency issued its ban on “dual networks,” forcing the company to divest holdings that would eventually become the nation’s third network, the American Broadcasting Company.

Meanwhile at the same time that all this monopolizing took place, college radio spread across the USA. I wish that I could identify the first college radio station in the country, but as Jennifer Waits notes, it is not so easy. Still, candidates for the 1920s would include the University of Minnesota, Grove City College, the University of Wisconsin, the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Haverford College, and Dartmouth.

Alas, no good deed goes unpunished. In 1927 the government appointed a regulator for broadcast radio: the Federal Radio Commission. The FRC repaid this decision with an Order that reorganized the nation’s radio licenses in favor of big commercial operations at the expense of smaller non-profit and college radio outfits. What happened? As I put it myself ten years ago:

“The result? In 1926 most stations belonged to civic groups, or colleges and universities, or trade unions. Only 4.3 percent were commercial stations. But by 1934 the vast majority of licenses were now commercially supported (98 percent). Early 1920s proposals like Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover’s to fund radio with a two percent tax on receivers were forgotten by all but a handful of media reform groups.”

I am sure that I have missed many wonderful bullet points in this timeline. And if for some reason (like preserving your sanity) you decide to skip the 2020s altogether, rest assured that the 2030s will offer one hundred year broadcast anniversaries galore, such as Orson Welles’ famous 1938 rendition of War of the Worlds, which scared the daylight out of America . . . or did it?

This article was edited on January 5, 2020; I suspect that it may be edited some more. Stay tuned.

The post The 2020s will be heaven for radio anniversary history buffs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One of the fun aspects of writing for Radio Survivor as we enter a new decade is that our efforts have become more idiosyncratic. When we first started the site in 2009, I think we sort of envisioned it as a radio news site, but one with a decidedly non-commercial focus. An early motto offered by Matthew Lasar, “not the voice of the industry,” illustrates this emphasis on community and college radio, alongside the quirkier and independent commercial operations.

As the last decade wore on, the newsiness of Radio Survivor declined. Speaking only for myself, I can say that the daily or weekly grind of keeping up on stories for the sake of writing about them got old. On the one hand, it was exciting to document the roll out of the largest expansion of community radio in history every week from December 2013 to July 2016, but few other topics were quite as alluring for me to dedicate such weekly time and attention. Instead, I gradually chose to follow my muse, writing from the spark of inspiration (or obsession) rather than obligation.

It also became apparent that appealing to a more mass audience was difficult, and only occasionally successful. For me, it made sense to settle in to the idea that Radio Survivor the website and podcast is for a relatively select group of radio lovers. That bunch includes broadcasters, producers and listeners, but really nobody whose job depends on what we cover and write about. As we say on the podcast, it’s for “the love of radio and sound,” and I think it’s love that we’ve really doubled-down on over time.

On the newsy side, Jennifer Waits’ weekly College Radio Watch reviews – Radio Survivor’s only remaining regular news feature – certainly qualify as a labor of love.

So, it’s interesting to take a look back at our most popular posts of the decade, all of which received between 29 times and 614 times the traffic of the average Radio Survivor post. It’s an instructive exercise because these posts represent a fascinating overlap area in the Venn diagram of what is popular or important in the culture at large, and what is of intense interest to folks who love radio and audio.

The Enduring Popularity of “Alice’s Restaurant” and the Super Bowl

This seems particularly true for a full half of the raw top 10. Three are posts from Jennifer’s annual Thanksgiving rundown of stations playing “Alice’s Restaurant.” This shows that tens of thousands of people are still into this holiday tradition. It also provides an example in inadvertent search engine optimization, where having a reliable post every year – that people click on – puts you at the top of search results.

Two of the top 10 are installments in my annual “how to listen to the Super Bowl” posts. As I freely admit, I don’t really care about the NFL or about the Super Bowl. But it’s a steadfast American cultural event that cuts across media. So I’m always curious to see what’s available to people who can’t view it on television, no matter where they are in the world. Obviously, tens of thousands of readers agree, or at least find the guide useful.

Incidentally, the Super Bowl posts rank pretty well in search results, too – coming in at number three – but not as well as the “Alice’s Restaurant” posts, which come in at number one and two.

The Strategy of Holding on for 10 Years

If we combine these “Alice’s Restaurant” and Super Bowl posts into just one entry each, the rest of the top 10 also highlights this coincidence of the popular zeitgeist and our deep radio nerdery. I’ll come clean that one reason for writing my yearly “Super Bowl on the radio” posts is because they bring in traffic. However, because Radio Survivor has been ad-free for about two-thirds of the decade, clicks themselves don’t add up to a payday. And while it’s nice to be popular, that’s not really my point either. Rather, I hope that some tiny percentage of these readers are radio nerds who come back.

It’s not entirely clear this strategy works. Overall, as we begin 2020 our monthly pageviews are about 25% greater compared this time in 2010. But this number fluctuates, and at times has been as much as almost double that figure from a decade ago.

That said, as a relatively niche, untrendy and not-clickbaity blog, holding on and even growing during this time is an actual accomplishment. Anecdotally, I’d say the group of devoted radio lovers reading and engaging with us has grown to a larger portion of the overall audience, judging from feedback we get from social media, email and old fashioned interpersonal networks. I like to think we’ve helped coalescence a community of Radio Survivors.

Nevertheless, looking at the rest of our most popular posts of the decade we gain insights about what a broader population of internet denizens thinks is attractive, intriguing or simply just useful about radio in the 2010s.

People Are Looking for Guidance

In at second most popular is a post from 2015, “In Search of High Fidelity Internet Radio.” For a while, this one’s popularity was a little puzzling, because it’s a very techie subject, and because I tend to think the topic of high fidelity itself is very niche. Yet, the explosion in headphone listening has won over a new generation of listeners who care about sound quality in the last ten years.

Also, if we see a tiny trend here, posts that are resource guides seem to have an outsized draw, and this one includes a list of better quality streaming stations. However, it’s a list that I haven’t reviewed or updated in a long time. Maybe that goes on the 2020 to-do list.

If we use that resource-guide frame, I think that explains a full 70% of the top 10. This includes a 2010 piece on, “Make Your Own Radio Kits and DIY Projects,” one from 2012 that explains “There’s still jazz on Chicago radio, despite the death of Smooth 87.7,” and a 2017 entry from Jennifer’s yearly examination of Princeton Review’s “Best College Radio Station” list.

News with a Curiously Long Shelf Life

At number four is one of only two straightforward radio news stories, “FCC Fines iHeart $1 Million for Airing Fake Emergency Alert Tone during Bobby Bones Show.” Though published nearly five years ago, this post saw many spikes in traffic in 2019. While Bobby Bones is a popular radio and American Idol personality, it’s a mystery to me what drove all this recent attention.

The other news story – at number 10 – is, “Apple Kills Off Its First and Only FM Radio” from 2017, reporting the cancellation of the iPod Nano, the only Apple device to ever have a radio receiver built in. Most of its hits came when the news was hot, though at least a hundred people or so read it every month in 2019.

CDs and a Question

The least radio-centric post is also the only one in the top 10 that was written in 2019, “10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio).” Like most of these pieces, it saw a spike of traffic around the time it was published, which quickly fell off. But then it’s been picking up steam since March, going up in traffic ever since. I’m not sure why this is happening, though I get the sense that it taps into a rising interest in CDs and physical media in general, as streaming music has become less novel and more everyday.

Finally, last in this haphazard review, but not least, is the fifth most popular post of the decade, “Can your radio receiver access 87.7 FM?” Now, content that is titled with a question often does well in search results because many people literally type in questions to Google. If we search for exactly this question, our post is the first result. Matthew’s inquiry taps into a long running vein at Radio Survivor, following the creation and evolution of channel 6 low-power TV stations that effectively broadcast as radio stations owing to the fact you can hear their audio at the far left end of the FM dial.

One such station that once played smooth jazz for Chicago, was the jumping off point for the number seven most popular post on jazz stations in that city. Yet, none of the posts specifically about these stations ranks in the top 50. Perhaps there are more questions than answers?

The Numbers Don’t Lie, but What Do They Say?

It’s always a humbling experience to look at your web stats, which provide at least one score on how many people took in what you created. But, as I’ve said on the podcast many times, I think the modern internet distorts our perception of reach and audience. A post that reaches 140 people may seem like a failure compared to a major tech blog or an Instagram post that got 3000 likes. Yet, if you filled a room with all those people for a talk, performance or meeting, you’d probably feel like a great success.

The Passionate Niche Is Alright by Me

The paradox of the internet is that while a significant percentage of all humanity can find your stuff, that doesn’t mean they all are interested or will see it. Then again, the spirit of the radio (inclusive of podcasting and internet radio) we love and champion here is the kind that reaches maybe only dozens at a time, late at night on a frequency on the far-left-end of the dial, maybe broadcasting to a town with fewer residents than the number of people attending Coachella. At Radio Survivor we celebrate the passionate niche. We are the passionate niche.

And every once in a while – maybe even a few times a year – a group that would fill the United Center for a Bulls game stops by to check us out. A few stragglers come by again, but for most this is just a little morsel in one day’s enormous internet diet.

But along the way a community forms around this shared love for radio and sound. If this enterprise were a newsletter or magazine this core audience would outpace most academic journals, and many magazines you might find at your local indie bookstore.

I’m not arguing that size is so important or that it’s an indicator of merit. No, I’m just grateful to everyone who has read this far, and continues to spend a little time and attention with Radio Survivor, whether it’s once a week, once a month or once a year. Thanks for benefit of your attention, and I hope I’ll be writing another review like this in 2030.

Here are the Top 10 most popular Radio Survivor posts of 2010 – 2019:

(With “Alice’s Restaurant” and Super Bowl posts conflated.)

1. How To Listen to Super Bowl LII on the Radio this Sunday – Jan. 2018
2. Digital Watch: In Search of High Fidelity Internet Radio – March 2015
3. Alice’s Restaurant Maintains Spot on Thanksgiving Radio Dial in 2018 – Nov. 2018
4. FCC Fines iHeart 1 Million for Airing Fake Emergency Alert Tone during Bobby Bones Show – May 2015
5. Make Your Own Radio and DIY Projects – Sept. 2010
6. There’s Still Jazz on Chicago Radio despite the Death of Smooth 87.7 – May 2012
7. Can Your Radio Receiver Access 87.7 FM? – March 2015
8. Princeton Review’s Best College Radio Station List Released – Aug. 2017
9. 10 Reasons Why CDs are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)– Jan. 2019
10. Apple Kills Off First FM Radio – Aug. 2017

The post Understanding Radio in the Popular Zeitgeist – An Analysis of Radio Survivor’s Most Popular Posts of the Decade 2010 – 2019 appeared first on Radio Survivor.