First, it’s good seeing some life in this forum.…
I’ll get this out of the way immediately:
Richard, although I admire your passion, your thoughts about college radio are nostalgic … but largely outdated, in my view. (Frankly, the same could be said about the entire Wall Street Journal article — which, in its lead, focuses on 30 years ago.)
In particular, teaching “new talent” how to be on the air (job training, essentially) is less important today with so few jobs available compared with a few decades ago — and, hence, so few students wisely choosing not to pursue them. (I’ll add, however, that many skills are highly transferable — and, thus, still valuable. But I’m definitely not referring to such things as taking transmitter readings — TheBigA is right on in his reply on this subject.)
Three decades ago (when I was an undergrad and working in college radio), if a station did little more than train future broadcasters, that was generally OK … because those graduates actually got jobs in broadcasting (so “mission accomplished” … but that decidedly is not the situation today).
I only partially agree with FredLeonard (who seems at the polar opposite), however.… First, I would add the word “when” to his remark: “[When] student radio stations are a toy for students to play with [they are] a waste of institutional resources.”
Indeed, stations should never be considered merely as “toys” … and I do not believe the vast majority are treated as such (in his remarks, johnbasalla is right on). To the contrary, most, I’m confident, are well-managed — and taken quite seriously — by faculty or staff advisers and dedicated student managers. (An aside: In my opinion, non-student-affairs affiliation, such as academic-department oversight, is preferable.)
So, I heartily disagree that well-run (again, the vast majority) college stations “waste” licenses. That said, paramount, I believe, among missions today should be fulfilling public-interest obligations (required of all licensees), serving listeners (without them, why bother in the first place?), and, yes, serving institutional missions (likewise, but from quite a different perspective, why bother otherwise?).
As correctly pointed out by others, not all stations achieve such standards. For those that do attain high quality (and the listeners that follow), DJs playing music may or may not be part of the formula (in this sense, I don’t necessarily share the ‘college radio’ nostalgia of some others).…
To students, I emphasize: “We must protect us from ourselves.” By this warning, I mean we must remain relevant, so as not to give our school any reason to even think about selling the license. This might be accomplished, in part, by taking seriously the original spirit of the NCE (noncommercial educational) license classification — which does not emphasize training DJs … being merely a student-club activity … nor, most definitely, breaking new music (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Rather, I believe, stations must offer at least some programming — potentially in alliance, on occasion, with parent colleges or universities — that also serves the public interest … and listeners (what a concept), via informative or educational nature. Such programming might also have educational value to students — because careers still exist in areas such as multimedia news and sports journalism (hence, relevance to institutional missions).
In my view, this could be a successful recipe for long-term relevance. In contrast, highlighting, as the WSJ article does, college radio’s breaking R.E.M. three decades ago … and suggesting that’s the universal formula for college radio to thrive in 2014 … is pollyannaish, at best. The more important question: Is the signal being used appropriately and productively today?
The Wall Street Journal — of all places — seems to depict news programming as some kind of calamity: “Instead of cutting-edge music, it now airs local- and national-news programs 14 hours a day, including during the peak daytime hours.” Sorry, WSJ, but relying mostly on nostalgia, with little regard for modern-day relevance, will only result in more situations like in Georgia and elsewhere (which, needless to say, as many comments in this thread demonstrate, isn’t considered horrific by all).
Lastly, on NPR … I’m not a huge NPR fan (though I appreciate the high-quality of some of its — and other public-radio networks — programming) … but, echoing some others, I think criticism might be better directed at (and deserved by) some of the religious-formatted stations cluttering the spectrum with duplicative (and, frankly, often not very good) programming.
(Sorry for writing so long … but, believe it or not, I did use an “erasure.” Just before posting, however, I saw TheBigA’s post, just above mine; I think it serves as an appropriate “abstract” to my longer post. He’s right on the mark … and I hope he doesn’t mind such a depiction.)