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Alternative College Radio in your city???

T

Time Traveler

Leading Participant
How is college radio in your location? In the Albany, NY area....there are three well programmed...and live free form college stations....including big signaled 91.5-WRPI...which in its early days...functioned as the album rock station for the market...as well as much lower powered 90.9-WCDB...and 91.1-WSPN to the North in Saratoga Springs...
 
It's great here in Champaign, IL! I work with a student-run station that is fully commercial (programmed, sold, etc. by students) and unaffiliated from the nearby University. "Champaign's Alternative, WPGU 107.1." We play the more mainstream alternative stuff, as we are commercial and ratings actually matter. We're actually the top rated rock station in town, which is cool considering a bunch of hungover college kids are beating out the clusters in town ;) wpgu.com.

There's also a traditional college station run by the students of the local community college, WPCD, that is totally freeform. So the best of both worlds!
 
Here in Philly, its 91.7 WKDU Drexel University's Free Format non- comm station. 800 Watts and serves about 20 miles from the transmitter. Plays a great mix of cool indie/college, reggae (which has won it multiple awards), early punk and jazz. To me, it is the greatest station in Philly. It has turned me on to many great different artists (Doug Gillard, Zero 7, Neutral Milk Hotel). It's a breath of fresh air from all the big corporate stations that dominate Philly.
 
Here in central Connecticut, WWUH (University of Hartford) and WHUS (University of Connecticut) play a wide variety of music with a minimum of gab. WESU (Wesleyan University) mixes its music -- mostly jazz, reggae or Latino genres, with some rock -- with a generous helping of liberal, sometimes radical, talk. WNHU (New Haven) is mostly rock, with specialty shows on weekends, including a long-running Irish music show hosted by older folks from the community rather than students. There are other stations owned by colleges, but they don't put students on the air.
 
Time Traveler said:
How is college radio in your location? In the Albany, NY area....there are three well programmed...and live free form college stations....including big signaled 91.5-WRPI...which in its early days...functioned as the album rock station for the market...as well as much lower powered 90.9-WCDB...and 91.1-WSPN to the North in Saratoga Springs...
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What's the story with Siena University's station, WVCR? Every time I'm up that way I hear college kids playing burnt-out classic rock tunes -- their dads' or granddads' records, basically. It seems an odd format for a college station. Do they ever play anything less than 30 years old and/or unfamiliar?
 
CTListener said:
What's the story with Siena University's station, WVCR? Every time I'm up that way I hear college kids playing burnt-out classic rock tunes -- their dads' or granddads' records, basically. It seems an odd format for a college station. Do they ever play anything less than 30 years old and/or unfamiliar?
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They are running a voice tracked "Jack" type of variety hits formats....with lots of "underwriting" types of announcements too...I don't get it. With that signal they could be an Alternative powerhouse. I wish that WCDB had that facility.....
 
atrainradio said:
Here in Philly, its 91.7 WKDU Drexel University's Free Format non- comm station. 800 Watts and serves about 20 miles from the transmitter. Plays a great mix of cool indie/college, reggae (which has won it multiple awards), early punk and jazz. To me, it is the greatest station in Philly. It has turned me on to many great different artists (Doug Gillard, Zero 7, Neutral Milk Hotel). It's a breath of fresh air from all the big corporate stations that dominate Philly.
Click to expand...

I heard WKDU when passing through Philly last year! Agreed!!! Definitely a great station!!!
 
Time Travler, glad you agree with me! My band debuted on there!
 
CTListener said:
What's the story with Siena University's station, WVCR? Every time I'm up that way I hear college kids playing burnt-out classic rock tunes -- their dads' or granddads' records, basically. It seems an odd format for a college station. Do they ever play anything less than 30 years old and/or unfamiliar?
Click to expand...
In my area, Marietta College (Ohio) has two signals, WMRT, which plays classical music primarily, along with WCMO, which plays the music you state, except all the classic rock options are familiar-too much so, IMHO. The only college students' contributions are liners.There is ZERO effort invested in standing out. One would think they would be breaking active rock or something similar. To me, WCMO's potential is certainly being wasted. WMRT is certainly the darling of the two, with 10,000 watts or so at 88.3, so it has a great coverage area, while WCMO is running at flea power.
 
On the other hand, WPKM 96.3, licensed to WVU-Parkersburg plays indie and alternative music, with very little classic rock. Going home tonight, I heard two students doing classic rock from the 60s to the 80s. Again, not much wattage, but I enjoyed it as much as possible. I salute WPKM for giving their community a real alternative.
 
Curious, do many colleges still put as much effort and resources into terrestrial broadcasting stations and programs as was once the case? Also, back in the day many students worked at the college station in hopes of parlaying that into a career in professional broadcasting, do most nowadays do it as a hobby since so few on-air positions exist compared to even a few decades ago?

Seeing this thread made me wonder about that, because where I grew up, there were a few high school and college stations, and many students from those programs became jocks, announcers or even board ops at the dozen or so stations in that market. Now, aside from a few of those stations which may have local on-air staff in the mornings, all of them for the most part are satellite or computer automated, and one of the college stations went off the air and its now an NPR affiliate with no connection to the school.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Also, back in the day many students worked at the college station in hopes of parlaying that into a career in professional broadcasting, do most nowadays do it as a hobby since so few on-air positions exist compared to even a few decades ago?
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Then and now, I know of a small percentage of college DJs who pursued successful careers in their college towns and many who seem to have faded into oblivion, BUT many are from out-of-town, so it is impossible to tell how many graduated, returned home, and became radio superstars on, as Carl Sagan put it, their own fraction of a dot.
 
How did I not find this nice thread? Thanks @Greg Goodfellow for regurgitating it after 5 years.

Sadly, my state's university (Wyo) does not have any "alternative albums", with the closest thing I can think of is 103.5 in Laramie running occasionally deep cuts of oldies. UW doesn't even have student ran radio, with CSU being my closest bet on 90.5. In addition, the Fort Collins area has KJAC 105.5, a real winner for AAA, along with Denver's KBCO 97.3, and I try to tune in when I find the time. I once toured Central Wyoming College's student station KCWC.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Curious, do many colleges still put as much effort and resources into terrestrial broadcasting stations and programs as was once the case? Also, back in the day many students worked at the college station in hopes of parlaying that into a career in professional broadcasting, do most nowadays do it as a hobby since so few on-air positions exist compared to even a few decades ago?

Seeing this thread made me wonder about that, because where I grew up, there were a few high school and college stations, and many students from those programs became jocks, announcers or even board ops at the dozen or so stations in that market. Now, aside from a few of those stations which may have local on-air staff in the mornings, all of them for the most part are satellite or computer automated, and one of the college stations went off the air and its now an NPR affiliate with no connection to the school.
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One of our alumna works for Westwood One as a network engineer. We have a former student that is in the broadcasting program at West Liberty University in West Virginia, and at least one other one was in the multi-award-winning Marshall University Broadcasting program. Others have served as board ops for SEVEN RANGES RADIO. By the way, this past school year, ur school system poured a ton of money into both their OTA radio and closed-circuit TV operation, and continue to do so,
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