We have two good local college radio stations (CWRU and John Carroll both have solid proper college stations). Thumbs up.
I'm not sure I ever listened to CWRU, but I recall being consistently impressed by how good John Carroll's radio station was.
Bummer. Listened to KTRU a lot back in my Houston days. Also KPFT (Pacifica) which still seems to be going. And reminds me that I probably should have posted this story during one of the annual AR threads:
Five months later, on October 6, 1970, while the station was broadcasting Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," the transmitter was bombed yet again and the damage was significantly more extensive. The second bombing took KPFT off the air for three months. No other U.S. radio station or transmitter has been bombed.
My impression is that as a network Pacifica has been slowly imploding for some time.
I thought AIM was finally gone but apparently it's still technically available.
At Brown, there was a commercial radio station run by professional managers but with all the on-air and production work being done by students, which was theoretically fine but a) played terrible dreck and b) required a level of commitment and professionalism that I wasn't willing to provide. Eventually a "proper" college radio station, WBSR, started and piggybacked on someone's transmitter for a while. Well after I graduated exactly this happened: the public radio people bought out said station and plays Fresh Air and Car Talk.
WZBC plays NPR shows in the morning now, I think which is just a damn shame.
AOL has a feature that you can only be logged in to one device at a time. My parents, who share an aol email account, are constantly getting kicked off by each other. It is phenomenally anachronistic.
I'm not a radio person, but I think Fordham's WFUV is still independent and still good. Let me be the first to applaud the Jesuits.
the public radio people bought out said station and plays Fresh Air and Car Talk.
Ugh, no! I did not know that. Boooooooo.
I thought public radio stations that play classical or jazz (as opposed to Ben Harper and Tune-Yards) were also highly endangered species. Since classical and jazz fans are more likely to listen to terrestrial radio I'm fine with them taking over from college stations.
The BU station has been the public radio station since forever.
WGBH (our public TV people) used to have a more musically-oriented station, but now it's PRI and NPR (though not as much as 90.9 WBUR.)
I *think* that the old Harvard station is now WGBH's Classical station. I'm not a connoisseur, but I like them okay, because they broadcast the Boston Symphony's Concert*
*This is proof that I am a true Bostonian: an unsophisticated supporter of our cultural institutions.
I'm not convinced that playing MC Hammer generates all that much indie cred (or whatever the kids are calling it these days).
Penn State's station back in the '90s was an NPR affiliate too. There was supposedly a student-run station on campus, but it was only available in the dorm complex way the fuck out on the edge of campus.
Duquesne University's station was a founding NPR station (students interned there, but it was in no way student run, at least not since the 70s), but played more hours of jazz and community programming than NPR (they basically did the morning and evening shows, plus Car Talk and I think Terri Gross). A few years back, Duquesne wanted to get out of the business*, and so another public radio station (unaffiliated with any uni, and playing a decent but anodyne brand of adult rock, or whatever you'd call it) bought the license in order to turn it into a full time NPR station, which, ugh. At least a couple of the most distinctive music shows were saved.
In addition to those 2, there's another public radio station playing classical, and 2 significant college stations (Pitt and CMU), both of which are pretty much classic college radio stations.
*widely believed to be because they were unhappy to be associated with a vaguely progressive station - there had been some deal with the DU hierarchy complaining about abortion coverage or some such
6: Yeah, that's what I was thinking of, plus a long history of griping from a relative of long peripheral involvement.
That LA Weekly article in 6 is eye-opening; did not realize the extent to which pseudoscience was being relied on for pledge drives. Of course, PBS had the "Rich Dad" guy on for pledge drives, which is equally corrosive.
I'm one of the tiny number of occasional KPFK/Pacifica listeners left, and it alternates between maybe 10% great (the Ian Masters show they mention is probably the best news show on radio, way better than Amy Goodman who is also good but super tendentious) and 90% ultimate crazytown. There's a late night program that is just some dude who has a 900 part conspiracy theory which he has been elaborating on for years, so you'll tune in at 4am and it will be like "Today I will discuss Part 442(a) -- the Zapata Oil Bush-Mafia-Rockefeller-KGB Connection -- July 3 through July 6, 1971." Honestly at this point they should just hire someone to read from McManus' comments in a dramatic voice.
Smearcase and I have enjoyed Berkeley's student station, or at least a few of the DJs who've been on when we're driving around town. And it's one of the pleasures of long drives to find a real college station on the dial for a few miles. Nothing can take the place of WFMU, although as culture minister I would do my best to subsidize WFMU-esque stations around the country.
19: Dave Emory? They used to play those on WFMU for some reason. I guess because they are genuinely weird.
I think that is the guy, googling. It's pretty great.
For example, here's a taste. Bob is pithier but maybe less dedicated.
Very unreconstructed whatever he is.
KOOP radio is probably my favorite thing about Austin.
It has a dedicated show for pretty-much any record collector nerd genre you can think of: : http://www.koop.org/schedule/
I believe the author of the OP would dig Commercial Suicide, for example.
Their internet stream is, alas, kind of touch and go.
My writing is generally over-hyphenated, but I don't know where that one came from.
Neb cured me of my over-hyphenation problem.
I'm fond of the college radio station in HeebieTown.
KFJC plays Emory's stuff. In the afternoon, yet.
6: I think the guy I mentioned in the post might have been at Brown, in fact.
Which is distinct from KOOP in 25, although one of my very favorite t-shirts is a KOOP shirt.
KFJC and KALX are where it's at. Dave Emory is completely deranged and has been going at it FOREVER! Used to listen to him when I was in high school, driving around with friends and ummm getting chemical altered ...
Years ago we used to listen to the older woman with the Sunday morning show on KPFA playing Bach which was sometimes nice and a reliable source for like st. matthew passion on pan pipes which hey why not listen to once? but right afterwards was the dude with the universe's most annoying whiny voice, so you had to DIVE for the controls in order to not have the entire morning ruined by his voice. Also damp, something about his voice both grating and damp.
33.1: no love for KALW? My favorite of the non-commercial stations in the area.
Also neb! Viol concert at st mark's lutheran in SF this Saturday evening, I think they are going to play some contemporary pieces, check it out, spread the word!
I fear I will be unable to attend, most likely.
Also KALW, yes! Particularly for the sort of endless celticy folky stuff on weekend afternoons, when you are stuck in traffic on a wretched errand to a home improvement hellhole on the peninsula due to catastrophic plumbing fail or some such and all the cds in the car were selected by another person in the household under the influence of a severe infatuation with celibidache-bruckner!
That's it! So cool how you all do those links without posting the whole thing, so much more elegant. Alex is lovely and he is playing with a Belgian pal. Recommended!
I love and rely on KALX. I have no idea if the stuff it plays is officially cool or not - I don't even know what the stuff they play is -, but when I'm coming home from work at 2am and need something interesting, random, and weird to keep me awake, it's almost always perfect. Everything else in the Bay Area is just a radio station.
Re/ed had a college radio station, but it didn't even reach the whole campus, let alone the whole city, so no one took it very seriously and it never felt like a real radio station, unfortunately.
I've probably told the story here about how I had a show for a semester on my grad school institution's radio station, except they had an FM and an AM station and you had to do a show on AM before you got an FM show, and the AM station was "formatted" meaning you could only play stuff from mini-discs! and tape carts, and then they told us the AM transmitter wasn't working but the station was piped into the dorm dining halls as well as the internet, and then at the end of the semester they told us it wasn't actually piped into the dining halls. So I spent a semester playing Elvis Costello and stuff to an internet stream that nobody but my sister ever listened to.
That isn't my understanding of what "formatted" means but I guess different stations have different rules.
I had thought of "formatted" as meaning you had an updating playlist that you had to (mostly) work from. The rock shows at 'zbc were like that, and then the late night shows were all freeform.
I understand "formatted" to mean that you have to play stuff that's rock or rockish during the rock time slots, jazz during the jazz slots, etc. That's how it was at WHPK (the pride of the South Side), anyway, though access to the "other" section was also fine during rock shows, and probably sufficiently noisy jazz as well would have been fine. The putatively freeform KZSU did have a requirement that you play a certain number of tracks from the "new" records, which tended to kinda suck.
It is amusing to think about a station where "formatted" instead means that you can only play from certain kinds of media, though.
Are you sure your sister was not just saying she listened to spare your feelings?
Harsh, Moby.
40: KALX is unparalleled for purposes of junior high school carpooling duties, sole exception possibly Stimmhorn.
WSLU is entirely run by North Country Public Radio, despite having the call letters of Stuffwhitepeople Like University. The actual students have been shuffled off to an internet only station that goes by the name KSLU.
Just checking in to say that I enjoyed the cunning Shellac reference in the title. And at least John Peel didn't have to die for the sins of college radio.
You guys sure seem to care a lot about college radio.
(Note: This comment is not entirely uninfluenced by that time a while back that Cryptic Ned mocked me for coming from a part of the country where major cities have either zero or one colleges, rather than a part of the country where each city has dozens of colleges, each with its own radio station for some reason.)
I can't say how much it delights me to hear that there is an organisation out there whose role is to shut down stations playing the Dead Kennedys and MC Hammer and replace them with stations playing classical music.
And when those station also played Chinese-language programming for Chinese immigrants, and the classical music programming is totally unadventurous?
If there is any classical music programming...nor here is wall to wall drivel re "news".
The actual students have been shuffled off to an internet only station that goes by the name KSLU.
Transmississippnation! I'm shocked and revolted.
I think this is old enough that I can go off-topic a little and say that I loved this piece on work-life balance NPR host Michel Martin wrote recently.
35: I might go! Lurid has offered to mind our ward, anyhow.
For a semester or so I did news on the college radio station at DFH college. I was not good. Worst moment was when news came over the ticker of a"breakthrough" on Vietnam peace talks (fall of 1972, so undoubtedly some Nixon/Kissinger "peace right around the corner"bullshit) just as my broadcast started. I basically tried to read it live, made a fucking mess of it, and went way over time.
A story at the station was that at the end of the prior year the graduating music director ripped out a lot of the wiring under the supposition that it would be replaced with stereo (which it was).
Serious question: do college students even listen to broadcast radio anymore? I'd assume most dorm room listening is through computers and in cars they're playing Pandora or Spotify or their portable music libraries. I don't actually know the answer to this though I suppose I could look it up.
60: That's been my experience. The only guy I knew who was into local radio was the guy who DJed on one of the stations mentioned above.
58: marvelous! We'll be the trio consisting of nattily dressed gentleman, dairy queen and very slender and TALL young man (he's honing in on 6'). Let me know if you make it!
And when those station also played Chinese-language programming for Chinese immigrants
It's a net gain for humanity. No one who doesn't speak "Chinese" (presumably Mandarin?) can benefit from "Chinese"-language radio. Everyone can benefit from classical music. Even Chinese people!
I can't believe I thought I could write just write "Chinese-language" and not be called on it.
I can't believe ajay could write "Everyone can benefit from classical music. Even Chinese people!" and not be called on it!
I can't believe you could write "honing in on" and not be called on it!
60: College radio used to be considered at least potentially a kind of job training. Maybe being involved in running a college radio station now is more like joining the SCA.
It's amazing what you can get away with!
I like boring classical music. Just yesterday I bought a record of Edward MacDowell's Woodland Sketches for a dollar at Half Price Books.
66: for being so, so right, you mean?
60: College radio used to be considered at least potentially a kind of job training. Maybe being involved in running a college radio station now is more like joining the SCA.
Running the radio station is a form of job training, but being a DJ there is just for fun. And not so much fun nowadays because nobody is listening.
I was in UT's early music ensemble with a guy who had a popular show on KOOP! Least interesting fact ever, but I'm having an Austin moment so....there you go.
I used to work at KALX. It's (or at least it was, when I was there) actually fairly impossible to get a reasonable DJ slot as a student, since opportunities were handed out on a seniority basis, and only the oldsters (community members who were not students) had been around for long enough and could put in enough hours to get a regular DJing gig. There's just no way an undergrad could accumulate enough hours and seniority in four years to get anything better than a couple hours a month at 4 AM. I think maybe there was one guy who had worked at KALX as an undergrad and also went to grad school at Berkeley, who got a pretty good spot. Maybe things have changed since I was there.