Finding WRKU cover

I’m a college radio history buff, so whenever I run across someone who has taken the time to document the early history of a college radio station I am beyond impressed.

Lew Houston, formerly of WRKU radio at Kutztown University (now known as KUR radio), researched, compiled and wrote, “Finding WRKU: A History of College Radio in Kutztown, Pennsylvania 1948-2003″ in order to capture tales of the station’s past before they were lost in the ether. He chronicles the experiences of students at Kutztown University, from the formation of a radio club in 1948 to the birth of their first college radio station WKSC in 1967 (using AM carrier current), to their attempts to get on FM, to call letter changes (to WRKU in 1984 and to WKUR around 2001), to ongoing debates over the music format of the station.

I’ve seen similar station histories before, including the book about radio at Beloit College written by another Radio Obsessive Dave De Anguera, but I’d never seen anything quite like Lew Houston’s tome. “Finding WRKU” is a ‘zine style black and white photocopied booklet with a few staples down its spine. Originally available for $1, the booklet captures the same aesthetic that many of us remember from our college radio days in the pre-Internet 1980s and 1990s.

It’s a fitting format, as WRKU DJs published zines (“Tales of WRKU” and “Pop Schmear”) for 7 years starting in 1988. Lew writes, “In the late ’80s WRKU had a staff made up of punk and hardcore kids, indie rockers and outcasts who were in love with the underground and its do it yourself cry. They’d already made meager attempts at spreading the word through the airwaves…The next logical step was printed media.”

In Lew’s history of the station he includes photocopies of images from some of these long-forgotten ‘zines, as well as photos of former DJs, and press clippings. As he writes in his booklet, “I spent hours in Rohrbach peering at microfilm. Days really. I was there so much my friends started stopping by to say hello. I was buried in the upper corner of the library where no living beings dwell and still I could get no peace and quiet. So much for hiding. Or keeping a secret. They would ask why I was wasting so much time looking at microfilm. I’d tell them I was researching the campus radio station. They’d have no idea it ever existed. I’d resume my task with renewed vigor.”

I’ve SO been there and thank Lew Houston for taking the time to preserve tidbits from WRKU’s past, as we all benefit from it. His station history reminds us all of the struggles that many college radio stations have had. He writes, “…the station was always jumping through hoops, on the verge of falling apart, attempting to gain student support, dealing with hassles from the administration, and not making very much progress. There were several years of growth, popularity, and success but these were always punctuated with years of inactivity and decline.” These words could easily have been written about the station where I dj’d in college, so I found Lew’s booklet to be a fascinating and familiar read.

Thanks so much to Lew for answering some questions over email about how he came to research the history of radio at Kutztown University. I’m also very grateful that he sent me my very own copy of “Finding WRKU.” It’s amazing that I even found out about the booklet in the first place while doing my own research on college radio history. Today radio lives on at Kutztown University, in the form of radio station KUR, which broadcasts terrestrially over low power AM and FM, over the Internet, and on local cable outlets.

Jennifer Waits: When were you involved with radio at Kutztown University?

Lew Houston: I was on the staff as a freshman starting in the Fall of 1999 through Spring 2000. I then took a break from the station until Fall 2001 and was involved with the station until graduating in Spring of 2003.

Jennifer: What prompted you to write up a history of radio on campus?

Lew: When I was involved in the station I spent a lot of time digging through the collected detritus of years past and came across a stack of cut and pasted originals for the WRKU Zines: ‘Tales of WRKU’ and ‘Pop Schmear’ which dated from 1988 through the early ’90s. They were the station’s attempt to give itself more identity and I found the little snippets of historical records in them really intriguing. Plus, I had been publishing my own zine since I was in high school so there was a greater connection to those types of documents for me.  I couldn’t help but feel that the originals, which were practically falling apart, deserved to be re-photocopied and shared with the current student body, however after picking through them I realized that a lot of the content didn’t hold up over time. Still there were bits and pieces that I really wanted to preserve. I then realized they would be a great lead off to a broader history of the station from its inception to the then current day.

Back Cover of "Finding WRKU" with reprint of comic from 1988 WRKU 'zine

Jennifer: Tell me about the methods you used to piece together the history of radio at Kutztown from 1948 to 2003. Was it difficult to find out about the station’s history?

Lew: I started with those zines and my own personal involvement as well as the vague history of the station in the early to late ’90s that I had gleaned from older members of the staff. But, the majority of my research was done in the library doubled over the microfilm machine scanning through the student newspaper beginning with 1948, the year the first Radio Club formed in Kutztown and scanning it page by page all the way up to 2003, the year I began working on the project. Sadly, there was a large chunk of the newspaper missing from the ’70s but I still managed to find lots and lots of articles and letters to the editor, etc. throughout that 50 year span that allowed me to piece together a somewhat coherent history of the station. It would have been great to get the story straight from the mouths of the staff but I had no means to travel and wasn’t trying to get involved in a large scale project. For photographs I also relied on the University yearbooks which tended to have staff group photos as well as some candid shots of DJs while on air.

Jennifer: Having chronicled bits and pieces of the history of my own college radio station at Haverford, I could relate to your quote that: “The first headline devoted to college radio in Kutztown, Pennsylvania read: WKSC Goes on Air; Problems Abound.  That was 1967. During the next thirty-six years very little would ever change.” Can you briefly explain why college radio has had so many challenges at your university?

Lew: Really it’s the same thing that plagues almost all student run organizations and that’s the high turnover rate. Every four years and sometimes every year, or even semester, the dynamics of the staff are changing. And as those with experience and wisdom in dealing with the university bureaucracy leave they often take their knowledge with them meaning that the staff practically has to start over from scratch in fighting the uphill battle for funds, respect, recognition, etc. Perhaps with a more stable staff they would have been able to get the funding necessary to get better equipment which would have lead to greater recognition and student/staff support, but it’s the old chicken and the egg and without the student/staff support there was never any leverage to get the funding.

WRKU Executive Staff at the IBS Convention in NYC, 1989. Photo by Dean Agiato

Jennifer: How many different stations have existed at Kutztown? What were some of the high points/achievements of some of the stations on campus?

Lew: The original spark came from the Radio Forum, which was a radio enthusiasts club that began in 1948 before college radio was at all feasible. After that it was always one station, however the call letters changed from WKSC to WRKU and finally settled on WKUR which was shortened to KUR when the station switched to an online streaming format. It’s hard to list high points/achievements as it was always a sort of slow struggle, I would say the moments when funding was actually allocated and new equipment was purchased was always a highpoint. The station, although plagued with difficulties, did have some periods of stability in the ’70s and ’80s, it wasn’t really until the mid-’90s that things started slipping. And again a lot of those highs and lows are better outlined in the zine itself.

Jennifer: What was the role of the station on campus when you were there? Was it an active campus group known by most students? Where could the station be heard/seen?

Lew: When I joined the staff the station wasn’t broadcasting at all although we were making attempts to get back on the local cable station as the background music for community listings, etc. We maintained a small presence on campus by organizing live music events and DJing around campus but ultimately we were just a pack of radio/music obsessed weirdos sitting in the offices digging through LPs and bullshitting between classes.

Jennifer: Your history ends with the line, “As I type the station is still not on the air…” Can you tell me what happened to the station after your written history ended?

Lew: In the years directly after I left the station and Internet/digital radio became more popular and more affordable the station was able to acquire new equipment and a slightly larger presence on campus with streaming broadcasts. I have not kept in touch with anyone at the station but a quick Internet search revealed a website with this: “KUR is…available at certain times of the day as the audio simulcast on Berks County Service Electric TV Channel 24, Hometown Utilicom TV Channel 28, on I-Phones by searching for ‘Radiolicious’ and downloading the free app, and as a live feed on any telephone by calling (610)-465-7860.”

Jennifer: Your booklet is in a ‘zine format and I know that WRKU published ‘zines at one point. What’s similar about the ‘zine culture and the college radio scene back in those days before the Internet?

Lew: Well the similarity is that both gave a voice to the voiceless. Mainstream radio and magazines were pretty unreachable for the average music/media arts fan or upstart writer, however college radio, especially with open formats in the ’90s, allowed DJs to play music and express views that weren’t being played/expressed on mainstream radio. In a very similar way zines allowed writers to express views and share the love of music, art, etc. that wasn’t being exposed in mainstream magazines. There was a definite heyday in the late ’80s/early ’90s of college radio and zine culture that ran concurrently and often fed off of one another and it was the openness, malleability and underground nature of those formats that created this kindred spirit.

Jennifer: Did you continue with radio after you left Kutztown?

Lew: I did not, though I stayed involved in music, booking a few shows in Kutztown and then going on tour as a roadie for several years and finally ending up in Austin, TX playing music myself.

Jennifer: Do you follow news about Kutztown radio today? What’s the status of the station?

Lew: As I stated earlier, I really don’t follow the station these days. However they have a web presence here.

Jennifer: Anything else you’d like to share?

Lew: The zine is not in print any longer but if anyone really really wants a copy, they can email me at lewskerdu[at]gmaildotcom and I will do my best to Xerox them a copy and mail it out.

Previous Radio Obsessive Profiles:

#1: Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

#2: Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

#3: Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch

#4: Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel

#5: Herculodge’s Jeff McMahon – The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much

#6 & #7: Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins of American Museum of Radio and Electricity

#8: Beloit College Radio Historian Dave de Anguera

#9: Engineering Radio’s Paul Thurst

Photo of LEA surge suppressor courtesy Paul Thurst

Back in the olden days radio was owned by the geek crowd, with every science-savvy kid worth her salt crafting a home-made radio out of wires and household objects while sitting at the kitchen table. The earliest radio stations were created and run by physicists and engineers who had the skills to build transmission equipment from scratch. As with every form of media before and after radio, the early days of any particular technology are marked by a movement from early-adopter use to mainstream appeal.

After taking a look at the Radio Obsessives who I’ve profiled for Radio Survivor, I realize that much of my focus has been on radio fans who are devoted to the artifacts and culture of radio. So, when fellow Radio Survivor Paul Riismandel suggested that I take a look at the Engineering Radio blog, it was clear to me that it was time to give props to someone who is in the trenches dealing with the nuts and bolts of radio broadcasting.

Paul Thurst is a radio engineer who decided that he could fill a niche by writing a blog all about his field. On Engineering Radio, Paul chronicles visits to transmitter sites and shares his experiences troubleshooting various problems that have arisen at the stations where he works. He also includes amazing photography of radio equipment, from unique transmitter locations in the middle of nowhere, to a vintage vacuum tube found during a studio clean up.

Thanks to Paul Thurst for taking the time to have an email conversation with me about his love for radio and radio engineering. Paul started creating radios when he was a kid and went on to work at a number of different stations, from Guam to New York. In his interview he shares with me why he’s such a radio fan and reveals some tidbits about the secret life of a radio engineer.

Jennifer Waits: What prompted you to start the Engineering Radio blog?

Paul Thurst: I started looking around for radio engineering blogs and didn’t really find what I was looking for.  There are blogs written by magazine editors and a few other engineering types that write blogs, but nobody was really blogging about what it is like to be a radio engineer.  I like to write, so, I started my own.

Jennifer: Can you tell me a bit more about your personal radio history. What led you to becoming a radio engineer?

Paul: I guess I have always been a geek, even before that was popular.  I started fooling around with radios and such when I was 10 or so.  From there, I became more and more interested in the technical side of things, so I started building radio kits from Radio Shack and Heathkit.  I joined the Coast Guard and continued along that line. When I was stationed on Guam, I had some extra time on my hands, so I stopped down at the local radio station (KUAM) and asked if they needed help.  Boy, did they ever.  It was fun work, but there was a lot of it.

Jennifer: Are you a radio fan? What do you love about radio?

Paul: I love radio, especially AM radio.  I like the bigness of it; big towers, big transmitters, etc.  Being a part of a good radio station is being a part of something that is larger than self, and larger than the sum of its parts. I was thrilled when I got to work for WGY as chief engineer for several years. I also enjoy the technical challenges, trouble shooting and repair is a reward all to itself.  As far as radio in general, listening to a well produced radio program is a joy. Sadly, it is becoming harder and harder to find those these days.

Jennifer: What types of stations do you engineer for? Are you working solely in the commercial radio realm or do you work for non-commercial stations as well? Any thoughts on the differences from an engineer’s perspective?

Paul: I’ve done mostly commercial radio work, although I did do some work for Union College (WRUC) in the early 1990′s.  Recently, the company I work for has also been involved with VPR (Vermont Public Radio). There are many differences, especially between the public radio vs. commercial radio operations.  Technically speaking, public radio is less about bringing in the money and more about good product.  This affects things like studio design; microphone choices, console choices, etc.

Vintage Vacuum tube photo by Paul Thurst

Jennifer: Rice University just announced that it’s planning to sell off their 40+ year old non-commercial student radio station’s transmitter and FM signal, although they will allow the station to continue as an online-only station.

Students and fans of the station, KTRU, are fighting back and saying that online radio is not the same as terrestrial radio. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, as I saw a post of yours indicating that Internet radio is not real radio.

Paul: It is a shame that more and more colleges are getting rid of their radio stations.  I think it is a larger reflection on the loss of radio’s “coolness” among many of the younger generation.  College radio is a great experimentation medium, to lose that would be a great disservice.

Online radio can be well done, but radio, by definition is transmitting signals through the air.  3G and 4G wireless is a radio service, but many folks aren’t listening to online radio on their wireless devices because of data caps.  Technically speaking, it is very easy to set up an online radio station, which means there is a plethora of them, with the majority being not very entertaining.  Many of them operate as a computer based jukebox, similar to what is available on commercial radio.

From a non-technical standpoint, one does not normally tune through the Internet searching for a new station to listen to, that would be very hard to do.  Further, it would be even harder to nail down a local Internet station that way, you would have to know about it from some other source first.  That is counter to the way I have discovered some of the best radio stations I have known.

Jennifer: Have you been a radio DJ too?

Paul: I once did a Jazz show on Saturday afternoons.  The music was good, the DJ was horribly bad. It is best forgotten.

Jennifer: Did you work in college radio?

Paul: As a student, no.

Jennifer: What are some little-known facts about radio engineers?

Paul: Engineers have a wicked sense of humor. Unfortunately, most of our jokes go over people’s heads.

Couch spotted by Paul Thurst on a hike to a transmitter

Jennifer: Have you found anything strange during any of your treks up to transmitter sites?

Paul: Many of the FM sites around here are on mountain tops, connected by long roads through the woods.  I occasionally find things dumped on the road, old furniture, stolen cars, etc.  I once found a complete craftsman mechanic’s tool set in the middle of the road, which I still have.

Jennifer: What do you think about the future of terrestrial radio?

Paul: I think terrestrial radio has its problems, mostly due to poor business decisions during the great consolidation.  Radio will survive in one form or another.  I think that there will be a certain niche local radio station that will do quite well.  I think the AM band is going to lose stations, which might be a good thing. Otherwise, I don’t see much change in the next five years or so.

Jennifer: Who do you think should be the next Radio Obsessive?

Paul: Could you get Jerry Del Colliano?

Previous Radio Obsessive Profiles:

#1: Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

#2: Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

#3: Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch

#4: Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel

#5: Herculodge’s Jeff McMahon – The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much

#6 & #7: Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins of American Museum of Radio and Electricity

#8: Beloit College Radio Historian Dave de Anguera

Professor Charles Culver at the controls, about 1910 (Beloit College Archives)

The early history of college radio has not been documented sufficiently and much of it is sequestered away in the archives of colleges and universities.

Last year I was thrilled to see Hugh Slotten’s book, Radio’s Hidden Voice: The Origins of Public Broadcasting in the United States, as it is one of the first publications to give credit to college radio pioneers in the very early days of radio.

Personally I’m invested in this, as I’ve done quite a bit of research to uncover the hidden history of radio at Haverford College, where I got my start in radio. Students at Haverford College built a radio station in the 1920s and achieved a great deal of press and attention for both the station and their radio experiments (including a chess match with Oxford students by radio).

While investigating the Haverford station’s history I’ve also run across a number of other histories of college radio stations, often compiled by students or staff members. One such history is Dave de Anguera’s book Ethereal Messages: A History of Beloit College Radio 1907-1994.

Radio experiments began at Beloit College with the arrival of Physics Instructor Charles Aaron Culver in 1907. During his time at the college he initiated pioneering work in radio and wireless, leaving in 1920 to join the faculty of Carleton College (where he was also instrumental in college radio). As Hugh Slotten pointed out in his interview with me, Beloit College held one of the earliest licensed stations at a small college, with WEBW, having its initial broadcast in October, 1924. Beloit’s current station, WBCR-FM, is still going strong today.

WEBW log - first entry, 1924 (Beloit College Archives)

I reached out to Beloit College radio historian Dave de Anguera, as I thought he would be a perfect addition to the Radio Obsessives series here at Radio Survivor. From my own experience, I know what a challenge it is to dig through the archives of college radio stations, in which history is not necessarily documented all that methodically.

In his interview, Dave shares with me why he was inspired to research the history of radio at Beloit College, his take on how the trials and tribulations of college radio today are similar to its struggles in the past, and provides some perspective about the role of technology in college radio in 2010.

Jennifer Waits: What prompted you to research and write the history of radio at Beloit  College?

Dave de Anguera: I’ve always loved radio and have been a lifelong history buff to boot. So, when I kept coming across information on WBCR’s history, and the fact that it stretched back so far, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer and thus started investigating further.  I eventually made a proposal to the college (with the support of Beloit College archivist Fred Burwell and Professor Carl Balson) for writing and publishing a book on the subject.

Jennifer: Can you give a quick snapshot of the history of radio at Beloit and why you think it’s a significant piece of college radio history?

Dave: Beloit College started experimenting with “wireless telegraphy” in 1907, established a wireless station a few years later, and eventually operated one of first college radio stations (WEBW) in the ’20s.  After a hiatus during the Depression and World War II, a new carrier current station (WBWR) was constructed in the late ’40s. Eventually WBCR-FM was established in the mid-’60s, evolving from 10 to 100 watts in 1983, where it continues today. It’s important because they became involved very early on and (except in the ’30s and ’40s) have endured for so long. Also, the changes they went through reflected so much of what was happening in the larger world of radio.

Inside WBWR, c. early 50's (Photo by Ray Metzker, '51 -Beloit College Archives)

Jennifer: What accomplishments do you think have set the Beloit College radio station(s) apart from others?

Dave: Being ahead of the game on radio experimentation, essentially due to Dr. Culver’s pre-WWI work. Of course, there were other colleges that did research on this, but for a small institution such as Beloit it was unusual, to my knowledge.  Also the notoriety of operating two stations at once, twice during its history: Briefly in the late ’40s with a very early commercial FM station (WBNB) and a carrier current station, and later from the late ’60s through the early ’70s with WBCR-AM (somewhat sporadically) and WBCR-FM, which for the most part had separate programming.

Jennifer: What were some of the most interesting things that you learned during your research into the very early years of radio on campus?

Dave: How similar the budget woes, equipment snafus, and bureaucratic hassles were to what we were enduring at that time (late 1980s and early ’90s), and indeed, throughout its history.   Also fascinating was how, due to the lack of federal regulations (at least early on), stations could broadcast as far as money and technology would allow: Even WEBW could be heard out in Cuba! And that such heavy and cumbersome equipment was at the same time so incredibly fragile.

Jennifer: Can you tell me a bit about Beloit College and the role that radio played on campus when you were there? Was it purely a student station or were community members also involved?

Dave: It’s a liberal arts college located in Beloit, Wisconsin (90 miles northwest of Chicago), with currently around 1250 students and over 100 full-time faculty. At the time I was there (1987-91), there was a great deal of student involvement – it was one of the biggest organizations on the campus. But there were also a number of djs from the town and surrounding areas (as well as Alumni), which was important to WBCR’s sense of diversity and community outreach.

Jennifer: Are students/DJs at the Beloit radio station aware of the lengthy history of college radio on campus?

Dave: Prior to the book’s release, there was apparently little knowledge of it.  But now it seems that Ethereal Message’s objective of giving a sense of history to incoming students, at least those who become involved in WBCR, has been attained to some degree, judging by the feedback I’ve received.

WBCR 2010 Broadcast studio

Jennifer: Your history covers the years 1907 to 1994. Do you have any plans to update the history to include the last 16 years?

Dave: Not right now, but eventually I would like to find the time to update it.  There are many developments – including the obvious technological ones – that need to be documented, and I’ve also been itching to make a number of improvements to what’s already been written, as I’m rather critical of my work.

Jennifer: Are you still involved with radio? Do you have connections to the current WBCR?

Dave: Not presently, though I’d love to get involved again in some manner. I still have an infatuation with radio, and listen to college and public stations quite often:  I’m a fan of certain radio shows with an intensity most others reserve for television.  I don’t currently have any direct connections to WBCR, aside from Fred Burwell, who is on the advisory board and does a summer program: Red With Purple Flashes (Wednesdays 6-8 pm CST)  “Rare and obscure rock ‘n’ roll from the 1950′s-1960′s.” Listen in on www.beloit.edu/wbcr!  It’s a great show, so by God I’m plugging it…

Jennifer: Why do you think college radio history hasn’t been fully documented?

Dave: College radio has a much lower profile than its commercial counterpart, due to the fairly constant turnover in personnel and the (usually) much shorter broadcast range. This (along with the relative inexperience of the staff) also results in a complete absence of well-known national and regional radio personalities, which many histories tend to focus on.  This is unfortunate, as college radio’s history is a fascinating story waiting to be told.

WBCR-FM production room, March 1970. (Photo by Bob Wieland, '71 - Beloit College Archives)

Jennifer: Anything else you’d like to add?

Dave: Some friends of mine have expressed concerns (which I tend to share) about a dissipating interest in radio among college students, particularly due to the internet’s increasing demands on their attention. There’s also the growing reliance on “loop shows,” where pre-recorded material is used to fill air-time, thus taking away from the spontaneity that college radio has thrived on for so long (though it’s uncannily similar to the taped reel-reel programming that stations such as WBCR used in the 1950s). Still, many stations have utilized technology in more constructive ways, such as creating web sites for their stations and podcasting their shows. The key is for college radio to continue to embrace and evolve with the ever-changing technologies while maintaining its unique voice and independent spirit.

I couldn’t agree more! Thanks to Dave for chatting with me about the history of radio at Beloit College and for sharing some amazing archival photos.

Previous Radio Obsessive Profiles:

#1: Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

#2: Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

#3: Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch

#4: Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel

#5: Herculodge’s Jeff McMahon – The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much

#6 & #7: Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins of American Museum of Radio and Electricity

What is now known as The American Museum of Radio and Electricity (AMRE) began in 1985 as the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum as an outgrowth of Jonathan Winter’s personal collection of vintage radios and radio-related objects. As his collection grew, he sought out a bigger venue and eventually joined forces with fellow radio collector John Jenkins.

With their move to bigger quarters in 2001, the museum’s name was changed to The American Museum of Radio and Electricity to reflect its now broader mission of presenting exhibits focused on a variety of scientific innovations. According to their website:

“Today, the Museum is dedicated to the interpretation of the relationship between the scientific exploration of electricity and the development of broadcast radio into its Golden Age—a story with immense cultural, historic, aesthetic, and scientific significance. Among the Museum’s current holdings are unique examples of early scientific instruments and 19th century electromagnetic apparatus, an outstanding collection of more than 10,000 vacuum tubes, and an authentic reproduction of the radio room on the Titanic displaying an original Marconi wireless set.”

The museum galleries contain interactive exhibits recounting nearly 400 years worth of innovations related to electricity and wireless, from the “Dawn of the Electric Age,” to the early history of radio, to the radio’s “golden” age. AMRE also houses more than 1000 radios, operates a low power FM radio station (KMRE-LP), and hosts science education classes for kids.

I talked to founders Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins in order to learn more about the museum and find out how their collective passion for radio inspired its creation.

Jennifer Waits: When did you start collecting radios?

Jonathan Winter: My first radios?   I came across a one tube radio …….(I cannot remember exactly where) when I was around 15 and remember taking it over to a neighbor who was quite old,  and asking him how it worked. He spent some time getting it working and described how it worked. That was the beginning for me. I learned more about radio and have had an interest ever since.  For me it is a combination of technology, craftsmanship, art and science. I my mind they are all connected.

John Jenkins: My first radio was a set I found in my grandparents basement when I was 13. I tinkered with electronics at lot at the time, I took it home and got it working.  From the minute I heard music come out of it, I was hooked.

Vintage Sparton Model 738 from 1935. Image courtesy AMRE

Jennifer: What about radio was and is so captivating to you?

Jonathan W: As mentioned above, it was the object…… one could almost say it was the “Art”  of these early radios that drew me to them. Of course understanding how they worked only deepened  my interest.

John J: At the time I was fascinated by the beautiful wood, the smell of the vacuum tubes when they heated up. I loved looking at the circuit diagrams and figuring out how everything worked. Later I became much more interested in the history, the inventors, what inspired them, how the chain of ideas connect together. That is the theme in all of my lectures: invention as a process, not an event.

That interest was reflected in my collection, I started with radios from the 1920s as a kid, but as my interest and curiosity broadened I worked my way backward, the oldest object I own is the oldest known existent book that investigates electricity and magnetism, printed in 1560.

Jennifer: Jonathan, Tell me a bit about how your passion for collecting and for radio turned into the creation of the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum.

Jonathan W: The Bellingham Antique Radio Museum:  A long story which I will shorten. Around 1979 I was becoming more and more aware of how fast we were moving into the “digital world.”  I thought I might use my collection or early radio as an educational resource. At the time I was storing most of the collection. It seemed to me that I might spend the same money for a space I would call a Museum.  I rented a small room in the “Marketplace” building in Fairhaven and called it “The Bellingham Antique Radio Museum.” That was the beginning.

The “passion for collecting” is really not what moved me to make a Museum here in Bellingham. It was rather the desire to share what I perceived as a valuable collection with my community. I have always felt that the value of any good collection lies in what it can bring to the future….  We can learn so much from the past.

Jennifer: John, how did you end up connecting with Jonathan and becoming more involved with the museum?

John J: I grew up in Bellingham. I discovered the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum about 1995 or so, long after I had moved away (my mom & dad still lived there). I was too busy at Microsoft to get involved, but after I retired in 2001, I joined the board.

Jonathan’s collection starts in the 1920s and goes forward to the 1950s, and mine ended in the 1920s and goes backward to the very beginning of electrical discovery. We realized that by combining our collections we could tell the entire story of electricty and radio from the beginnings in the 16th and 17th century through to the golden age of radio. I bought the building on Bay Street in Bellingham, and we founded the new museum.

Jennifer: Have you ever worked in radio? If so, where?

Jonathan W: I have never worked in radio other that here at KMRE-LP.

John J: I worked as a dj on the college radio station for a couple of quarters.

Jennifer: What are some of your favorite items in the museum’s collection?

Jonathan W: It is impossible to say which  is a favorite.  The depth and breadth of the artifacts here at the Museum really preclude picking a favorite.  There is one piece that I am very proud of being able to exhibit here though. It is one of perhaps less than 20 working examples of the first color TV set. Made in 1952, RCA only made 1000 of these and very few exist today.   We spent well over a year restoring this one and I get a personal satisfaction knowing that we were able to preserve it and display it working to the public.

John J: This is always a very hard question for me to answer. I can’t point to a specific piece, but I can say that I especially like the pieces that represent an important step in development. There are many of them on display at the museum.

Jennifer: Tell me a bit about the community radio station that you operate: KMRE-LP. What type of programming do you air and how is it integrated into the activities of the museum?

Jonathan W: KMRE-LP came about because it seemed like a good idea to have an exhibit which extended beyond the four walls of the Museum. The station broadcasts the music of the 1920s through 1940. We operate much like the early local stations did.  We also keep the community informed about the activities at the Museum such as classes we offer,  special speaking events, and some community news.

Jennifer: I love that you offer hands-on science classes to kids, including one that taught youngsters how to make crystal radios. Do you think that helps to keep younger folks interested in the medium of radio?

Jonathan W: Children today are not as exposed as they once were to the fundamental workings of science and physics. For most,  that connection is through the keyboard, the computer screen and the television. Our classes are designed to give children the opportunity to discover  on their own by using and or doing the very experiments that  led to great insights and discoveries.

When a child makes a meaningful discovery, there is a sense of accomplishment and a desire to repeat the experience and  continue learning. Our hands on approach is all about that. We want to help kids to discover the huge playground of science, math and physics. Hands-on is the way to do it.

John J: Most of the kids classes are about science, not radio, and even the crystal set class is more about the magic and mystery of how you can pull sound right out of the air without using electricity. We try to get kids excited about science.

Jennifer: Anything else you’d like to add?

John J: If you haven’t seen my book, Where Discovery Sparks Imagination, you should  - it does a pretty good job of highlighting the museum and the objects on display. There are a lot of beautiful photos of early radios in it also, which your readers would appreciate!

What we are about [at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity] is broader [than just radio]: helping folks (especially kids) discover the wonder and mystery of electricity and science. We talk alot about electricity and electrical inventions; most of our demonstrations are more about electricity than radio. Some of our most important and rare objects (such as one of the original electric lights made by Thomas Edison) have nothing to do with radio.

That said, we do have one of the largest and most complete collections of early radio on display in the world.

Previous Radio Obsessive Profiles:

#1: Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

#2: Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

#3: Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch

#4: Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel

#5: Herculodge’s Jeff McMahon – The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much

Jeff McMahon's Rare Panasonic RF-1130 Radio

It’s time for another installment in our ongoing series Radio Obsessives, in which we share tales about people who are passionate about radio.

So far we’ve profiled Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest, Jose Fritz and his amazing Arcane Radio Trivia website, Radio Sticker of the Day curator Greg Blouch, and radio historian/Seattle Radio Theater founder Feliks Banel.

Blogger Jeff McMahon muses about radio on his blog Herculodge. Although the blog is ostensibly focused on a myriad number of topics (from vegetarian cooking to parenthood to cars), Jeff found that his posts about radio seemed to generate the most interest and excitement from readers.

Filed under the category “Radio Lovers Can’t Be Cured,” Herculodge’s radio posts typically focus on reviews of both new and vintage radios, as well as radio-related products. Written by Jeff and a crew of guest contributors, the radio section of Heculodge is kind of like a clearinghouse for feedback about specific radios. I was also amused by a post by Radio Russ enumerating a “12-Step Program for Radio Addicts.” He writes that step 1 is: “We admitted we were powerless over Radios, that our lives had become unmanageable without a radio in every room.”

On the site, Jeff also has a 3-part semi-autobiographical story “The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much,” in which he describes both the origins of his radio love and how he has descended into obsession.

In our email interview, I chatted with Herculodge founder Jeff McMahon about his website and why he’s so passionate about radio and radios.

Jennifer Waits: Herculodge covers a range of topics, but the majority of the most
 recent posts deal with radio. What’s the main goal of the blog and how does radio fits into that?

Jeff McMahon: I had no main goal except to cover a wide range of passions, radios, books, movies, etc., but I noticed early on that over 90% of the web traffic was for radios, so I focused more and more on them. You know the saying, a tree that falls in an uninhabited forest makes no noise. I wanted readership. I wanted my posts to be read and I learned early on that a blog should be focused, achieve brand identity, and fill a niche. I still write about other topics, but mostly I deal with radios.

Jennifer Waits: Why is it that you are so passionate about radio?

Jeff McMahon: My radio passion stems from childhood memories of radios, falling in love with the music of the Delfonics, the Ojays, The Isley Brothers, Carol King, to name a few bands and singers whose songs played secretly through my earbuds and a transistor radio while listening to KFRC in San Francisco; also, a good radio is like a security blanket, a constant friend during nights I don’t sleep well. In general live radio makes me feel connected.  Readers talk about the same nostalgia and sense of connection, so I know I’m not alone.

Jennifer Waits: What is it that you find fascinating about radios themselves (vs. radio broadcasts)?

Jeff McMahon: I like that a familiar voice can be something, a personality, who becomes part of your life over the years. Of course, it remains a miracle to me that voices and music can play through a little box.

Jennifer Waits: When did you start collecting radios and what was your first radio?

Jeff McMahon: I got the radio bug inexplicably in 2004 after eating a Lucille’s Barbecue. My wife Carrie and I exited the restaurant, entered a nearby electronics store on a whim and I walked straight toward a blue Tivoli PAL and bought it. That began a long trek into a radio obsession.

Jennifer Waits: How many radios do you own and what are your favorites?

Jeff McMahon: I own or have owned about 50 or so. My favorites are my Panasonic RF-888 and Sony ICF-5900. My favorite modern radio is my Sangean U3 worksite radio, which I use in my office/power yoga room.

Jennifer Waits: Do you prefer vintage or modern radios?

Jeff McMahon: I like both. Obviously, a heavy vintage has a grandeur that today’s cheaply made radios don’t have.

Jennifer Waits: Have you ever worked in radio? Where?

Jeff McMahon: Never. I’ve been a full-time college English/Composition instructor for 25 years.

Jennifer Waits: What type of radio programming do you enjoy the most? What are some of your favorite stations?

Jeff McMahon: I love KPCC 89.3 (NPR), KCRW 89.9 (NPR), 88.1 KJAZZ, 640 KFI AM, 570 Fox Sports [KLAC].

Seattle Radio Theatre's 2008 Performance

Radio passion takes a variety of forms. Some people love the artifacts and become avid collectors of vintage equipment, promotional materials, and publications. Some are scholars, meticulously curating radio’s history. And others seek out present-day radio gems in order to remind people that radio is still relevant.

Seattle Radio Theatre founder Feliks Banel’s enthusiasm for radio spans across several of these categories.

While he was the deputy director of the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle (MOHAI) he started a tradition of live holiday radio plays. Over the years these radio dramas have included performances of both original and vintage scripts. Last week the 2009 production featured a live performance of It’s a Wonderful Life (you can listen to the podcast here or take a look at a video of that performance here).

It’s exciting to see that Seattle Radio Theatre is keeping live radio drama alive. According to the program notes for this year’s production,

“As far as Seattle Radio Theatre producers can tell, we are the only regularly-scheduled live radio drama in the United States (if you consider once a year ‘regular’). While there are many groups recording radio programs in-studio and ‘live to tape’ before a live audience, Seattle Radio Theatre is the only one that has done it every year live on the radio before a live audience for what will be a eighth year in 2009.”

In addition to his work with Seattle Radio Theatre, Feliks also writes about radio for his blog I Still Love Radio and for the website Crosscut.com. In his email interview with me he talks not only about radio drama and his own radio past; but also shares with me his insights about the role that radio has played in Christmas traditions in America, with “shared holiday moments” facilitated over the airwaves. I love this idea and it reminds me of the fun I had last Christmas Eve watching the WGN Yule Log while listening to their accompanying soundtrack of classic radio dramas.

Thanks to Feliks Banel for taking the time to chat with me by email about his love for radio. Although he was a bit nervous about the “Radio Obsessive” label, I hope that he embraces this honor, as he’s doing important work to help keep radio alive.

Jennifer Waits: Why are you so passionate about radio?

Feliks Banel: As a listener, radio is a great medium. It’s portable, and local stations (with the right level of staffing) have the ability to mix local and national programming according to what’s most appropriate for a given situation, whether local news or events, or national news or events. It’s also practical, in that you can wash dishes or drive or get other tasks done while you listen, without diminishing your concentration (as is required when watching TV). Radio can be as unobtrusive as you need it to be, turned up loud or on in the background, at midday or in the dark.

As a producer, radio is inexpensive to create. Broadcast quality mics and recorders are just a tiny fraction of what similar video equipment would cost, and editing is much simpler and cheaper. Also, anyone with a telephone anywhere in the world is within reach of any radio producer/reporter with a few inexpensive pieces of equipment. It’s a very different situation for TV producers, who must be in the same room with their interviewees (or connected via satellite to a studio), and who must have thousands of dollars of camera and lighting and editing equipment on hand to produce even a simple broadcast quality video interview.

I also think I was trained to love radio. I was born in 1968, but I grew up with older parents who were definitely of the radio generation. My Polish father was four when Lindberg crossed the Atlantic, and he had memories of listening to radio news about the event with his parents in their home in his native Poland. He also told me of hearing early morning transmissions in Russian from Moscow of text for rural editions of Pravda (radio was used by the Pravda editors like an audible teletype).

As a young man in the Polish Home Army (organized resistance to the Nazis and the Soviets), he learned of the D-Day landings by way of a radio captured earlier that morning from a German weather station that his unit had overran. That he could be hundreds of miles away from London and get this very good news out in the woods somewhere, surrounded by Nazis and Soviets, was pretty amazing.

My mother grew up in 1930s and 1940s London, listening with her family to many of the classic BBC programs from that era, including It’s That Man Again, In Town Tonight, Bandwaggon, Monday Night at Seven and J.B. Priestley’s Sunday night “Postscripts.” I heard about all that stuff as I was growing up, and have gone on to read and listen to as many radio history books, articles and recordings as I can.

Radio was always a large part of our media diet growing up, especially 1970s commercial AM news, Top 40 and oldies. As I matured, I found FM and public radio, but still find myself listening to commercial news and talk, especially for local content during breaking news or inclement weather. I’m pretty busy and rarely watch TV (usually only documentaries on our local PBS station), but I always listen to radio several hours a day.

Can You Hear the Radio Drama?

Jennifer: I noticed that you have an essay posted on your “I Still Love Radio” website in which you draw links between the rise of radio and the rise of the American Christmas in the 20th Century.

In the spirit of the season, could you give a few highlights of what you found?

Feliks: As I postulate in that piece, radio and Christmas were inextricably linked in the first half of the 20th century and each was a factor in growth and “market penetration” of the other during this time. From what’s generally held to be the first transmission of the human voice (by Reginald Fessenden on Christmas Eve 1906), up through each World War II Christmas, radio played a unique role in creating an audience for simultaneously shared holiday moments that helped build a national community (much like FDR speeches and sporting events during other times of the year).

That the first broadcast was on Christmas Eve was, I think, not a coincidence: so much more material (centuries of music, spoken word) lends itself to broadcast on that night than on any other night throughout the year. Later Christmas broadcasts (especially firsts, including the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere) took advantage of the natural state of Christmas, especially the fact that most Americans were home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, creating perhaps the largest potential audience of any day of the year.

The war years provided some of the most poignant broadcasts, juxtaposing war zones with what’s supposed to be the most peaceful night of the year. Ed Murrow’s Christmas 1940 broadcast from London; FDR and Churchill’s joint address from Washington, DC on Christmas Eve 1941; the first civilian special broadcast of “Command Performance” on Christmas Eve 1942; an episode of the Army Air Force program “I Sustain The Wings” from Staten Island on Christmas 1943; and announcement of Glenn Miller’s disappearance on Christmas Eve 1944 are among my favorite examples of this.

Jennifer: When did you start Seattle Radio Theatre and what prompted you to create it?

Feliks: Seattle Radio Theatre began in 2000 at the Museum of History & Industry, the same year I produced the first live broadcast of Sandy Bradley’s Potluck! Holiday Reunion (also at the museum). Sandy Bradley’s Potluck! was a live variety show produced in Seattle up until the mid 1990s, and Sandy was eager to come back for an annual live show (on KBCS FM), which lasted until about two years ago…

I’m not an old-time radio fanatic, but I have enjoyed listening to radio drama for many years, and had worked with Jim French at KIRO in the early 1990s. Jim’s been producing live-to-tape radio dramas in Seattle for many years, and syndicating them under the name Imagination Theatre. I came around to wanting to do my shows live because it makes for more of a spectacle, and is more fun knowing that anything can go wrong at any minute.

Anybody can stop the tape and start over. Doing it live is a bigger adrenaline rush, and is incredibly addictive. I wrote my own 60-minute scripts the first few years as a way of scratching my screenplay itch (it was nice to not have to try to sell the scripts, and to know that they would be produced and not just sit gathering dust). It was exhausting work, which is why I was glad to discover the Lux Radio Theater scripts for old holiday movies. I also produced a number of other live remote broadcasts from the museum beginning in 2001 (on community radio KBCS FM), mainly a series of recently rediscovered musical scripts originally produced in Seattle from the early to the mid-20th century.

Again, radio is such a practical way to distribute audio material, and live radio creates a spectacle and an immediacy, as well as a means for people to participate from far away. It was a great fit for what we were doing at the museum at that time.

Jennifer: How often have you simulcast your productions over terrestrial radio?

Feliks: We’ve done the annual show as a live broadcast every year since 2002 (on KING FM from 2002-2003; on KPLU FM from 2004-2006; on KPTK AM since 2007). The first two shows were done “live to tape” for KIXI AM. When we went live in 2002, there was no going back. KPTK is great to work with, and the shows sound better on AM than they do on FM. FM is too clean and crisp for radio drama. Adding up the Seattle Radio Theatre live shows, plus Sandy Bradley’s Potluck! Holiday Reunions, plus the performances on KBCS, I’d say I’ve done close to 20 live remote productions in the past nine years.

Jennifer: What has listener response been like for Seattle Radio Theatre?

Feliks: We had fewer than 100 people in the auditorium for the first production in 2000, and this year had close to 500. I always hear from several people after each year’s show about how much they enjoyed it, and how they wish we’d do more than just one show a year.

One of my favorite listener comments was from 2006, when a massive storm had left thousands without electricity for several days, including the night of our show. A man who lives about 20 miles from Seattle told me that he and his wife stoked up their woodstove, and then listened in the dark to the show on their battery powered radio.

I also hear from people who are grateful to have a program that they can listen to with their families, including young children, and from others who are thrilled that local celebrities (especially our famous TV clown JP Patches) are back on the air.

Jennifer: Have you ever worked in radio? Where?

Feliks: I was an intern and then worked part-time as an assistant editor in the newsroom at KIRO AM from 1990-1992 and loved it. I was offered a full-time job that would have meant overnight and weekend shifts, and opted instead to go into 9-5 public affairs and communications as a longterm strategy that would be more conducive to home and family. After seven years as deputy director of Seattle’s history museum, I went back into media in 2006, and have been producing TV segments and programs for the Seattle Channel (civic TV station) for the past three years.

Jennifer: What are your plans for your “I Love Radio” website?

Feliks: I toyed with going to grad school for media history and actually was accepted to the University of Washington here in Seattle for autumn 2005. But I backed out, not wanting to try and balance work, family and school (I’m not sure what I was thinking). But I still want to study and write about media, so starting a blog seemed like the best way to proceed.

I launched istillloveradio.org in June, and have spent the past six months writing timely critical pieces about contemporary radio (local and national) as well as essays about historical/pop culture topics (DDay radio coverage, books about radio, films about radio, etc.)

In September, I began freelance writing about local radio and TV for a Seattle-based non-profit journalism project called Crosscut.com. Since then, most of my writing about local radio has shifted to Crosscut.com (I did a piece about 9/11 on NPR, a piece about Seattle classical station KING FM’s troubles, a look back at a 1980s Seattle alternative station and a profile of the new PRI president, who happens to be an attorney from Seattle, etc.) and my more national pieces have been for ISLR. My plans for 2010 are to upgrade the look of the site, and to add more audio (contemporary, historic and otherwise from my own collection and where I can find it already posted on the web).

Most local radio suffers from a lack of criticism, and national radio criticism is pretty much nonexistent. I love John Crosby’s columns from the 1940s and 1950s, and Robert John Landry’s writing about radio from the 1940s (as well as Jack Gould’s TV and radio criticism, and Michael Arlen’s TV criticism)—I’d love to have a full-time gig writing about radio and other audio entertainment. Until that happens, I’ll keep writing for Crosscut and ISLR.

Jennifer: What do you enjoy about radio today? Any favorite stations?

Feliks: What I have always enjoyed most about radio is live coverage of significant local and/or national events, whether planned in advance like a presidential speech or unanticipated like Scott Simon’s excellent coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Very rarely does the addition of video provide much enhancement to live coverage—the audio is often much more evocative (and you don’t have to sit and stare at a screen—you can get up and move around or you can see the faces of other people you’re listening with).

I’m also a big fan of live, “curated” music programs. We’re lucky to have two fabulous shows like this in the Seattle area: “The Swing Years” with Amanda Wilde on KUOW (American popular music from the 1920s to the 1950s), heard every Saturday (and hosted live by Amanda) from 7pm to 12 midnight; and “All Blues” with John Kessler, heard Saturday and Sunday nights from 6 to 12 midnight on KPLU.

The fact that Amanda and John are sitting in their respective studios, hearing the music in real-time (rather than voice-tracking) and then commenting about each tune live, gives both of these programs a decidedly human feel. Plus, as a listener, you know that Amanda and John are experiencing the same weather and same daylight or darkness as you—you feel connected.

I also like KING FM’s commercial-free HD channel (this time of year playing all classical Christmas music); community station KBCS FM, where I used to do a Christmas Eve show and where I’ve done several special programs over the years; KIRO FM, the newstalk station I worked for 20 years ago where I still have a lot of friends and where they do a consistent job covering local news and live events; and KUOW FM’s HD channel that carries BBC World Service. I also tune in KASB in my car, the station from Bellevue High School (which I wrote about for Crosscut a few months ago), because I love how “pure” it sounds.

KOME Sticker

Recently I was tracking some college radio news when I ran across Greg Blouch’s website, “Radio Sticker of the Day.” Immediately I was taken back to my junior high school years when radio station stickers were a hot commodity. My classmate Ricky Kanazawa would spend most of our English class time focused on a stack of bright yellow and black KOME stickers and an exacto knife, carving up new, inspired, psychedelic creations. I’m not sure if Greg has tapped into this aspect of sticker art; but his website is a testament to the most visible radio station branding that there is.

KISR Sticker Courtesty Greg Blouch

I dropped Greg a note to find out what fuels his obsession for radio station stickers and learn more about his website, “Radio Sticker of the Day.”

It turns out that his fascination with stickers began in the 1980s, around the same time that my friends and I were plastering KOME, KSJO, and KMEL stickers (with a picture of a camel on them) all over our notebooks, windows, and Pee-Chee folders.

Over the years he’s accumulated around 12,000 stickers and largely credits the Internet for making it easier for him to contact stations. His site only features pictures of stickers that are in his collection. I love that attention to detail! On to the interview:

WYSO Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer Waits: How did you get started collecting radio stickers and what was your first sticker?

Greg Blouch: When I was 13 years old our family moved from Middleport, New York (in the western part of the state near Niagara Falls/Buffalo) to Celina, Ohio.  I was homesick and wanted to get my hands on something that reminded me of New York.

My favorite radio station had been 107.7 WUWU which was an offbeat, almost freeform, rock station heavy on the new wave music of the time (this was around 1982/1983.)  I wrote to the station and asked for a sticker which I promptly wasted by slapping it on a book cover for school.

WUWU Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

My obsession really began after I found a book in the library with station mailing addresses and started sending out self-addressed stamped envelopes with a note asking for decals.

My success rate was only about 50% but it was fun to get an occasional surprise in the mailbox…and it still is.  The Internet and the ability to write to stations instantly has helped the collection grow tremendously.  About 90% of my stickers have been acquired since I  got online in 1997.

Jennifer: How many stickers do you think you have?

Greg: I’ve tried to count them more than once but got bored and gave up.  My guesstimate would be somewhere around 12,000 different stickers.

KMLE Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: How do you find your stickers?

Greg: I subscribe to 100000watts.com, a subscription-only website with updated information on every radio station in the United States and Canada.

I find station websites through the 100000watts database and email every one of them going state-by-state (I’m currently canvassing my own state of Ohio, next is Oklahoma.)

I always offer to send a SASE but usually they just mail them to me.  Every once in a while I’ll venture overseas and email foreign stations but the return rate is much lower.
I also trade stickers with a small group of like-minded hobbyists and am a member and column editor of Decalcomania, which is a newsletter for radio enthusiasts and radio promotional item collectors.

Jennifer: What’s the strangest promotional item that you have from a radio station?

Greg: I received a whoopee cushion from a rock station in California, a fishing lure from KARP in Minnesota and a condom packet from Germany, but the strangest might be a bar of soap from Earlham College’s WECI in Richmond, Indiana.  The station logo is engraved into the bar itself.

I have a few boxes of non-sticker stuff…lots of keychains, magnets, mugs, t-shirts, pens, buttons, mousepads and on and on.

WECI Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: Do you ever visit radio stations?

Greg: Rarely.  I annoy the receptionist at the Dayton Clear Channel cluster every few months and ask for stickers but that’s about it.

Jennifer: Have you ever worked at a radio station?

WWSU Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Greg: I did college radio for three years at WWSU which is Wright State University’s station.  While still in college I answered an ad that my future wife saw in the paper looking for air talent for a brand new radio station.  I threw together a tape, got an interview with the PD and somehow got hired.  I was the night jock on WZJX “94-5 XRock” which was Dayton’s first commercial alternative station.  This was 1993/94.

I was on the air about 35 hours a week plus a little bit of production and promotion work as well as being in school full time.  It was a tough schedule to pull off but a great experience where I learned that I like radio but didn’t necessarily like working in radio.

Speaking on the air never came naturally to me but I think I faked my way through it fairly well.  When the ownership group sold the station and flipped it to Oldies it was both a disappointment and a relief that I was no longer in the biz.  I got a steady civil service job and never attempted to get back into radio.

WZJX Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: What do you love about radio?

Greg: So much of my love for radio is music-based and now that I’m on the curmudgeonly cusp of 40 I find it hard to listen to a lot of it.  It’s either songs I’m burned out on or styles that I can’t get into.

I fully admit that my musical tastes are permanently stuck in the 1980s and early 90s.  I do love good sounding production and a DJ who sounds like he’s into what he’s playing and is doing more than reading liners.

Jennifer: What kind of radio do you listen to? (college? commercial? music? talk?)

Greg: As far as terrestrial radio goes, it’s almost all college/non-commercial and sports talk radio these days.  I love college radio because it’s usually music you don’t hear everywhere else, presented by kids who are just being themselves in all their unprofessional glory.  It’s refreshing.
My job allows me to listen to a few hours of podcasts a day.  Most of it comes from WNYC, KCRW, WBEZ and a whole lot of individual NPR shows.

Jennifer: What are you favorite radio stations?

WOXY Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Greg: I could pick up WOXY from Oxford, Ohio when they were on 97.7 FM so I regularly listen to the Internet version.  I like listening to my old stomping grounds of WWSU although, at only 20 watts, it can be a tough catch. 

WYSO from Antioch University in Yellow Springs is a solidly quirky NPR affiliate.  My favorite might be 6 Music which is the BBC’s “alternative” digital radio station.  I especially like Roundtable, where four music geeks meet to hear, discuss and judge new music releases.

Besides the aforementioned WUWU, my favorite station from the past would be Toronto’s CFNY in the 1980s.  A friend would send me tapes of the station which had tons of cool music, about 30% of it (by law!) consisted of mostly-unheard-of-in-the-States Canadian artists.

WFMU Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: What can a sticker tell you about a radio station?

Greg: Hmmmm…not much.  I guess the only answer I have is that you can tell it’s a Clear Channel station because they often use the same logos for their stations across the country.  The blandness is kinda sad.  A single generic logo for all their “Kiss” and “Mix” stations…only the frequencies on the stickers are different.

Jennifer: Anything else?

Greg: If anyone out there has any stickers to swap, I’m always looking for a trade.  Email: radiodecals@gmail.com

Thanks to Greg for sharing his radio obsession with me and for turning me on to some more stations. Your sticker is in the mail…

Previous Radio Obsessives:

Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

Jose Fritz

I’m awed by all the radio enthusiasts, collectors, historians, and scholars out there; so I’m going to try to feature some of my favorites on Radio Survivor in a new feature called Radio Obsessives.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my interview with Garrett Wollman about his fascination with radio towers is what prompted me to begin this quest to profile radio obsessives; simply because I love talking to other radio fans about radio.

“Jose Fritz” lives for radio and regularly blogs about radio factoids from the olden days on his blog Arcane Radio Trivia. In many ways I’ve found a kindred spirit in radio reportage, as Jose is also a fan of non-commercial radio and continues to remain optimistic about the future of college radio.

Interestingly, he’s opted on his blog to focus entirely on the past, avoiding “topical” stories for the most part. Consistently writing an impressive 5 posts a week, he’s covered everything from the long-forgotten radio show “The Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour,” to WXPN’s scandalous student radio past, to James Brown’s career as a radio station mogul, to little-known radio pioneers like Reverend Jozef Murgas.

I had an email chat with Jose Fritz to learn more about his radio obsession and to attempt to peel back some of the layers of his secret identity. I can tell you that he’s an engineer by day, is a blogger by night, has a music and radio past, and writes a fun and educational blog. On to the interview:

Jennifer Waits: When did you start Arcane Radio Trivia and what prompted you to begin writing the blog?

Jose Fritz: I began Friday, May 13th 2005. I decided one day maybe a few weeks prior that I needed a structure that would compel me to write more regularly.  I gave myself a set of strict rules and started that Friday. It’s been 5 posts a week since then for 220 weeks; that’s 1047 posts not counting today.  I keep thinking I should edit and compile them into a book.

I though it would make my other writing more productive. I was wrong.  I did write more, but I wrote more about radio, instead of becoming a writing exercise it became a consuming hobby.  I still manage to get the rest of my writing done, but I often end up posting after midnight.

Vintage Radio Ad Courtesy Jose Fritz

Jennifer: Why are you obsessed with non-commercial radio?

Jose: Because commercial radio is homogeneous, and worse yet, boring. Non-commercial stations are more free, more varied, less structured and much more regional and local.

Even when a college station is bad, it tends to be exceptionally bad, strikingly bad, even entertainingly bad. I’ll choose entertainingly bad over inoffensively boring every time.

Commercial radio has been in a 30-year death spiral.  When it’s all said and done they’ll have squeezed out every drop of what made them interesting.

Jennifer: Have you worked in radio before? Where?

Jose: It’s not just radio. It’s music too.  I’ve booked shows.  I’ve been in bands.   I have been a music critic at newspapers, zines and webzines.  I’ve worked at record labels, promotions companies and three radio stations. I really would like to volunteer at a local community station but it’s hard to find the time these days.

Jennifer: What do you love about radio?

Jose: That’s kind of a broad question.  I really like being turned on to a band I’ve never heard of, a format that nobody ever tried before.  I like old radio dramas. I also am fascinated by radio history as is evident from the continued existence of Arcane Radio Trivia.

Jennifer: What kind of radio do you listen to? (music/talk/college/etc.) Any favorite stations?

Jose: I like eccentric programming.  As I travel the country I make note.  I’ll listen to a screamin’ and hollerin’ preacher on the AM radio at night in New Orleans, I’ll listen to a Polka station in Chicago, A doo-wop show in Quincy, MA, a indie rock show, a great interview…

So let’s name names I think the Minister on WWOZ has spectacular taste as a jazz-man.  I think that Jonathon Solomon on WPRB is constantly good with his playlist of indie rock.  Joe Belock on WFMU has a Phd in garage rock.  There are a plethora of good shows on NPR including This American Life, Fresh Air, American Routes, etc. WRAS, WSOU, KEXP, KCMP…all very reputable solid stations but low power, small market college stations like WHUS, KAOS, KXUA and others are also truly great.

Radiomans Guide Courtesy Jose Fritz

Jennifer: You seem particularly interested in radio’s history. Why is radio history so compelling to you?

Jose: There are a couple reasons.  History is easier for me to write about than current events. By definition there is more in the past than in the present. I also wanted to avoid being topical. I don’t want to focus on opinion pieces. I cover current events when I find them to be either A. directly tied to historical events.  or B. so crucial I think people need to know.

Jennifer: What are your thoughts about the future of radio?

Jose: I think college radio despite some setbacks will persevere.  I think they will weather things largely unchanged. Young people and hobbyists are great at adapting to change and adopting new technology.

Sadly commercial radio will continue to target that lowest common denominator in each demo and age bracket.  The larger radio groups will cut costs, syndicate, simulcast, voice-track and automate every last drop of life out of the media platform.

My car stereo has a USB port. I don’t need to listen to the radio if I don’t want to.  They often make me not want to.

Demonstration Record Warning Courtesy Jose Fritz

Jennifer: How do you track down all the tidbits for your blog? Are you a collector of radio memorabilia?

Jose: Every time I read about something post-worthy, I start a draft. The backlog is several hundred unfinished posts deep now.  I keep a set of radio reference books on my desk, I take notes, and I listen. When a “new” post goes up it might actually have been started 4 years ago.  I add to them as I find out more information.

I don’t collect radio memorabilia so much, though I have a few items mics, and acetates and an absurdly large record collection.

Jennifer: What’s your day job?

Jose: I work for a radio monitoring company.  I am the head field engineer traveling the country continually keeping the services up, the antennas secure and the contracts valid.

Jennifer: Is Jose Fritz your real name?

Jose: Nope.  Different arenas of my writing get their own pseudonyms.

Jennifer: Anything else?

Jose: I keep thinking I can’t do this forever, but then can’t think of a good reason or time to stop.

Thanks so much to Jose Fritz for the interview and also for all of his work documenting radio’s past. In the coming weeks I’ll be featuring more Radio Obsessives.

WLS Radio Tower Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Fandom is an amazing thing and thanks to the Internet it’s easier and easier to find like-minded obsessives who share one’s passion for the most obscure objects, idols, and idiosyncrasies. Radio is no exception. Loads of websites document radio history, with nostalgic archivists collecting ephemera, airchecks, and reminiscences from San Francisco to Boston. Various forums also exist, like those on Radio-Info.com, allowing listeners and industry types to talk shop and share current radio gossip.

And then there’s Garrett Wollman. I recently ran across some of his photographs of radio towers and was fascinated. As part of his work with The Archives @ BostonRadio.org, he’s been traveling around the country meticulously photographing every radio tower that he can find. Sometimes he even ventures into radio and television stations; but for the most part it’s the outside architecture and landscapes that he finds so compelling.

In order to learn more about this project, I contacted Garrett to get the scoop about his love for radio towers and his work to help document the history of radio and television. I was surprised to find out a couple of things: 1) Garrett’s a young guy—a rarity in radio history circles and 2) He’s not a big fan of current radio offerings. After chatting with Garrett, I also was made aware of pursuits like DXing and county counting, making me realize that there’s so much more to the radio scene than I ever realized. On to the interview:

Jennifer: Can you tell me about the background and purpose of BostonRadio.org? And the Archives?

Garrett Wollman: The Archives @ BostonRadio.org (originally The Boston Radio Archives) is, so far as I know, the oldest broadcasting-history Web site on the net.  Scott [Fybush] and I started it in January, 1995, with a simple listing of information about the stations in the Boston market…Scott was already writing his New England RadioWatcher columns (now NorthEast Radio Watch)…and I started to archive them.  I also started creating radio and TV dial pages for other markets in New England, and I think around that same time we started writing histories of all the stations…Eventually, the dial pages became too hard to maintain, and other Web sites (like Chip Kelley’s original 100000watts) were doing it better, so I dropped them, but kept the histories.

My first tower-hunting trip was to Cape Cod, in March, 1994.  A couple years later — this is still before the days of good digital cameras– I started taking video of the tower trips.  Eventually, digital cameras became good enough, and I bought on in late 2000; that’s when I started developing the photo galleries that you see in the Archives. What you see is, by the way, less than half of what I actually have “in the can” — I have several thousand more photos from 2001 through last month that I have not yet published.

Radio Station Park Photo Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Each photo gallery involves about 20 hours of work to write and edit, even though the images you see are rarely processed in any meaningful way.  Often, when doing a photo gallery about a market, I will do research in the FCC files, in other reference books like /Broadcasting Yearbook/, and in Web resources like mailing-list archives and Wikipedia, to fill in as much as I can about the history of a facility.

I try to identify the correct callsign, community of license, channel, and station class (FM) or antenna mode (AM) for each station at the specific time the photos were taken.  I want to get more semantic tagging into the photo galleries, so that it would be easier to identify, for example, all the photos (across multiple galleries) of a particular station or tower, but thus far this has been stymied by my rather antiquated, homebrew workflow.

Garrett: Well, I’m not sure that I am.  I’m really passionate about geography, history, and some aspects of architecture, and touring the world’s broadcast sites unites a lot of those interests.  I find much of today’s radio unlistenable and television unwatchable.

On the other hand, I grew up in the 1980s — during the second round of CHR [Contemporary Hits Radio] Wars — at a time when radio still meant something to a lot of people.  It still mattered, when I was going school, what station you listened to; those of my classmates who listened to Q-99 or B-100 were looked down upon by the 95 Triple X crowd, and those of us who listened to Triple X were considered hopelessly bereft of taste by the rock snobs who listened to The Wizard.

By the early 1990s, CHR formats had left me behind (at the ripe old age of 20!), and when I moved to Boston I eventually gravitated to AAA…I learned to listen to — if not always like — some great evening talk hosts, like the late Dr. David Brudnoy on WBZ, and I still enjoy (but don’t listen very much) to the meandering, but usually non-political, Steve LeVeille on WBZ overnights.  Most of my listening today is to the BBC (both World Service, heard here on WBUR, and domestic Radio 4 over the Internet), and in the car to WXRV (92.5B Haverhill), WBZ, and the XM decades channels (particularly 80s on 8 and 90s on 9).

On the gripping hand, I have an engineering (specifically computer networking) background, so I have both an appreciation for the behind-the-scenes work that engineers of all kinds do, and the sort of curiosity that makes me want to know how stuff works, and why, and who built it, and where does it come from.  When I’m not doing this stuff, you’ll find me reading planning documents about a local highway project, or writing a Wikipedia article about a recent Supreme Court decision.

I seem to be running out of limbs here…One final factor is that my parents absolutely refused to pay extra for an FM radio in their cars when I was growing up.  For much of that period, we lived well east of Burlington, Vermont, and thus well out of the night patterns of the AM stations there.  In the winter months, as my father was driving my home from a Scout meeting or other evening event, I would tune the radio and listen to all the other things on the radio — and back then, the AM dial wasn’t filled with satellite talk at night — so we might hear something completely different from anything available locally.

I particularly remember hearing Wolfman Jack on W****N****BC on these late nights.  So I became, unintentionally, something of a DXer as well, and that fed into the geography interest, at least until the AM dial became so filled with indistinguishable satellite junk that there was no longer much interest left.  I joined some of the DX clubs, but eventually dropped out when it seemed that they were mostly interested in yammering on forever about how much better it was in the decades before I was born.  (I’m still a member of the Worldwide TV-FM DX Association, which is a bit less prone to this sort of nostalgic excess.)

WCNK Tower Photo Copyright 2001, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Garrett: Never.

Jennifer: How many towers have you photographed? What states have you visited?

Garrett: I have visited all of the lower 48 except North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi.  I will fix all of these at some point.  (A friend of mine, George Greene, is a county-counter, so he has actually visited every single *county* — a much more difficult challenge.)  I’ve done five Canadian provinces, all in the east.

On my current camera, I’ve taken about 10,000 shots.  I think I was somewhere close to 3,000 on the old camera.  (What a difference bigger memory makes!)  Of course, many of those pictures are junk, and will never be seen on the Web site.  But given all that, I believe I’ve seen in excess of 3,000 stations, and photographed over two thirds of them.

Garrett: Touring radio stations is something that’s normally arranged by my partner-in-crime, Scott Fybush. As a freelance journalist in the trade press, he goes to trade shows and meetings of industry organizations, and knows a lot of people who can open the doors for us at various station groups.  It can be a lot easier to get a tour when you can start your conversation with “I spoke to [name of CEO] at NAB last year, and he said I really ought to see your stations.”  I can’t do that — it’s strictly a hobby for me — so when I travel alone it’s mostly the outsides of things that I see, unless it’s a business day in a small market and I can just walk in the front door and get an impromptu tour.  (Such things do happen!)

We do try to make maps that show where all the studios and transmitters are, also noting any particularly significant historic studio locations. Currently this is all on paper; some day soon, GPS systems will be good enough to assist us in the navigation, although I will probably still want paper maps for my own reference after the fact.  (I’ve been able to piece together photo galleries from seven-year-old photos because I still had the maps and could figure out what route we had taken through a market.)

WHSD Antenna Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Jennifer: Have you visited any college radio stations? If so, which ones?

Garrett: I’ve seen a good number of college stations from the outside.  As far as inside tours go — and excluding college-owned public radio — I’ve seen WBRU (95.5B Providence) and WREK (91.1C2 Atlanta) this year.  In the past, I’ve seen WHRB (95.3A Cambridge), WMBR (88.1A Cambridge), and a few others that I can’t readily remember.

Garrett: There was the time, back during “Big Trip 2001“, when we were in Floyd’s Knobs, Indiana — across the river from Louisville — and an elderly local accosted us and insisted that we were government agents who had some control over the radiation in his neighborhood.

There was also one time — I forget which year this was — when we went to see the tower of WHPE-FM (95.5C1 High Point), and had the security manager of the chemical plant across the street call us in to the police as suspicious characters.  Thankfully, the rental car was not in my name that trip….

Garrett: Yes and no.  As a medium, absolutely.  There will always be a place for a medium of information and entertainment that does not demand all of our attention at once.  There’s no substitute for radio when driving or doing any number of other, primarily visual tasks.

As a means of delivering prerecorded music, not so much.  Radio programmers and record companies have so segmented the market that there is no longer a mass audience for musical entertainment any more.  The days when a CHR could pull a 25 share are gone, in every market.  With dozens of choices on the radio today, none of which are precisely what I want, why would I set through the endless commercials (or endless fundraisers) when I can get exactly what I want from Pandora or my iPod?

The specific technologies of over-the-air broadcasting are clearly on their last legs in the developed world — I give them another decade, maybe two if the broadcasting industry succeeds in its drive to put non-broadcast radio at a competitive disadvantage (through, e.g., the “Local Radio Freedom Act”, which preserves in law the subsidy regime whereby analog broadcasters can use recorded music for free, but digital broadcasters have to pay).  In the developing world, probably about twice as long, because the economics of broadcast are much more favorable there (traditional analog receivers are small, light, cheap, and battery-powered, whereas transmitters are big, heavy, expensive, and require an external power source).

All this, of course, is reason to go and see these facilities while they are still around.  I almost certainly won’t get to all 14,000 — and some of them really aren’t worth getting to — but I am making an effort to see all the significant sites in all the significant markets while they are still with us.

Garrett: I like non-comm AAA and Americana formats, particularly WXPN (88.5 Philadelphia) and WNCW (88.7 Spindale) of five to ten years ago.  I think a lot of the NPR news and talk programming is excellent, but it honestly doesn’t do anything for me.  The best spoken-word radio station in the English-speaking world, in my view, is BBC Radio 4 — it’s everything that I wish NPR was but could never be.  (What other English language radio station is still commissioning new drama?)  If this were Britain, that would be making a pretty strong statement of my social class, but thankfully it isn’t, and they provide “Listen Again” worldwide for most shows, so I can get my fix of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” or “The News Quiz” or even the Shipping Forecast at a time that fits my leftpondian schedule.

Most of today’s music formats turn me off.  If I’m stuck in a market where there’s nothing else to listen to, I may find a local Hot AC or Modern Rocker, but I’m just as likely to turn the radio off.

KYCA Studios Photo Copyright 2009, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Garrett: Rarely.  There are plenty of college stations around Boston, and some of them even do worthwhile programming at least occasionally, but they’re never dependable enough, and there are lots of other choices here in market #11.  Some of the smaller college stations, and most of the high school stations, show little evidence of understanding what operating a radio station is about; if they have any listeners who aren’t actually in the studio, it would be a surprise.  Many of them seem to look at it as a glorified iPod, and put little or no effort into presentation.  But there are occasional gems.

I remember about 18 months ago, on the little class-D high-school station in Acton, Mass., hearing a student on the air who actually seemed to have some idea of what a jock is supposed to do; I actually sent him an email complimenting him on his presentation and suggesting that he look for colleges that have a student-run station.  (Of course, he then spoiled the impression by dumping carrier without a legal ID when his shift was over — stations with limited schedules like that really ought to get hooked up with a radio reading service.)