Radio Survivor

mtvU Woodie Awards

I was starting to feel like such a buzz kill today as I wrote yet another post complaining about the voting process for mtvU’s College Radio Woodie Award.

As I mentioned in my piece for Radio Survivor, this contest has had a number of rounds; so it’s been easy for me to scrutinize various issues along the way.

There were nominees who showed up in the Top 25 after being absent from previous rounds, station call signs attached to the wrong college, and then today I noticed that the voting rules were recently changed, reducing the number of rounds of voting.

(A station testimonial on the Woodies Contest Page)

Here is why 90.5 WASU is the best college radio station:

1) The perfect music for college!
2) Always giving away great stuff like movie tickets, concert tickets, and anything else us poor college kids want.
3) Hilarious commercials that are created by the students.
4) Great radio voices that are always on air. LIVE!
5) They do so much and their studio is like a closet. A new one is being built right now but they are the best station I have ever heard any they have done so much with little resources. That is passion!
6) The station manager is Jon Wood. Obviously WASU is destined to win the woody award!

I’ve also poked holes in the annual Princeton Review list of “Best College Radio Stations,” and was tickled this year when I noticed that they accidentally left the #3 station (it turned out to be WSOU) off of their online list of the top 20 stations in their 2010 rankings.

(Another Comment on Woodie Awards page:)

WRCT Pittsburgh. Not on this, but amazing nonetheless. Freeform as ****. http://www.wrct.org

Basically I get irritated when stations proclaim things like “We’re the Best College Radio Station in the Country!” based off of these lists. Am I bitter? Perhaps. My own station was not nominated for either of these awards; and it’s not alone.

(Another Comment on Woodie Award Page…in a nod to Kanye West at the MTV Awards:)

Other stations nominated, I’m real happy for you and Imma let you finish….
BUT KSCR TRULY IS THE BEST COLLEGE RADIO STATION OF ALL TIME OF ALL TIME

So, although I’m really glad that college radio is being recognized; I hope people realize that there are excellent stations beyond those who win these contests.

(Another comment from the Woodies award page:)

appalachian state only have cows and hill billies listening to their station. And none even know how to operate a radio. In other words, they probably are listening to another station instead of listening to your hick music station.

Perhaps the main benefit of these awards is that they get people talking. If your favorite station is nominated, then you may feel pride and may work to help get them an award. And, if your station was left off the list, then you may get angry and start working to promote the heck out of your station so that more people know about it.

(Another comment from Woodie Contest Page:)

WRVU Nashville is a truly great radio station, but the truth is that the non-student run radio shows are what make it a unique station. Most of the college students just play lame trendy hipster crap.

As long as we’re talking and debating about radio; then at least it means that we still care and that it has a future.

mtvU Woodie Awards

Whenever a list is produced of the BEST of anything there will be nay-sayers; whether the list comes from “experts” or is the result of popular vote. For that reason, I’m suspicious of every list that I’ve seen of the most popular/best college radio stations. Now with the latest contest underway, mtvU’s (MTV’s college-oriented network) award for best college radio station in their annual Woodie Awards, I have even more reason to cast a critical eye.

Currently one can vote from among the “top” 100 college radio stations in the U.S. on the mtvU Woodies page on RateMyProfessors.com. This is the second round of voting, as those 100 stations were chosen from a list of 300+ stations that was posted a few weeks ago. On September 15th, based on votes, the list will get whittled down to 50 stations. After that, votes will determine the top 25. Finally, there will be another 4 rounds to determine four regional winners (Northeast, West, South and Midwest). From those regional winners an overall winner will be chosen by popular vote.

I have several problems with mtvU’s specific process:

1) Timing of Nominations over Summer Break a Bad Idea

Voting for the top 100 stations was from August 18th to September 8th (the day after Labor Day). Although one could nominate stations not already on the list, chances are high that many college radio stations were on summer break when the voting process started and missed the opportunity to nominate or vote.

2) Factual Errors in Nominee List Casts Doubt on Results

During the nomination round I saw a ridiculously high number of factual errors on the list of nominated stations. When taking a look at the California stations alone, many of the listings had an incorrect school name attached to a radio station’s frequency and call letters. This makes me very dubious about a lot of things. The lack of attention to detail casts doubt on the entire voting process for me. It also means that we can’t know for sure if people were voting for the station that they meant to vote for if the call letters and school name were incorrectly matched.

(more…)