Happy World College Radio Day! October 6, 2023 marks the 13th annual College Radio Day. As part of the festivities at Radio Survivor, we did a special episode of the podcast/radio show: College Radio’s Hidden Early History. On the show, I talk about the role that radio clubs played in germinating some of the first […]
A casual comment during a college orientation session in 2020 was the spark that led to the revival of college radio station WHRC at Haverford College. Although Haverford had one of the earliest student-led radio stations in the 1920s (WABQ, whose first broadcast was 100 years ago in 1923!) and a very active AM carrier […]
What are the odds that a popular television series would feature your college radio station as a backdrop for two episodes? That’s exactly what Jennifer found, when HBO’s “Mare of Easttown” employed a set that accurately recreates Haverford College’s station as a location for the limited-run drama. Jennifer talked with the show’s production designer to […]
Student DJ Anne Harris is on the microphone in the booth at WWXU Haverford College Radio. While back announcing a track by Mannequin Pussy, she looks through a sticker-covered window into the record library, where local band Androgynous is preparing to play live. Posters, stickers and flyers are plastered on the walls and there are […]
Colleges and high schools are finishing up their first – and, with hope, last – full academic COVID year, and all indicators are that student radio remained on the air, as students adjusted to online classes and socially distant campuses. Jennifer Waits reports back from the Intercollegiate Broadcast System annual conference, held virtually this year, […]
Jennifer, Eric and Paul get the gang back together to remember community radio innovator Lorenzo Milam, who passed away on July 19. We reflect on how he helped to propagate a community access model of broadcasting that departed somewhat from the model of the first Pacifica stations, and was reflective of the counter-cultural currents of […]
We dig into the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision on new royalty payments for internet radio, looking for clues about the future of small and medium-sized webcasters. In our final review of the 20th anniversary of the Telecom Act of 1996, Matthew Lasar explains how the Act and the political environment of the time affected community […]
Earlier this week, Salon.com posted an article with the title “College radio is dying — and we need to save it.” In the piece, Garrett Martin outlines the situation at WRAS-FM (in which student DJs will soon lose access to the FM station during daytime in order to allow Georgia Public Broadcasting to air public […]
College radio history is largely undocumented, with much lore locked away in the memories of its participants. Glimpses of the past can be found by digging into the archives of student publications, particularly yearbooks and newspapers, where radio activities were often chronicled. Luckily for college radio history buffs like myself, it’s getting easier and easier […]
I was doing a random search on Twitter this weekend when I ran across a photo of a radio reception stamp for the first Haverford College radio station WABQ. It turns out that some of the current radio station participants at Haverford College found this gem on eBay, just in time for this year’s 90th […]
