Over the years there have been so many reports about the ebb and flow of college radio and I’ve tried my best to not feed into narratives of decline. With that in mind, I was pleased to read a piece this week from Emily White, Gen Z’s College Radio Revival, which outlines feelings about college radio from current participants. It’s eerily like a glimpse into some of my recent college radio station tours, on which I’ve met so many enthusiastic young people who are dedicating their time to their home stations. Is this a revival or just part of the natural cyclical nature of college radio stations, as members join and often graduate a few years later?
One thing that is for certain is that college radio faced many challenges during the 2020 COVID pandemic and its ensuing years of lock-downs and limited access to campuses and studio spaces. Since I resumed my station tours in 2022, I’ve met with many college radio participants who have talked about having to rebuild station culture after students returned to campus. Many have also reported that institutional memory was lost during that time, which can have both negative and positive implications. In some cases station leadership opted to rethink mission statements and policies to make radio station spaces more inclusive.
As Emily White learned while surveying college radio participants, interest and engagement is quite high at many stations. I heard similar sentiments while visiting radio stations this week. Wesleyan University station WESU had representatives at a school activities fair last week and as a result, 140 students signed up for radio station training. WCFM, the student-run radio station at Williams College, currently has around 130 DJs (and total college enrollment is close to 2,000). Bennington College’s station, B-Rad, has approximately 50 DJs, which is even more impressive since the campus population is less than 800 students. WCFM General Manager Olivia Johnson, a college senior, articulated to me that the Williams College station provides an important creative outlet and that as a student, listening to others’ shows is a way to feel connected to fellow classmates through the lens of personal music taste.
In celebration of College Radio Day, I hope you will tune in to a station near you or at your alma mater or simply a random station that you’ve found online or in my archive of radio station tours.
