It’s no surprise that the home of one of the oldest still-operating college radio stations, WESU 88.1 FM at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, is full of typical student radio artifacts. The walls are plastered with band stickers, posters and flyers. And most rooms contain shelves of CDs, vinyl records and cassettes. In fact, there’s […]
On a Sunday morning, when most college students were likely asleep, KUCR Music Director Diya Anantharaman cheerfully greeted me at University of California, Riverside’s college radio station. Off-the-beaten path, KUCR 88.3 FM occupies a couple of low-slung aging buildings that are adjacent to residence halls and apartments near the northern edge of campus. Headquarters for […]
College radio stations are generally very welcoming spaces, so much so that I often have to tear myself away at the end of a visit. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s WRPI 91.5 FM in Troy, New York had that effect on me. It had it all: comfy couches, the requisite Leo Blais sign, shelves of vinyl records, […]
I hope you had a fantastic College Radio Day last Friday. I spent the day at the Grassroots Radio Conference in Portland, Oregon. While mostly community radio stations were in attendance, I shared “Happy College Radio Day” greetings with colleagues from University of California, Santa Cruz station KZSC (see my tour) and Portland State University […]
The stereotypical college radio station that I conjure up in my mind looks a lot like KDVS 90.3 FM at University of California, Davis. Its spacious digs are full of musical ephemera, from posters of bands that I’ve loved over the years to packed shelves housing recorded material on every format imaginable (even carts). Rumored […]
My inbox and social media feeds were buzzing today, with the release of another best college radio stations list. In the post, “10 of the Most Influential College Radio Stations in the US,” Soundfly lists off ten radio stations: WERS, WFUV (see my tour), KALX (see my tour), WRSU, KCRW, KUTX, KUSF 90.3 FM (see […]
There’s nothing like visiting a college radio station that you listened to in your youth, so I was in full-on fan girl mode when I set foot in college radio station WKDU in Philadelphia. The Drexel University radio station was one of the spots (you can listen at 91.7 FM) that I would lock in […]
When I was planning my trip to Virginia, I had hoped that I would be able to see college radio station WXJM-FM, as I’d long been interested in its association with the MACROCK music festival. Now in its 20th year, the event was launched by WXJM in 1996 and at the time was called the […]
My trip to Cabrini University’s college radio station WYBF was a long-time coming. Located on Philadelphia’s main line in Radnor, Pennsylvania, WYBF has shared an FM channel with WXVU at nearby Villanova University since 1991. I’d known of this time-share arrangement for many years and my own alma mater station WHRC had even made attempts […]
Are you ready? Drum roll… It’s time for my 100th radio station field trip post. Eight years after my first radio station field trip, I’ve traveled to various pockets of the United States (covering 14 states, plus District of Columbia) and Ireland in order to feast my eyes on a wide range of radio stations, […]
