“Get Loud in the Library” reads the headline on a flyer posted on a table in front of KYRS-FM, a community radio station located inside Spokane Central Library in Spokane, Washington. Promoting a series of evening performances that were held in conjunction with the 2025 Grassroots Radio Conference (GRC) in mid-September, the flyer hints at […]
Around lunchtime on a warm day in September, WYBC General Manager Jules Morris and I comb through stacks of paperwork from the Yale University radio station’s files. Car horns, traffic noises, and the sound of church bells seep through the windows of the office space on the second floor of a nearly 100-year-old apartment building […]
Perched on a shelf in the WCFM 91.9 FM studio at Williams College sit well-loved copies of Moby Dick, Ulysses, and The Idiot. Band stickers are plastered on an entry door, records and CDs are spread throughout the room, and an overhead pipe rumbles — a reminder of the college radio station’s dorm basement digs. […]
This year, College Radio Day began for me in the best possible way, with a visit to Middlebury College’s student-run radio station WRMC 91.1 FM in Middlebury, Vermont. From the second that I walked into the station, on the upper floor of the Proctor Dining Hall, I was charmed by the colorful space. Lavender and […]
As I was plotting out my fall vacation to New England, I imagined chilly days, falling leaves and colorful foliage. While hot weather was the norm for much of the trip, the first bit of crispness was in the air for my twilight visit to B-Rad, the student-run college radio station at Bennington College in […]
One of my favorite things about tuning in to terrestrial radio is hearing unlikely juxtapositions as stations fade in and out of each other. With religious radio covering much of the left side of the dial in some communities, there are often unintentionally bizarre mash-ups of faith-based messages with the sometimes edgier music and lyrics […]
In 2009, a University of Denver Magazine profile of the school’s student radio station bore the headline, “The nine lives of DU radio.” It’s a fitting description for the ebb and flow of radio activity on the Colorado campus, where there have been at least 7 distinct stations since the 1940s. The current college radio […]
A sentence on the KRCX website, “Regis University is home to Denver’s oldest college radio station,” piqued my interest and led to a journey not only through the radio station, but down many archival rabbit holes in search of more information. The story goes that the station began as a “dorm room shortwave broadcast,” but […]
One of the first things that I noticed when I arrived at WMPG-FM in Portland, Maine was a familiar-looking three-dimensional grey cardboard sign perched in the lobby window. Hidden behind a chair and near stacks of bumper stickers, the sign is on my hypothetical radio station tour bingo card. Sent by musician Leo Blais many […]
“Walk to the front between the two large turrets!” read the text message from WZLY historian Berit Raines, directing me to the entrance of Billings Hall, a gothic 1904 building that is home to the Wellesley College radio station as well as various student services and administrative offices. While walking across the lushly landscaped campus […]
