Saving College Stations Panel at NFCB (Photo: J. Waits)
It’s shaping up to be a really weird and sad couple of weeks for college radio news. Two weeks ago I wrote about the possibility that college radio station WXLV at Lehigh Carbon Community College is up for sale. On Friday I reported that Bryant University’s college radio station WJMF was moving off the FM dial so that public radio’s massive WGBH could simulcast its classical programming. And then today, word leaked that the license holder for Vanderbilt’s college radio station WRVU had secretly changed the call letters of the station.
In addition to this new news, KUSF supporters are still fighting to keep their station from being sold off to Classical Public Radio Network and will be holding a peaceful rally at University of San Francisco tomorrow at 12 noon during the final Board of Trustees meeting of the semester. The Save KUSF crew is hoping that University of San Francisco will reconsider selling off the station in light of mounting pressure from the San Francisco community, USF students, and KUSF supporters.
Over the weekend I sat in on the very timely Saving College Stations panel at the National Federation of Broadcasters (NFCB) conference in San Francisco. The audio for that session is now available on the WFMU website. In the coming days I’ll post a summary of that session, as well as a recap of the entire conference. Matthew has already posted part one in his series of pieces about the “Great Music Programs” panel that he moderated.
In the meantime, if you are at one of these stations that is currently in crisis, here are a few resources to get you started. I’d also recommend that stations reach out to the folks at Save KUSF, Save KTRU, and Save WRVU to get advice about how to launch a fight against a station sale.
9 Tips to Ensure College Radio’s Survival
Saving College Radio Panel at SXSW 2011 (Podcast)
The Mediageek’s Advice for College Stations, Part 1-Be True to Your School
The Mediageek’s Advice for College Stations, Part 2- No More Elitism, Recruit, Recruit, Recruit
