With the start of a new semester, college radio stations are often getting nice write-ups in their campus publications. In a profile in The Phoenix, the back-story of Swarthmore College’s long-time radio station WSRN is revealed. According to the piece,
“…WSRN was founded by engineers prior to the ’70s. At one point they ‘rigged up WSRN to the train tracks’ and somehow transmitted into Philadelphia, before that scheme was shut down. The station has gone through many incarnations, expanding in the ’70s to accommodate new laws that shut out small-scale broadcasters.”
I’ve run across references to WSRN dating back to the 1940s, as the station was part of an intercollegiate radio network (along with WBMC at Bryn Mawr College and WHAV at my alma mater Haverford College) that debuted in the Philadelphia area in 1945
With more than 80 programs on WSRN 91.5 FM today, the station boasts an eclectic line-up of shows. Some of the goals for this school year include making the station a “social space,” and promoting and airing its shows in various venues at Swarthmore. One idea is to “buy radios and blast WSRN around the campus.”
