No drinks sign at college radio station KUSF.org. Photo: J. Waits

College Radio Watch: What Do You Think My 100th Radio Station Tour Will Be?

By Jennifer Waits on February 12, 2016 in College Radio, College Radio Survivor, Noncommercial Radio

In this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast, I talked about my ongoing radio station tour project. I’m nearing my 100th radio station tour, so I chatted with Eric Klein about the overall project and reflected back on some of my early station tours in 2008.

When I first started to tour stations, my goal was to highlight under-the-radar college radio stations all over the country. Eight years later, my primary focus is still college radio, but I do diverge from that mission to profile other interesting radio stations. At this point, I’ve written up 97 official radio station visits, approximately 65 of which focus on college radio stations. The remaining visits include high school radio stations, community radio stations, religious radio stations, commercial radio stations, a pop-up Internet radio station, and even NPR headquarters (although not technically a radio station).

I’ve started posting some extra highlights from my early station tours for our $5 and up monthly Patreon subscribers. If you aren’t contributing to our campaign, hopefully this will be an added incentive to support our work at Radio Survivor.

Guess What Station will be my 100th Tour

I’m curious to hear which station you think might be my 100th radio station tour report. Add your guesses in the comments section of this post and at some point this Spring, the answer will be revealed. Those who guess correctly will be recognized in a future post.

See Me Speak about College Radio History at Haverford College

I will be giving a talk about college radio history at Haverford College (in Haverford, Pennsylvania) on Tuesday, February 23 from 4pm to 5pm in Magill Library. I will talk about the 90+ year history of college radio at Haverford College and will also be sharing some of the interesting college radio-related artifacts that are housed in Special Collections at Haverford College. I’m forever grateful to the archivists who had the foresight to save radio materials at Haverford, including program guides, meeting minutes, scripts, and amazing photos from the 1920s.

Happy 60th Birthday to KSPC Today

Pomona College radio station KSPC-FM turns 60 years old today and in honor of that occasion, the station posted a special anniversary video. It gives a nice look at the station and features interviews with students and long-time Station Manager Erica Tyron. Last fall I posted my recent tour of KSPC, which was particularly meaningful to me since I spent a wonderful year DJing there in the 1990s.