It’s a new school year on many college campuses, so many college radio stations are in active recruitment mode as they invite students to join their stations. The Orange County Register notes that Chapman College radio station Chapman Radio is the biggest student organization on campus, with 250-275 student DJs. CMJ posted an interview with a former college radio music director from Indiana University of Pennsylvania station WIUP in which she shares a “how-to guide” for college radio music directors. Laura Ragsdale’s College Radio Music Director Manual is full of great tips for music directors or anyone else involved with college radio. No doubt this will be helpful for all the new music directors out there! Additionally, in a profile this week in Orlando Weekly, Rollins College’s radio station WPRK is recognized for its ongoing emphasis on local music. In other college radio news this week…
Boston College Radio Station Field Trip Reports
I’ve been busy this year visiting radio stations all over the country. I love checking out different radio stations and I always find something unique or interesting about every station that I visit. While I’m not always very prompt in posting wrap-up reports from these visits, I’m on a mission to quickly publish articles about all of my Boston-area college radio station field trips. This week I made great progress and you can read all about my visits to WMBR at MIT, WHRB at Harvard, WTBU at Boston University and WMFO at Tufts University on Spinning Indie. I started touring stations back in 2008 and as of this week, I’ve written 60 radio station field trip posts, with more on the way soon…
Save WRAS Rally at Georgia State University
With the launch of fall semester, the folks at SaveWRAS are working to get the word out about changes to student-run radio station WRAS-FM. They held a rally and benefit yesterday at Georgia State University in order to spread the word about the lack of daytime student programming over WRAS-FM. Promotion for the event points out that, “Your student fees pay for student-run radio at GSU. So why does GPB get the airwaves? Take back your student voice!” A local TV station covered the protest and you can catch up on all of our WRAS coverage here.
Colby-Sawyer College License Sale is Approved by the FCC
This week, the FCC approved the application to assign the license for WSCS 90.9 FM to the Vinikoor Family Foundation. We reported on the WSCS license sale earlier this summer and learned that the new owner would like to keep a close relationship with the college and has spoken with some of the WSCS DJs already.
New LPFM Radio Station Coming to Columbia Basin College
In yesterday’s LPFM Watch column, I mentioned that there was a college, Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington, among this week’s crop of newly granted low power FM (LPFM) construction permits. According to its application, the station may be aligned with curriculum at the 2-year college. The school has offered radio broadcasting courses in the past.
Coahoma Community College Seeks Donations in Order to Launch FM Radio Station
Fundraising is underway at Coahoma Community College in preparation for the launch of a new 50,000 watt FM radio station. According to its Indie Gogo campaign, it is hoped that the student radio station, WCQC, will launch by fall 2015 at the historically African-American college in Clarksdale, Mississippi. WCQC’s construction permit is held by Quitman County Development Org, whose DBA is Deep South Delta Foundation.
More College Radio Finalists in the CBI Student Production Awards
College Broadcasters Inc. continued to post lists of the remaining finalists for its Student Production Awards this week. Check here to see if any of your favorite stations got the nod. I’m happy to see that my current station KFJC-FM is a finalist in one category and a few other stations where I trained or volunteered are also in the running for awards (WBGU-FM, where I was a DJ and Assistant Music Director and KZSU-FM, where I went through the DJ training program one summer long ago…). Winners will be announced at the CBI convention in Seattle this October. See the CBI blog for more college radio news, including its round-up post from this week.
CMJ College Radio Award Nominations Now Open
With the annual CMJ Music Marathon coming up in New York City in October, CMJ has just opened up its nomination period for its annual College Radio Awards. If you work at a station that reports its charts to CMJ or hold a CMJ New Music Report subscription, then you are eligible to submit nominations in various college radio and college radio promotions categories through September 12 at 4pm Eastern Time. Voting will then take place during the CMJ Music Marathon, with winners announced during College Day on Thursday, October 23. Speaking of CMJ, its blog is starting to run updates about college radio news. Here’s its column from last week.
We report on college radio news every Friday in our College Radio Watch column.
