How Can Commercial Radio Support College Radio?

The demonstrations, encampments, disruptions, and more that have taken place on college campuses over the past couple of months have garnered major headlines. Whatever your take on the war in Gaza, there hasn’t been much positive news with perhaps one exception: college radio.

The kudos have been handed out to WKCR, Columbia University’s student radio station.  While I’ve not personally listened, the ability of the station to cover the events on their campus has been lauded. When radio people wonder about where the next generation of talent will come from, college radio operations give us some hope.

My own background includes a full decade of college radio, both at Michigan State in the AM carrier current days before MSU finally was given the license for WDBM-FM (the former owner of then-analog channel 6 in Lansing fought the application for years on interference grounds) and also at WUSC-FM at the University of South Carolina. I was a program director twice and a general manager once as a student. 

While I didn’t like everything we put on the air, college radio was a wonderful experience and I’m still in touch with some of the people I worked with decades ago.

There are still plenty of vibrant college stations out there. Both of my alma maters have great student-run stations that cater to all kinds of tastes and bring in plenty of students as talent and administrative staff. To some extent, the mix of volunteers has changed. When I was an undergrad, the mix was about 50/50 between those who wanted a career in radio and needed experience versus those who loved the music and, in some cases, wished to impose their superior taste on the listeners. Today, I suspect that the percentage who are there for experience as a stepping stone to our industry is far lower.

Over the past decade or so, some colleges and universities have sold their FM licenses to either public radio operations or non-commercial religious broadcasters. In some cases, the schools did well financially. In 2010, Rice University in Houston sold KTRU for nearly $10 million to the University of Houston, allowing UH to have a second public radio station. KTRU eventually returned to the air as an LP in 2015. Vanderbilt University collected over $3 million from the sale of WRVU to Nashville Public Radio in 2011.

WRAS at Georgia State University in Atlanta was partially sold off. Georgia Public Broadcasting took over the station and began airing public radio programming from 5 AM until 7 PM while the students kept 7 PM until 5 AM. While public radio programming is on the air, the student-run Album 88 format is broadcast on the station’s HD2 signal. WRAS has a great signal and I was amazed when I visited in 1977 compared to the 10-watt WUSC-FM (we occasionally referred to it as 10,000 milliwatts on-air).

There are other instances of college FMs being sold, mostly from smaller schools (Bucknell, University of Evansville, Trine University, Castleton University). While the amounts generated by the sales have been far smaller than what Rice received, these schools decided that it wasn’t worth keeping the on-air frequency alive and an online version would be a suitable replacement.

To put it mildly, selling off student radio stations is short-sighted. The industry needs more talent and college radio is a great place to learn, make mistakes, and either fall in love with radio and audio or just meet new people. College radio also helps build a sense of responsibility. It’s your show, you need to be there on time, be prepared, and be responsible for what goes out over the air. Even the mild restraint of what can be said or played on an FCC-licensed frequency versus the free reign of the internet is a great lesson for students.

College radio also gives students a chance to operate an organization as a business. A station needs marketing which is a golden opportunity to use social media, it needs sales much like any noncommercial operation, and it needs promotion. Since most college operations run on shoestring budgets, that should prepare anyone who goes on to work in commercial radio. The students probably know more about social media than most of us and this is a great opportunity to put the knowledge to work which can translate into professional skills.

Further, while I doubt any school would want to shut down the student newspaper, writing for “print” is not the same as writing and gathering news for audio or video.  Without a radio station, there is no opportunity for the repetition needed to become good at producing information content for the electronic media. And with a college station, you have a way to promote off-air content as well which can be on the station’s internet presence.

Here in Bowling Green, I give a number of quarter hours to WWHR, Revolution 91.7 at Western Kentucky University. Unfortunately, the station has been almost entirely automated since I moved here which is sad considering there is a broadcast communications curriculum at WKU.  The station has a good signal, sounds fine technically, and has a solid history. My fear is that WKU may be looking for a payday by selling the frequency. No, I don’t have any evidence, but if it happened, it would be a sad day.

Let’s support college radio and let’s meet again next week.

Dr. Ed Cohen

One of the radio industry’s most respected researchers, Dr. Ed Cohen writes a weekly business column, heavily focused on ratings research for Barrett Media. His career experiences include serving as VP of Ratings and Research at Cumulus Media, occupying the role of VP of Measurement Innovation at Nielsen Audio, and its predecessor Arbitron. While with Arbitron, Cohen spent five years as the company’s President of Research Policy and Communication, and eight years as VP of Domestic Radio Research.

Dr. Ed has also held the title of Vice President of Research for iHeartMedia/Clear Channel, and held research positions for the National Association of Broadcasters and Birch/Scarborough Research. He enjoys hearing your thoughts so please feel free to reach him at doctoredresearch@gmail.com.