 Join me virtually in welcoming Catherine Rye-Jewel. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Everybody can hear me and as I enunciate about college radio. All right. So hopefully that is sharing so that you can all see the party, the party ball. Since I am starting in the 1970s appropriately. We will go backwards a little bit. Okay. So we're going to start in 1978, perhaps unsurprisingly as rumors of a call letter change percolated through these volumes or one volume of the book. This is a hard bound ledger kept in the WTBS studio at MIT. In the basement of the Walker Memorial building, where handwritten notes about station announcements, technical problems, conversations regarding station affairs, all of here by WTBS's annual benefit in 1979, warning surfaced not to mention Ted Turner on the air, but that the call letters might transition to WNBR before that event. And that's two forms of promotional announcements would be recorded for that upcoming event. MIT station had turned down the New York Times's 1973 petition for the letters, but Turner's offer came at just the right time. Although the station had increased power as the FCC was phasing out the class D license popular at most college stations on the FM non-commercial band, it needed another upgrade to prevent challenges for its license from higher powered stations, thus straining its budget. Donations had also flagged and the station received scan support from MIT given its independent license held by a nonprofit corporation, although it remained a student activity, which is why station positions such as general manager are required to be students. As one alum remembered out of the blue, Turner contacted the station to buy the call letters. Of course he remembered buying call letters was not legal, but after negotiations, it was agreed that Mr. Turner would donate $25,000 to the radio station when it released its call letters by acquiring new ones. And then he donated an additional $25,000 once WTBS became his. Instead of WTBS standing for the technology broadcasting system, the new letters WNBR would stand for walker memorial basement radio is the check in the book, in the studio, where it still resides. As the deal went forward, Turner insisted that the station refrain from using the call letters he has paid for to avoid association between a college station and his Atlanta based broadcasting empire. The general manager cautioned announcers not to inform listeners, even those calling in of the whole Turner story. Even though Turner's $50,000 classified as a gift, not as illegal payments for call letters, it didn't seem wise to dwell on the transaction. Finally, the telegram announcing the change arrived. Carter Allen wrote that's it. WTBS has been nuked and no longer exists. Instead, WNBR arose from the ashes. The official change took place on May 24th, 1979 at 0300, the hour all FCC license changes take effect. Staffers turned back to questions regarding programming, staffing, and making Cambridge rock. Turner's check appeared in WNBR's coffers at a moment when changes were gripping college radio, commercial broadcasting, and higher education. There's just a few listed here, forgive all of the text. I got a little carried away. There's the Pacifica decision though. There's changes to the class D license. There's weakening public service requirements for commercial broadcasters, such as they had been, as well as regulatory changes that would embolden urban renewal efforts and the corporatization of higher education. College radio garnered attention from administrators, political officials, and the music industry for reasons beyond questions of obscenity or indecency or political balance in broadcasting, subjects that often receive the lion's share of attention to culture war era battles over media and entertainment. Given these developments on the surface, Turner's purchase of WTBS's call letters seem to signal the coming deregulation and corporatization in media. For media scholars, Turner's empire signaled consolidation and convergence that would transform entertainment in the 1980s and the 1990s, thanks to faith in the concept of synergy, to choke out competition, thanks to revised antitrust enforcement and rule changes regarding ownership and licensing. College and community radio in this rendering seem like these stalwart underdog defenders of democratic radio and diverse voices against the stultifying middle road entertainment on offer from corporate media and the record industry, which was intent on cramming disco and arena rock or as Bruce Shulman lamented in his history of the 1970s, the Peter Framptonization of the music industry. The college radio existed as part of the larger economy of radio, as well as within and in relationship to the commercial music industry, to broadcast media, regulation, and to these institutions of higher education. So what I suggest is that instead of seeing these signals as simply authentic democratic alternatives to these developments, instead needs to be understood as a site of negotiation regarding these developments in US media, political economy, popular and political culture. Now perhaps this revised narrative doesn't exonerate Peter Frampton for his contributions to popular culture, but they do put the history of stations like WNBR into new perspective. So WNBR, while it stands out among college radio stations for its independence from its host institution, nonetheless can't fully escape MIT's institutional logics nor the ever present challenges to college radio's democratic potential and contributions to American musical culture. So to explore this dynamic, since I'm at MIT talking about WNBR, I'm gonna take a little bit of an uncommon approach for myself rather than kind of traveling over the country, I'm gonna use WNBR as a lens and give you three episodes in its history with a little epilogue to explore these confrontations with these larger historical forces. So turning to episode one, we're gonna go back before the Turner check for a little bit. When WNBR then still WTBS signaled how from the early days of campus FM stations, students connected campus activism to community service, revealing how institutions of higher education were embedded within communities. So we're starting in Boston, where soul music fans turned to college stations after 1969. A Boston Globe columnist described, quote, the aridity of the AM airwaves in so far as consistent soul programming is concerned. He encouraged readers to escape the assault of insipid broadcasting by tuning in to student-run radio. Boston University, Harvard, Boston College, Emerson and Tufts all offered a range of black-oriented programs. Harvard consistently programmed jazz since the 1950s while Emerson offered the black experience. Northeastern aired a show called Souls Place dedicated specifically to that genre. But the columnist singled out one show, The Ghetto at MIT for its quality. In 1969, MIT's Black Student Union, its chapter on campus had sought an outlet on the campus radio station, the student activity, reflecting civil rights activism turned to cultural celebration and black power. In addition to a Memphis sound program and a throwback R&B show on weekends, MIT's station kept listeners sustained with music unavailable on commercial radio. And there's a great write-up of this program on this website that I have linked here. So you can go and kind of read the full history that I'm kind of pulling from here. So WTBS had eight walks when the ghetto debuted, but that increased to 720 by 1972 helped along by an MIT trustee and FCC member who smoothed the process. Even with this still limited coverage, the signal reached into densely populated areas. As the first engineer for the ghetto, it's Sally pictured, I think it's, yeah, that's pictured, this picture. As you remembered, the number of shows and nightly programming meant MIT station became the number one black radio station in the entire Boston metropolitan area. I don't know if this will play or not. I don't know if it will, it will, it will, it will with the zoom, but you can go and, and, uh, you can hear from I don't know how that sounded, but there we go. There we go. So the ghetto sets WTBS apart in the entire Boston metropolitan area for its programming. So MIT's offerings amounted to more than alternative musical entertainment. These shows together collectively helped in uniting the black community, the former DJ explained. The ghetto and the BSU offered local, national and international news, student DJs design programs to emulate higher powered black oriented FM stations and other markets, hoping to diversify the sound of the hubs airwaves. As Sally remembered, we became like the number one station in Boston. I mean, black, white, everything. WTBS featured artists to promote local appearances. Pop entertainers such as the Jackson five jazz artists such as Al Jarreau visited WTBS to record promos and give live interviews. Sally remembered visits by Aretha Franklin, Richard Pryor, Isaac Hayes and Stevie Wonder, because as he put it, if you had any event that was going on in Boston that was black, then you had to get it on the ghetto because everyone would hear it. In 1972, the ghetto hosted a concert by war that attracted more than 20,000 fans. That event inspired ghetto DJs to imagine my single favorite instance in college radio history, a city party. The hub at WMBR, WTBS, excuse me. The ghetto essentially would broadcast music to a party hosted outside the station. Then there would be satellite parties at other area college stations that rebroadcast what the MIT signal was putting out on their low watt signal. Together, these 10 watt signals would blanket the entire region essentially across greater Boston. As Sally described, everybody in their homes and cars were urged to turn on the ghetto and to play it loud. You could stand outside almost anywhere in the Boston metro area and hear the party. People were dancing in the streets. There's another newspaper article that describes driving down streets in Boston. You could hear parties in living rooms out on the streets. You could hear people dancing in the streets. You could hear people tuning in all across the area. The event, importantly, netted more than $10,000 in donations for the station. The ghetto's hosts became leaders of the station. Unlike other institutions where students found campus stations often to be closed to black students and student leaders, MIT proved different. MIT's station offered significant time to programs for the area's black residents with music and news tailored to their interests. Eventually, commercial FM stations in the market emerged to displace MIT's status as Boston's leader in black music, but it remained an important spot on the dial for soul, R&B, and reggae, featuring both student and community DJs. Institutional arrangements. Proved crucial to this outreach. MIT's governance structure allowed WTBS the freedom to pursue community-oriented programming. Although the station received institutional support with its on-campus space and qualified as a student activity, it enjoyed greater independence than other college stations. Nonetheless, despite existing in an ecosystem somewhat apart from commercial radio or even from host institutions, noncommercial license stations still worked within the broader structure of broadcasting and the commercial music industry. Therefore, I turn. So, too. So, in episode two, we're moving on from city party, which indicated how college radio could offer community service and culture and defiance of commercial broadcasting trends. Still, these links were strong with commercial interests. College radio was becoming known in the music industry as a place to test new sounds. Signals support for new wave and post-punk after 1978 in particular show that these signals could make waves in popular music. But only a handful of independent labels existed with most college stations still relying on major labels or major label distribution for the music they played. Along with the FCC, labels privileged higher wattage signals in major markets that could reach many listeners on a single frequency. Providing an existential threat to small underfinance stations that were facing budget cuts thanks to declining enrollments and state funding. So, these college stations, they could drive sales in certain genres and demographics in certain markets. Arista records, for example, for one, enjoyed a very good relationship with college stations as jazz records including those by Gill Scott Herron, received play on many college signals. But those good relations gave way to dismay among college DJs in 1979 as major labels began cutting back on college promotions. Inflation, economic recession in the late 70s hit the music industry and labels cut this promotional staff. Billboard reported in August 1979 that college radio is entering a crucial stage with many stations in jeopardy of being cut off from free record company service. A&M records, which for ten years staff to dedicated college radio promotion team abruptly axed that wing. RCA, MCA, electro asylum, all cut staff who focused on promoting to the college crowd. As album oriented radio, the commercial format left behind its free form days in stations like WBCN and Boston, the industry, the radio industry and the music industry welcomed the data driven approach of these new commercial formats that made financial sense in hard times. Labels could ill afford to send records to college stations where they would gather dust on shelves during the summer, for example. So it was labels financial woes that accounted for the decision. It was not any sort of perceived shift in college radios. It was too weird or out there or something like that. Executives focused on stations that proved they could make waves in the market. To receive free records, stations had to show that they could break new artists, drive sales at record stores and provide that data back to the labels. So stations amateurism often fragment and it's fragmented schedules in these block programs that you'll see some images of that that worried these promoters who were increasingly cognizant of their bottom lines. So by summer of 1980, and if you can see, this is just the beginning of what's about to happen. By summer of 1980, WMBRs realized that their record service was in jeopardy. One DJ attention called them the record manure people. He spelled it this way in the book. I felt I had this out for you. He pointed to distributors who cut off the air supply to non-com FMs. He suggested DJs contact those disc heads on high. The book is amazing for direct votes. I can't stop voting. It's like ridiculous. Contact those disc heads on high with the campus perspective. DJs debated. They're just a small watt station. They're one of many. They're thinking about how to combine their power with other stations to protest these changes. Arista records was the one that's going to emerge as the prime target regarding its record service fee. But it wasn't the only one that WMBR DJs targeted for boycotts. They were sort of a subset within this larger Arista boycott, which I won't go super into. Instead, I'm going to focus on this subset issue. In 1980, you have British independent labels, rough trade and beggars banquet, signing new wave and post-punk groups such as Joy Division, I wore the T-shirt, the buzzcocks, and the raincoats. Miles Copeland, the third manager for squeeze and for his brother's band, was a member of the WMBR and he was the first to sign new wave and post-punk records for which he crafted an innovative promotional plan. He secured distribution from Jerry Moss, the head of A&M. With this deal, he brought the buzzcocks to the United States and he relied on college radio. As MBR DJs noted, the small new wave labels signed many acts broken by IRS. When IRS instituted a $25 fee for records sent to non-commercial stations, DJs were baffled. The music director told label raps the station was not going to pay this fee. Not only did he bulk at the sum, he considered a betrayal. We feel, he explained, the fee placed an unjustified burden on a station that supported them. He asked DJs to refrain from signing records until the label rescinded the charge. A DJ responded, it seems like the IRS is indeed living up to their name. IRS had yet to release its first number one record in 1981, of course, the go-go's beauty in the beat, which would top college radio charts on its way to commercial success and MTV. Peter Buck still worked at Athens and had only just met Michael Stipe. Their band, R.E.M., would sign to R.E.S. and define college rock, but in 1980, that success linked to college radio had yet to establish the label's might and the medium's influence. WNBR's DJs believed IRS depended on non-commercial stations, not vice versa. I love this picture of them, they're very, very young. And nonetheless, these stations lacked collective clout. With industry publications such as College Media Journal only having just recently appeared to track college charts in 1978, college radio was still kind of nascent in being able to prove its industry influence. IRS too sought to establish its reputation. If stations had to pay for record service, they would not be able to sell any music. Copeland wanted the credibility that came with independence and the prestige afforded to major labels and he thought record fees were the way to do this. For the majors, bands featuring synthesizers or more experimental sounds still seem like a passing fad. IRS strove to legitimate the music and college radio was important to the major player to precedence. WNBR's punk show the late risers club began though a month long boycott months long as many months of IRS closing off a primary show on which its artists would appear. While no meaningful larger boycott of IRS emerged, the same was not true for Arista which most of these comments that I have drawn from CMJ editorial are commenting about that. For that record label a multi station boycott emerged centered in college stations around the northeast spearheaded by the station at Wesleyan University. These college DJs relied on a sense of connectivity with their listeners and believe that their status as music fans as well as promoters of content justified their free record service. But changes were happening in college radio. WNBR had long been a pipeline for DJs headed to commercial radio in addition for musical acts that would define popular music in the coming decades. Also in 1980 Henry Santoro you can hear him on WGBH I think reading the news these days Henry Santoro was doing a shift at WNBR. The phone rang and on the other end of the line came an Irish accent man's voice. I have this band here he explained they are on Toria and their record isn't out but I would like to show them a radio station how it works. Sure Santoro replied why not. About an hour later a group of four teenagers and their manager the man on the phone filed into the window of the station. U2 had yet to release their first album boy which would produce no hit singles but established the band's fan base in Ireland UK and on college radio in the United States. Whether this visit coincided with the band's visit to WBCN that year where DJ Carter Allen another WNBR alum and board member who had moved to WBCN promoted the band that remains unclear. In March 1981 the band did appear on many other college radio stations KFJC and San Jose California for one when they played a free show at San Jose State University. A listener they are called the band fresh and the band recognized that college radio stations played music that was quote real. Real rock fans turned to the left of the dial. College radio stations even if amateur and non-commercial though confronted questions of listenership and service. University administrators who increasingly interested how their institution sounded to wider communities. While openings for new types of relevance emerged. The FCC encouraged college station license holders to ensure stations adhere to regulatory rules and serve the public and not use these increasingly higher powered signals as play things or sandboxes as they were often called. DJs even though seeking careers to wield cultural power and much of that remained beneath the radar of commercial radio. The FCC wasn't very cool. But it did influence college radios emerging culture and its ability to break bands such as you to start them. The FCC could indirectly shape these non-commercial stations despite their educational purpose and institutional homes. In a diverse landscape of college radio remain populated by many small stations each doing their own thing maintaining their own islands of influence. Even though coordination and attention was beginning to emerge. Sorry this is pulled from the pages of CMJs. It's a little grainy. But CMJs debut which CNX are from here helps to validate college radio as a decentralized but powerful network with coherent musical influence. Still questions about college radio's direction and its status as gatekeepers and taste makers remained. Even as these conflicts over record service faded. These DJs felt that they had a more authentic connection over music that set them apart from commercial broadcasters and that sense of being an outlet for the people a media democracy simultaneously filtered into debates regarding college radio's role in the commercial music industry. Episode three there's the block schedule. So by the late 1970s and early 1980s Harvard and MIT both pursued controversial urban renewal efforts with uncertain results. In 1980 the by Dole Act allowed universities to reap financial awards through licensing federally funded research innovation. Rather than having to allow research to be publicly available institutions shifted to what one historian called an entrepreneurial financially risky and philanthropically inclined financial model. This shift came with implications for residents of deindustrializing cities transforming to the service and information economy working class neighborhoods surrounding the most and suffering from these transitions often felt that their voices were unheard in these processes and that extended to these radio signals. So at WNBR a debate over community service flared in 1980 in this context and as these DJs begin to consider the meaning of college radio itself. City residents were blocking MIT's expansion into East Cambridge as the university pursued collaborations in biotech and alignments with private industry to revitalize the Kenmore Square area. But the radio station reached widely into these communities unimpeded except by the limits of its signal. Conflict emerged over a new schedule that cut community oriented programs and increased opportunities for students. A DJ charged at these decisions commenced without a good sense of who the audience was. He argued WNBR needed market research to develop a more concrete idea of who our listeners are to better serve them. So this kind of market based rhetoric reflects this new logic of university's community involvement in these urban improvements often displacing residents who lack resources and power. Yet it also reflected the station's sense of community obligation and its commitments to public service. So audiences put up with a program that underwent wholesale changes or there we go, the block program. Wholesale changes three times a year as students schedules change you go from semester to semester and they still tuned in but some DJs felt that block programming and these frequent schedule changes sparked a philosophic problem. As one DJ put it we lost our commitment to diversity instead of the block programming. The structure chopped up time into discrete units rather than creating continuous programs. Blocks allowed DJs to stick to their interests and its siloed listeners went the argument rather than expanding musical coverage or exposing listeners to more than niche sounds. He proposed WNBR staffers rededicate ourselves to diversity and recommit to presenting shows and ideas not heard of elsewhere in Boston radio even if it means breaking up some of these program blocks. A movement to remove the program director grew out of this dissatisfaction motivated by these program changes that went forward without consulting affected DJs. 22 volunteers met with 14 voting no confidence in the program director. They didn't have a quorum so they couldn't they didn't have the power of removal but even if it didn't reflect a quorum it suggested dissatisfaction with student managers among the community, DJs in particular. DJ Dan Gerwitz a future music writer for the Boston Herald explained the vote was clearly saying many of us are sick and tired of the arbitrary power the role of program director wields around here. Each program director might take the station in new directions. DJs had no mechanism to control the power and limits of the job he said. The program manager appointed the program director. It was not an elected position and therein laid the problem. The system Gerwitz maintained was undemocratic and violated the core principles of college radio. Instead he proposed a year round schedule with major changes subject to state statewide discussion. He wrote, I am in favor of democracy and we can't have democracy work in an all volunteer people's radio station where can it work? College radio couldn't make it work the democratic media was not possible. Some doubted participatory democracy could produce a schedule though. When it came to democracy one DJ wrote the perfect example is a lynch mob an oligarchy and oligarchy and tyranny could easily result from a purportedly democratic system. Another DJ called using democratic practices to shape a program acute idea but extremely inefficient. She continued to imagine what would happen if we needed to get consensus on a schedule we would be off the air until 1999. But who exactly were the citizens of WMBR? Was it the DJs? MIT students whose facilities housed the studio? Residents of Boston and Cambridge? These dynamic questions mirrored urban development proponents and opponents arguments regarding MIT's expansion. These are private institutions for the most part occupying and influencing public space. How they answered for their service however was complicated and many of those involved felt marginalized. So this debate over programming involved deep questions about the viability of community radio run through institutions like MIT and sustaining democratic media especially when many of these people saw institutions like MIT more as rivals than allies amid conflicts over urban real estate both oral and physical. Meanwhile station business continued a beagle wandered into the studio DJ put a call for its adoption a DJ reported on development issues fielding calls from world bank staffers some enterprising volunteers took it upon themselves to reorganize the record library flushed records that received no airtime control knob appeared to be adding audio distortion to a studio device. There's lots of debates over whether you should put more jolt or coke in the station but the battle as one DJ called it continued. She called the new program schedule method screwed because the same problems reoccurred with each round. A poor management system she concluded not for managers must be the problem. A system developed under a 10 watt mentality did not transfer well to higher wattage that reached a wider range of listeners the controversy grew tiring for what it's worth she concluded I'm sick of this shit. Eventually one of WNBR's most famous DJs weighed in. Oedipus the first punk rock radio DJ in the country by 1980 had moved from WNBR to local commercial rock station WBCN into WNBR's board. He stated definitively WNBR is a democracy is simple station managers elected general manager who in turn appoints a program director according to the constitution vote out the general manager to change things you don't like. A disgruntled DJ resented Oedipus for his comments responding listen slug head if he put in more time here at the station especially at station meetings we'd respect your comments but the fact of the matter remained WNBR's DJs came from various walks of life some lived in dorms and could readily volunteer or attend events and meetings community DJs had day jobs and had trouble popping by the station to organize the record library during their free time college radio whether a democracy or not relied on volunteers to keep things running and functioning moreover rumors circulated that MIT's administration viewed the station with distress no one mentioned the reasons for this which it's totally possible that this stemmed from DJs publishing recommendations in the student newspaper about which new wave clubs carded laxly for beer but DJs interpreted the rumors as relating to low student involvement and the station's community orientation the answer was to recruit more students including grad students who might stick around for a little bit longer but college radio was a hot property by the mid 1980s garnering attention for its cutting edge music and sonic aesthetic setting trends that would redefine pop culture and MTV in the Reagan era as such it was not immune from culture war battles over indecency and obscenity with one station even rising to the attention of Tipper Gore and the PMRC in 1986 so 1980s so by the 1980s we have market institution culture warrior all wanted to control what went out over the collegiate airwaves at WNBR in 1987 the station revisited tensions between student and community volunteers revisiting those debates from 1980 but now in an increasingly fraught political and cultural context the controversy over four lovers only the program was not despite surface appearances though a culture war between black and white musical forms and audiences nor was it necessarily about the content of music and potential finds that would threaten the station's financial integrity instead the turmoil arose from the multiple demands placed on college stations in the 1980s as more groups sought coverage from collegiate signals or at least sought to maintain the airtime that was secured amid deregulation programmers struggled to weigh these demands they simply had more applicants than they could accommodate nonetheless the effect was to silence certain voices no matter the intent so in fall of 1987 there's another instance of the block schedule station managers are planning a new schedule and they gave DJ's notice to reapply for their shows four lovers only was a popular long-standing community run show highlighted r&b from mostly black artists and it did not receive renewal because it applied late the producer of sugar shack another r&b program called cancelling four lovers only a slap in the face the station relied on fundraising for operating money if it's all right to go to the community and ask them for money to modernize this place he argued that it should be station to serve that community musically sugar shack's producer referenced rising criticism over the ghetto the ghetto and four lovers only tended to focus on r&b and soul and less on hip-hop which is instead covered by shows such as let goes lemma which began in 1985 and aired on both wmbr and wcbc at Boston College r&b DJ's interpreted the cancellation which proceeded after only two days notice to submit for renewal as signaling a desire to give students more airtime at the expense of community DJ's students had made up less than 30% of programming staff during the previous spring semester still students supported the station's community radio identity one defended four lovers only denoting that the debate involved questions of what wmbr wants to be and what we students want to do here they could provide community service to MIT and our listeners excuse me and our listeners in the greater Boston area thanks to whom were now in stereo if they gave money or we could jerk off in a vacuum donations helped fund that upgrade in broadcast equipment and thus the students suggested programmers owed listeners music they wanted to hear whether it was MIT students tuning in or not he implied they're missing out on an education but competing service demands and the practicalities of running a radio station created dissonance responding to the charge that cuts targeted black music programming the music director tried to define diversity as more than giving airtime to black artists alternative radio he explained isn't just black radio these shows he argued received ample time other than progressive rock he continued black programming has the most airtime most of Sunday Thursday and Friday nights are dedicated to black music if you want to talk numbers he said that's a pretty high percentage the real reason for the cuts he explained were scheduling conflicts a show run by students took precedence over community volunteers in a contested time slot he asked that rather than complaining about lack of communication community DJs attend meetings and read station announcements station participation was important but these requirements potentially undermine the priority of ensuring that programming met community demands and here's where you can find archived tapes of Lekka's lemma at EMS Boston's hip hop archive so in the wake of this deliberation a DJ cited recent regulatory changes until the 1980s the FCC promoted localism and diversity in radio ownership but rule changes remove limits on multiple station ownership by single entities as the Reagan administration relaxed antitrust rules corporate acquisitions accelerated across media industries led of course by none other than Ted Turner the very mogul who had purchased WNBR's formal call letters to launch his media empire public service requirements disappeared as well deregulation the MIT DJ suggested that it is no longer necessary for a radio station to demonstrate that it will serve the needs of the community to which it broadcasts a core commitment of WNBR what all this boils down to he continued is that with more and more restricted lowest common denominator programming on commercial stations becomes even more important for a handful of non-commercial stations to serve the programming needs of the less entrenched segments of our society when you're in the archives and you're looking for like the money quote where like the historical subject says the thing that you think is going on it's like one of those jump up out of your chair moments that quote was one of them R&B shows on WNBR were an institution in the black community that DJ argued and he lamented petty station politics it was a damn shame it's only two hours the FCC and deregulation increased pressure on college stations during the 1980s which remained locally grounded to air the voices of underserved communities as commercial radio corporatized but institutional logics were an instruction and station mission also shaped WNBR's history as it shifted over time serving as a site for these deep debates about regulation the business of media and entertainment and the possibilities for democratic radio student and community DJs might square off over whose application took precedent in a certain time slot but the real politics of college radio were about much more instead the logic regarding structure of programming the methods of governance and financing as well as stations occupation of valuable spots on public airwaves combined to make these signals a key battle round in institutional and cultural change no one can understand the multifaceted culture wars that continue to rage without understanding the business and politics of these institutions on the front lines these campus stations were in the crosshairs of government regulators increasingly diverse sets of affluent Americans and local communities underserved by media in an era of austerity that was already causing social services media outlets and public spaces to contract the culture wars are as Pat Robertson declared a war for the soul of America Americans consumed much media about these battles but communities and college students participated in the culture wars through local media like college radio so the culture wars revealed by college radio and WNBR involved a sound a war for the sound of America and for the viability of democratic media I hit my ending target like on this thank you I can leave I have a little selection of WNBR's top 30 from CMJ and I can talk about my my data project here and it's very fuzzy which is I put up there for a reason so should I stop sharing my screen okay thanks everyone online for hanging in well thank you so much the capture that was outstanding really interesting stuff but definitely a lot of history I don't know I've only been on the station for going on four years well I do see that some of the people listening including the road here have some longer it's probably a good idea all right so Catherine thank you for the talk as I was saying that I've only been on the radio station for about four years so it's really fabulous to to hear this history I mean it's a remarkable story and the book is still alive that's right although it's taking a little hit during the Covid era but the book is the first thing you're introduced to I think as a new DJ right what an amazing document amazing things you found from it so I have one question I'm sure there are questions from the audience as well but I'll go back in with more but I'm really interested to hear more about these questions of democracy and sort of the role this idea of alternative so I read this article in the Boston magazine I believe it was and I forget the author but it made this very striking argument for me about counterculture and thinking about the counterculture of the 80s Boston used to be a hotbed of counterculture and Bob Dylan comes up here and Joan Baez and it was Boston and so there was this sort of idea and then the article goes on that argued that we've lost that Boston's no longer a center of counterculture and why is that and interviewing some of the different folks who do organizing in town of what used to be known as counterculture the idea of Alston Pudding or these different organizers of music formerly would have been known as counterculture but now doesn't quite feel the same way and the argument that was made which I think this is kind of interesting and I don't know what to make of it and partly because I don't think so historically that's why I'm very curious to hear your opinion but the conclusion of the article as I understood it is that when you have the internet and when you have access to all the things that the battles of the counterculture we talked to the counterculture what sort of linked us back in the 80s a little bit was the idea that we were being forced a narrow range of television a narrow range of radio I grew up in a rural high school in upstate New York we didn't have it we actually did have a couple of college stations but even there you felt like it was very hard and so that with a kind of dominant mainstream media and without the internet where one could somehow access everything the counterculture could sort of fight together it was a time when punk and hip-hop were very much on the same team in new ways they won't play us on the radio they don't like us they only play the older stuff we can't get access and so there was a way that these disparate things could be lumped together under counterculture but now when arguably I would say that the media is even more powerful even more forcing it down our throats that the impetus that is it the image that well I can still access what I want on YouTube I can still access what I want somewhere else for a while as I can still download it on Napster so that there was a kind of breakdown and a sort of breaking up of this group and that the enemy is actually stronger than ever but the idea that we don't need to fight that battle is somehow broken up the possible alliances that are there and I'm wondering what you think of that is there something to that and I know you've been thinking about what is alternative media what would make a more democratic media and it is I suppose maybe that's part of the question too is the counterculture done forever you know or is there something else or is this not the way to think about it so there's a few different things mixed in confusingly in there so if you can make something out of that question yeah well I think so the question of aesthetics kind of runs throughout this and there's this idea that something countercultural has this sort of aesthetic it's different somehow it's weird music that nobody wants to hear and if you have this sort of community of people who understand something that most people won't and so there's a kind of community of belonging around aesthetic but when you actually dig into terms like alternative and where they come from so in the 70s frequently the term alternative comes up probably even more so than progressive when it comes to college and community radio and but it wasn't an aesthetic definition it was just we're offering things that the commercial media won't play because it doesn't fit through the model that they have or you know and that's as this commercial radio radio formats we're starting to identify by kind of demographic subset for fragmenting and in that process of fragmentation they're kind of leaving these pieces out that were underserved and so you know that of the 1980s it's you know it sort of starts to develop an aesthetic association with post-punk hip-hop you know and that they but it's really they aren't aligned along this aesthetic counteraction to the mainstream industry even though it's there right that's important it's very important you know the green-haired freaks hanging out at the radio station they look different they sound different they want to hear different things the structure of media that they're sort of engaging with through the language of aesthetics is sort of what's happening in the counterculture of the 1980s and you know that the question of access is so present you know when I interviewed a whole bunch of musicians and they were talking about you know how they would they'd read about abandoned zine for example you know like their friend would give them a zine and you know after chemistry class or something like did you read about this oh I want to hear what that's like alright let's drive out into the country where we can sort of pick up this college radio station and we'll call and we'll request it like maybe we'll catch it and then you know bring a radio we can record it and then we'll have it have it on a tape and then I could decide if my parents take me to the city next month I could find an independent record store maybe I'll go get a copy or I can write in you know to discord records or whatever and they'll send me a copy of it that that access question was really powerful and I think it's so you know when I could queue up any of those records right now on my phone those barriers have come down but instead but I think the the thing that connects across all of those that unites sort of countercultural idea is the question of gatekeepers and taste makers and I think one of the challenges that I've run into is that a lot of people who are participating in this they this alternative ecosystem and these scenes or these bohemian networks whatever they're trying to create alternative markets but they want different systems of distribution and remuneration for artists and they're relying on different you know literally different businesses and informational networks than the commercial music and so there is that kind of oppositional that it does sort of there is this moment where they are viable and artists can make a living you know or at least get by through this alternative market structure but they are erecting sort of a new system of taste makers and gatekeepers in within that alternative system that I think a lot of times in the language that you see people talking about the counterculture they sort of resist that idea right it is that sort of democratic like we're letting everybody in but you know sort of the meritocratic part of that does creep in and so and that can end up being sort of a wedge among those different groups you know so a lot of times one of the things I run into is that you have at a college radio station they mostly wait station managers and I say we love rap and hip hop you know we're mixing public enemy into the rotation but we're not including black students as part of station management to actually like rethink the structure of programming and sort of who gets to control how those acts of the airways are sort of set up just that they're not thinking you know they're thinking through their own sort of lens and so I guess now that we have everything you know I talked to a K XP DJ and they look at themselves more as curators that was the term that they use rather than gatekeepers and taste makers because there's so much stuff out there and we still need a way to kind of find our find the things that we like find our aesthetics within that and so I think you know we won't go into the is college radio dead question yet maybe but it's that's kind of part and parcel of that that bigger question great alright good I'm sure there are questions comments we can start in the room and then please people online we'd like to have more discussion let's see introduce yourself to hi my name is Anne Hart and I'm a second year student thank you so much so I'm really interested in your images and those are your sources so I would want you to talk a little bit more about your research methodology and how do you think there's yeah so for in one sense the MIT book is really unique I think I put that in the slide in college radio history because it gives me longitudinal access to one station in a kind of coherent format over time it's like finding the world's longest email thread but it's so it is unique of any station that I've been to that has that kind of source I'll find you know there'll be you they call them job books and some other stations or something like that you know so I'll find you know one from like a year or a couple years and they're always like these really really vibrant pictures of the conversations that are happening in the station and so and the one hand so on one hand the WNBR source like really stands out is really unique when that's what makes it a great station for me to put together a talk like this because I can get that that picture for the most part though the research is really fragmented because I'm lying on college students to put stuff in a box and send it to an archive or to you know not throw away stuff or like not spill their jolt soda all over program logs or something like that so it can be very disjointed a lot of my good quotes also come from student newspapers which thankfully a lot of them have been digitized which made the research really easy to do for you know I've been able to get lots of stuff and you know call letters are pretty easy to search for so that kind of eased the process for a lot of that but you know in the book and they will put in things like they would take a clip like they're covered in the Boston Globe or something they'd paste the clip in the book and then everybody would like mark it up at WUOG at UGA there was a big fight over their format and they the administration instituted a manager that they all hated and somebody like took his picture and they were like pig like over his picture so you know you get this really like I don't know why I mean it's sort of organic kind of picture of this of this kind of like in the studio on the ground but when it comes to trying to put together a whole narrative of when you're trying to tell the national history of college radio it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle because I only have a couple of stations like WNBR which is not going to touch on every single issue anyways so I really wanted to have like a cast of characters to tell the history of college radio through like 10 stations or something but instead I had like 60 because I have to like piece together and the book is way too long so if you ended up with 60 stations how did you end up organizing the book and figuring out what your two lines would be yeah my initial thoughts ended up not handing out I thought I would be like really methodical and have a few like major market stations and like public universities and private universities and then small liberal arts colleges and it ended up like I was just sort of like you know wide arm grab and put it in the blender and like kind of see what came out you know I wish I could say that I stopped to like some sort of method throughout but instead I kind of basically I had these little chunks that kind of write up these episodes like I talked together today like I had this episode like I'm just going to write it up for my sources and you know I use things in the programs program you know how you can like kind of chop it up into these little pieces on a cork board and so I just kind of like gather them together like these two stories kind of go together like what's going on there and then I kind of go back into the context and sort of uncover like oh it really has to do with this kind of regulatory shift and so it moves chronologically and thematically at the same time so there's 18 total chapters right now so you can see how it happens in the final version of it but you know so the first part which a lot of this the first episode the the ghetto's debut is actually in the first book that sort of been chopped off so that's not actually in this book but the other two episodes are and the four lovers only probably not going to be in there because it's similar to the 1980 debate but it is this that kind of like fluid process of like moving across different examples and so I try to have some geographic diversity within each and different types of institutions but the distinction is between I thought there would be huge differences between like public and private universities and it's almost no difference it's so such a diverse landscape and radio markets really play a big role in what the stations look like so it's really hard to distinguish between public and private institutions that's great so maybe I have a lot of questions in the but maybe I don't know if we're going to chat one more in the Q&A area but see things pop up I saw someone ask here's a question there is a question from the chat here from Deborah Douglas thank you for this question okay thank you here we go I'll try again so Deborah Douglas asked a question and just came to the host of the panel so I can't see it there are a class of college stations that have morphed into NPR stations such as WBUR, WXPN how do these fit into your story thank you Deborah how do these fit into your story thank you Deborah NPR is sort of the bad guy in my story I mean you know and I think it's not because my former station was basically sold to NPR but it's always sort of this like giant in the room for college administrators so a lot of the college DJs don't necessarily aware of some of the things that are going on but some of the hottest fights in the book like picket lines and like you know screaming like duck paper faces like the whole thing have to do when administrators try to force stations to adopt NPR programming and there's a sort of there's a few sort of waves of this there's one in the late 70s and there's one in the late 80s but the really the key moment is I referenced it a little bit in this talk is with this class D decision because basically the National Association of Educational Broadcasters which is behind a lot of big NPR signals which are municipally owned like WBEZ in Chicago municipally owned WNIC and then the WBURs they and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were pushing to create this national network and they relied on high wattage clear channel signals and so what would happen is you would have a 90.9 launch increase the wattage to 50,000 watts or whatever and then out there in the hinterlands we would hit this little 10 watt station and so it would impede the coverage of these signals so they're the ones who are pressuring the FCC to do away with those 10 watt licenses but there is a sort of ironic effect because they're basically saying you have to upgrade to 100 watts or more and spend a lot of money and to become a more full service station to survive otherwise your signals are going to get obliterated and what ends up happening is a lot of stations upgrade and so that increases this visibility on college stations at this moment where they're also playing all this weird independent label music stuff and reaching kids in the suburbs and so it has a sort of ironic effect that sort of amplifying sort of bokeh-mian sound on the radio but NPR it's always there and I've had to kind of break off some of the NPR stuff because there's a whole story to tell there over sort of battles or whether these signals would become NPR stations so instead I've chosen to sort of focus on what's going on mostly in the studios rather than kind of in these administrative conversations but they're definitely there and they definitely make a lot of people mad. I want to hear about the relationship between universities and colleges and their stations their stations and the kind of power dynamics and issues that the stations have in relationships like the administration one sort of assumes that it's constantly possible to settle on the kids and play and the administration is alive or they're acting out or they're like that's kind of the default assumption we make but I imagine it's much more complicated and I'm wondering if there's NPR as the administration was like we're just going to take over so that we can do our line on the show instead or would you get it some of just beyond the like good-by-back narrative that one kind of assumes this and tell us more about how things tend to work out. Yeah it really is all over the map you know sometimes you have students who are pushing for these signals to be more mainstream or to provide more professional training they're saying you know I came here to college to get a job and you know this becomes an increasing narrative over time you know so I want professional experience I want to be like working at a commercial station where I can then go out into the field and get a job improved you know that I have sales experience or whatever WPRS is the perfect example Yes WPRS What do they think is professional it's really like amateur commercial stuff Yeah and like a lot of it are stations with a broadcasting program or a journalism program sometimes it's the faculty I have a whole chapter on the University of Kansas where Steve Ducey of Fox News is an alum of their radio station from the 1970s you know it's a really professional like students prestigious journalism program but then you know Lawrence has this whole like crazy music scene and William Sparrow is hanging around and like it's like super out of the garden which is great venues and touring circuit and so the station you know to go progressive but then the faculty in the 1980s start to say like oh whoa like let's bring the station in and there's a big fight and you know there's another picketing thing and an FCC mine and you know drama in Sioux so in that case it's the faculty supported by Dean but then in other situations you have the administration wanting to sort of prove that it has you know sort of public service mindedness they look to the radio station and that's where you get a lot of push for NPR programming or professionalization I have a whole tag in Zotero like administrative takeovers a lot of times what they would do is they would sort of handpick a student or a graduate student to come in as a station manager to kind of clean things up and there would be particular moments where this happened usually so the big moment is around 1980 when stations are operating their signals when they start to go progressive and then we're new wave then there's another round of them in the 1990s where you have station closures the probably the most outrageous example of an administration kind of going off the rails and closing the station happens at the Duffield University on Long Island which if you know the war is where Chuck D and Public Enemy formed in the early 1980s that you know they were all college rated DJs there Chuck D talked about it as the place where he found his voice and what ends up happening is these narratives over these college stations really replicate these larger higher education bottles that we see over the value of the works so you have on the one hand you know are these stations laboratories for students to get professional experience so they can go out and be positive members of the workforce or are they these places where students engage in sort of liberal arts inquiry as a student activity can kind of go out and find their voice like Chuck D said and discover new music and expand culture horizons and create new culture and so you see those the same kinds of array of sides in that larger debate over curricula visit on these stations so in the in the 90s president there comes in and he has the sort of culture wars you know western civilization I'm going to defend the canon and what is this radio station that's connected to these community members and oh they're black and they listen to hip hop and I don't think that sounds like college so I'm going to get rid of the station and he shuts it down over over about a year and it's gone WPAU no longer exists and it was this major force in popularizing hip hop particularly into the suburbs in the 1980s around D.M.C. I'm out there all the time and Dr.Jay of UMTD Raps was an alum and yeah the the heiress to boycott gets basically its own chapter because again it kind of comes at that crucial moment when you have the class D decision taking place and Dr.Woe is hitting the record industry and all of a sudden all the majors are instituting the service and so it's really Wesleyan is the key kind of epicenter of that and there's sort of like reluctant music director who's like well I guess I'm going to take this on and you know lead the charge and it gets tons and tons of press and attention and you know it is sort of interesting that it's like focused on this one station I mean this one record label when there were other cuts happening but I think because of that sort of unique relationship the heiress to had with college stations and the music that it was offering that it was sort of kind of a prime a prime target for that but I have to say it's definitely one of my favorite chapters in the whole thing lots of good quotes but yeah so Larry let me into the studio on this little wooden chair I was pregnant with my third child while I was doing this over the course of like four months and so after a while like I couldn't fit the book on my lap anymore I had to like readjust it's like all of a sudden all my photos change angle and various things it's very like kind of visceral experience at Saturday mornings and usually backwards was on I think while I was there so I got to enjoy backwards briefly mentioned the end of the fairness factor how we were did yes I put that in for Heather it really it really didn't affect college stations except there were a few talk shows that were on college radio and so but a lot of times the conversation in those individual shows didn't really end up in the records that I was looking at there were a couple of outrageous moments though with those talk shows for some reason in the late 1980s a bunch of college I have at least three instances that I've found decided that it would be a great idea to debate Ku Klux Klan members on the air you know like David Duke was sort of like rising there was resurgent KKK and so they're like well we're going to like do our service to public we're going to debate and put these people on the air and debate them and show everybody how wrong they are like a really bad really bad idea and you know there was lots of pushback unsurprisingly because of this and you know but they sort of used that kind of like fairness doctrine model for like how they were thinking about it I think or that was at least because that was sort of in the news I think that was also part of their thinking in the way that they were shaping those debates but what's really interesting so one of the examples actually comes from my alma mater station at Vanderbilt you know these two students are sort of like it's like they're taking like a conversation that happens in a classroom where they're sort of trying out ideas and cloning it on the air I think that was sort of what they were thinking about but they do this and they get like a basically slap on the wrist like you know WRBU this is a terrible idea but then about a year later there's a show called 91 Rap sorry 91 Soul becomes 91 Rap or spawns off 91 Rap they have this really popular hip hop show this is like 1989 1990 91 Rap is on the air they're having you know a few people come by the station there's sort of some partying going on at a certain point some high schoolers get on the mic and you know there's some kind of conflict and you know I think maybe an obscenity went out over the airwaves stations shut down for three months so the administration kind of like flies in like what's happening in the station so it's like okay so the station a year before put literally KKK members on the air and it was like and now you have members of the local black community associated with rap and hip hop basically a minor incident happens there's not a whole lot of records about what actually happened or what went out over the air but there were no complaints or there may be a few complaints but their FCC license was never in jeopardy at all so there's this kind of disconnect in the way going back to how there's questions about administrations and the way that they sort of handle content and what these students are doing and kind of the political content that they work off but you know bringing up the fairness doctrine on relationships with college radio makes me think about the sort of notion that fairness doctrine is dealing with you know political speech and then the other kind of places regulated in decency and that's just using dirty words and so on but if college radio is often playing really politically radical music like you could imagine a college radio station constantly playing say anti-mixin type songs or anti-Vietnam songs or anti-radian songs still relevant because he doesn't get rid of the fairness doctrine until like 1986 or six years of constant anti-radian punk rock or whatever and that's never going to be pointed to as unfair speech because it's entertainment and it's not going to be seen as content in the way that a talk show, if there were constantly talk shows that were anti-radian in a political place. So I'm just wondering if you see any you know moments where the music is taken seriously as political speech in terms of how the administrations looked at and obviously the people playing the music understand this political speech in some way but just sort of how that played out maybe one story even though that played out. Yeah they definitely see you know that's the whole like left of the dial identity and that there's a sort of like progressive political identity that comes sort of with the cultural part of college radio as well as the political associations that it might have you know there I mean and the station that does get in trouble with the PMRC is UC Santa Barbara station and they don't get fined but they get reprimanded along with Howard Stern and KBFK the Pacific the station and so there is and particularly in the 1970s you know there's a lot of times station managers who come from Pacifica and are sort of creating those sort of ties Georgetown station for one it gets sold because they're airing anti-abortion I mean abortion services you know Planned Parenthood clinics, PSAs on their station so a lot of times where you get that political conversations is not with talk shows but with kind of activist orientation of some of the programs or the associations that they have WRVU for one had a show that ran throughout the 1990s into the 2000s by DJ Ron was a lovely person called out of the closet on the buckle of the Bible belt you know in the 90s and it was pretty controversial that he was he was doing that and he got a lot of pushback on campus from that there were a lot of stations were very supportive of anti-apartheid protests which is sort of an often overlooked aspect of student protests in the 1980s that like there's sort of like apathetic student idea like after the counterculture totally not true total myth and that that sort of one area but instead where it comes out really on campus and where you see the most pushback or something in my eye is they critique it through aesthetics they're saying like this is like there's no crappy music that nobody wants to listen to and you know what are you doing with my student fees like I want to hear you know stuff that that I like and so a lot of the sort of content discussions get sort of filtered through these structures and governance and sort of these institutional arrangements and institutional politics which is why the governance structure of these stations even though it's like you know it's not as much fun as like talking about like you know your ex or something but it's it's that's really where the rubber meets the road is over these sort of you know bread and butter issues of funding and bylaws and constitutional arrangements thank you I just like to say thank you you know I think it was a fabulous talk I learned so much about this radio station that it seems very humble in the basement of a problematic building across the street here and it's just absolutely fascinating to hear this book project sounds fabulous is there a timeline when we might think about the book? It is on the verge of going out for peer review it is a complete manuscript it is there I'm in the cutting of words process and like I said there is a second book that I had to chop off from the beginning which is sort of the 60s and 70s counterculture years free speech on campus kind of lens on student media but hopefully within a year we will be having book talk type thank you so much for having me thank you so much I'm just going to close out with a plug for next week our talk will be 100% virtual next week on zoom and it's going to be with Raquel Gates who is a professor from Columbia University and she's going to present her experience working as a consulting producer on the criterion for the release of the Melvin that people's essential films collection so that's going to be really really interesting really important stuff that she did there so I'll just end with that and again thank you so much for one final round of applause thank you everyone online for coming thank you for all of our online see you next week awesome thank you so much