Tune into any of the eight college and community radio stations crowded together at the far left end of the FM dial and you’ll hear everything from classical music to hip-hop, including jazz, reggae, blues, hot dance mixes, independent-label rock, calypso and gospel. You’ll also find news and commentary in English, French-Creole, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese.
What you won’t find, however, are commercials — each station is funded by its operating institution — and slick banter.
These energetic, creative and unpredictable stations reflect the passions of their disc jockeys and producers. And each station — from Northwestern University’s 7,200-watt WNUR-FM 89.3, which has a potential audience of 1.8 million, to the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum’s WCYC-FM 90.5, a tiny but vibrant spot on the dial — has a distinctive voice, specific mission and active relationship with its listeners.
The most radically free-form programming is found on WZRD-FM 88.3, Northeastern Illinois University’s 100-watt station that can be heard from Wicker Park all the way into the northern suburbs.
“The station’s free-form philosophy dates back to the ’70s, and it works amazingly well,” says station manager Melissa Radja.
Sequestered in the basement of the student center, WZRD’s studio, with its funky furnishings and floor-to-ceiling posters, looks like a cross between a dorm room and an underground club. Broadcast equipment is concealed behind walls of record albums and CDs. The station’s emphasis clearly is on program content, not technology.
Not only is the station free of advertising, it also floats within the university structure, not anchored to any department, and even avoids the stereotyping of broadcast “personalities.” The student deejays are called “wizards” and remain anonymous while on the air; they don’t announce their names during the course of their boldly improvisational four-hour shows.
WZRD’s sister station is the University of Chicago’s WHPK-FM 88.5. On the air for 50 years, WHPK is hidden in the bell tower atop the turn-of-the-century Reynolds Club, an aerie-like haunt lined with 10,000 albums and as many CDs, all containing music seriously underrepresented on commercial radio, from avant-garde jazz to experimental 20th Century classical.
Like WZRD, WHPK is devoted to making the unheard heard, but it takes a different approach, alternating between student and community volunteer disc jockeys, and offering an impressive roster of thematic shows with such tantalizing titles as “In Grind We Trust,” “Raw Beets,” “Make Way for Tomorrow,” “A Feast of Irish Folk,” “The Evil Show” and “Radio dada,” the brainchild of author and music critic John Corbett.
Rock, including music produced by Hyde Park’s independent record labels, is the backbone of WHPK’s music programming, but a number of the station’s most popular and enduring shows are hosted by volunteer disc jockeys, including some old-timers who remember the 43rd Street jazz scene back in the days of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Arkansas Red’s beloved Saturday night show, “The Blues Excursion,” draws a large and spirited audience. WHPK also has a long-standing affiliation with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and has the honor of having been the first radio station in Chicago to play hip-hop.
The urge to share the music they love has always drawn students and community volunteers to college radio, but what’s new is a stronger focus on public affairs programming. WHPK has made space for Ald. Barbara Holt’s “City Countdown,” and lively international programs such as “All Things Africa” and the “Guatemala Radio Project.”
“Students are much more cosmopolitan than they used to be, and radio helps them and the community at large be more powerful and influential,” observes Will Mollard, a “veteran” WHPK deejay.
Music and important issues
Loyola University’s station, WLUW-FM 88.7, reached the same conclusion.
Craig Kois, faculty adviser and community programming coordinator, says the station’s quest for more original and meaningful community programming fits in well with Loyola’s Jesuit philosophy, which espouses a commitment to social justice and applying to the world that which is learned in the classroom.
Most of WLUW’s weekday hours are dedicated to rock and dance music, but at night and on the weekends the station airs a mix of specialty shows that reflects the cultural diversity of its broadcast area, which extends from the Loop to the northern suburbs.
WLUW’s push toward a culturally diverse broadcast mix began with the creation of the Lake Shore Community Media Project, a course in which students cover local news.
“Our hope was that as the students went out to cover local stories, the people they talked to would want to come in and produce their own shows,” explains Kois. “And that’s exactly what happened with the Native American, Guatemalan and Haitian communities.”
Relaying his own memorable community radio experience, Kois tells of hailing a cab late one evening. The driver was excited to learn what Kois did for a living.
“He told me that his church group had been involved with a radio ministry in Ethiopia and was planning on buying time at a brokered radio station in Chicago,” Kois explains. “I said, `You don’t have to do that; we’ll be happy to give you time for free.’ The cab driver . . . had actually not intended to pick up any more fares that night; he was on his way home but for some reason decided to stop for me. He and his church group decided that it was an act of God, that he was meant to meet me.”
The group’s Amharic-language show, “The Voice of Tinsaye Hiywot,” airs on Sundays.
Of all of Chicago’s college stations, WLUW offers the most diverse collection of cultural and public affairs programs, including literature and poetry shows; an irregular series on experimental composer John Cage; and various innovative documentaries. This month the station is celebrating Asian-American Heritage Month, and the revival of the popular Saturday morning show, “Live from the Heartland,” an on-air gathering of community and arts activists broadcast from the Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park.
Truly serving a community
Radio is the most accessible and ubiquitous form of mass media and has, since its inception, played a significant role in instigating social change. It gives marginalized community groups a voice, enabling them to tell their stories and rejoice in the wealth of their cultures and the value of their accomplishments.
WCYC-FM 90.5, the voice of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, epitomizes community radio at its best. Broadcasting from cramped but cheerful quarters in the Boys and Girls Club of Chicago in the heart of the Little Village neighborhood, WCYC entertains and informs its loyal listeners. It also provides people between the ages of 17 and 25 with extensive hands-on training in every facet of radio production and broadcast.
Of the college stations, WCYC is the most successful in fulfilling the dual missions of training students for a career in mainstream radio and entertaining and meeting the needs of the community.
Approximately 80 students currently are participating in the station’s two-year program. Their work encompasses everything from an on-air community calendar that highlights events of interest to their primarily Latino audience to producing a variety of musical shows, including “Let There Be House”; “Rock Expresso”; programs featuring salsa and Tex Mex; “Galaxia Cero,” a children’s program; and an assortment of news and public affairs programs.
The station’s training program has proved to be a real boon for young people needing funding for college. Yolanda Rodriguez-Wood, WCYC’s enthusiastic station manager, reports graduates are having good luck with job placements.
And, with 60 names on its training-program waiting list, the station has ambitious plans: To get accredited with a local college or university, change the call letters to WRTE-FM (Radio Arte), increase the signal to 100 watts from 30 watts, and to move into a larger space when the Fine Arts Center Museum opens its youth museum.
Rodriguez-Wood also has her eye on a more financially independent future for WCYC, so that both the station and the museum continue to grow and prosper.
“Our students are so talented, creative and hip, and the feedback from the community is so positive, we can only expect good things. We can only get bigger and better and do more,” Rodriguez-Wood says. “We’re working with young people after all, so we have nothing to fear!”
WCYC achieves extraordinary results with limited resources. On the other end of the spectrum, Northwestern University’s WNUR-FM 89.3 accomplishes a great deal with the best equipment money can buy.
A different approach
WNUR has been on the air for nearly 50 years, broadcasting for the last three from an impressive new state-of-the-art facility. Station manager J. Ryan Stradal says WNUR’s philosophy combines professionalism with a commitment to disseminating music and information that is “either suppressed or ignored by mainstream culture.”
Music is the big draw, both for deejays and listeners. Student deejays spin rock, blues, jazz and classical. And a diverse group of disc jockeys from the community bring the lilt of reggae and folk and the beat of live dance mixes to the air waves, hosting popular shows.
“The phone just rings off the hook during these broadcasts,” Stradal says, marveling. When asked where they find non-student on-air talent, he smiles. “They come to us.”
Acutely aware of the needs and interests of WNUR’s large and diverse potential audience, news director Jaimee Silverstein has worked to wean the station’s news staff off wire-service reports and away from the parroting of mainstream coverage.
“We have the capacity to serve as an original news source and to cover local stories and issues from fresh perspectives,” she says. “Four reporters a day cover community news, focusing not only on breaking stories and crises, but also on topics of ongoing concern, such as race relations.”
The link between creativity and professionalism is the source of WNUR’s success in teaching students the skills required for work in mainstream media. For example, “Capitalist Pig,” Jonathan Hoenig’s financial advice program for college students, has garnered the attention of CNN, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio affiliate WBEZ-FM 91.5, which is now featuring a monthly version of the show.
What other stations will you find at the beginning of the FM dial?
There’s WCRX-FM 88.1, Columbia College’s popular pump-up-the-volume all-student radio station. Program director and morning deejay Scott Trunda describes WCRX as an underground version of B-96 WBBM-FM. He explains that while the station works hard to please its loyal listeners, its primary mission is to train students for a future in commercial radio.
On the far south side of the city, you can tune in to WXAV-FM 88.3, St. Xavier University’s station, and hear a high-quality mix of jazz, blues, ska and hip-hop, as well as live broadcasts of local bands and public affairs programs.
And in many parts of the city and suburbs, listeners can catch the 5,000-watt WDCB-FM 90.9, the public radio station owned by the College of DuPage. Though the college owns the station, it, like WBEZ, and is corporately funded as well as supported by its listeners.
