By Grace Prust & Collin Bouressa
Throughout history, radio itself has been a valuable and important medium for sharing knowledge, stories, and culture. Many University of Wisconsin schools have student-run radio stations that provide value directly to the students who run and operate those stations. These radio stations also have underlying outreach into their respective communities. Of the eight student-run stations discussed in this story, some have been broadcasting to their communities for decades, while others are still in their infancy. Not all universities across the UW-System have radio stations on their campuses, and some have faced hurdles along the way.
History of Radio at UWGB
For instance, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (UWGB) radio has endured insurmountable challenges in its long history at the university. The station debuted on May 14, 1974. The station’s original name was Radio WGBW. It was granted an FCC license on October 7, 1974.
In 1985, Wayne Loehlein, former UWGB student and WGBW disc jockey, played Police Truck by the band Dead Kennedys over the air. The lyrics that flagged concern from listeners are:
“Pull down your dress,
It’s a kick in the a**,
Lets beat you blue,
Till you s*** in your pants,
Don’t move child I’ve got a big black stick,
There’s six of us so s***** my d***.”
Hours were cut after this incident, so students were not allowed to operate while faculty manager Glen Slaats was not at the station, which was only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hit the station with a warning for breaching regulations of Radio WGBW’s license.
In 1989, the station’s DJs used profanity on-air, which violated the staff radio contract, university rules, and FCC regulations. The DJs were responding to the new policies set in place by Slaats. They thought the university was taking control away from the students and WGBW was losing its identity as a student-run organization. The station lost its FCC license for this incident of breaking obscenity rules. Slaats received calls saying the DJs “sounded like somebody opened up the sewer over the radio station.” Police also found empty and full cans of beer in the studio. The offending DJs exclaimed, “The fascists are here” on-air when police showed up at the station to respond to calls regarding the profanity being used.
WGBW ceased to be after this incident. July 1, 1989, UWGB’s radio station was taken out of the students’ hands and transferred to Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), which is based in Madison.
UWGB Radio Now
Today, UWGB’s student radio station is known as Radio GBX, and it streams exclusively online. It has been a work in progress bringing student-run radio back to UW-Green Bay, and communication professor and faculty advisor of Radio GBX, Dr. Bryan Carr, explained, “We had to essentially prove the need for it through years of stopgap solutions.” The process of bringing radio back to UWGB started before and continued through the COVID-19 pandemic. He also talked about the technical aspects of building the station. There was a lot of intricate planning and decision-making throughout the process. Carr had to teach himself how to use the new DJ automation software and the new equipment, as well as build the music library for the station. From that point, Carr used that hands-on knowledge to teach and “empower [students] to use that knowledge for their personal and professional development.”
In Spring 2023, the Radio GBX studio opened, and the station was officially live. Students in the Communication 306 course, radio broadcasting, were the first cohort to be on-air. UWGB Senior and Radio GBX’s first program director, Val Tavarez, was one of those students. Part of the course required students to hold a two-hour shift. However, Tavarez did not feel that it was homework, per se, but more of an opportunity. “I always loved radio in the sense of what you can do with it. It’s a way for you to communicate with a lot of people, and you don’t have to speak in front of a huge crowd. All you need is a mic and a voice.” said Tavarez.
From experience, Carr understands how student radio can be an asset to not only a student’s education but also their enjoyment of the college experience. He knows “how vibrant and creative and fun” it can be to be part of a legacy in one’s student radio. When students have the opportunity to be on-air, they “get the chance to be [themselves] and learn about new music and do [their] own programming that is uniquely [their own].”
Currently, there are 15 students enrolled in Comm 306, and a total of 8 student shows from students are in this class. Overall, including the eight comm 306 shows, there are 24 student-run shows broadcasting throughout the week on Radio GBX. In total, there are about 47 hours of broadcast.
Student-Run Radio at UW-Oshkosh
Some UW schools have been reaching their communities uninterrupted for a great length of time, and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (UWO) is one of those. UWO started getting its radio station, WRST-FM, off the ground in 1966. WRST stands for Wisconsin Radio Station of the Titans. The station has been FCC-licensed since September 23, 1966, and retains its license through today.
WRST-FM is a student-run station with about 33 students on staff. Wendell Ray is the general manager of the station and a professor at UWO. Ray is mostly a hands-off GM, and he allows the students to use the information they learn in their radio courses to run the station. Students who are taking the required radio courses for the Radio-TV-Film program (RTF) are put into the station as freshmen in RTF 120, which is the Intro to Audio/Radio class. All students who are in the RTF program are required to take this class, so everyone has an opportunity to be on-air. By the time they are seniors, they will have four years of hands-on experience not only DJing or performing on talk shows but also making operational and production decisions. This also allows for little turnover. Ray said, “[WRST-FM] gets a nice and slow attrition. Then, people replace themselves, and they recruit people to come in after them.”
At UWO, students can also work their way up the ranks at the station. Anyone can apply to be an assistant manager, and eventually, they will become managers at the station. This ensures that, if a student wants to, they can have an opportunity to help manage the radio station. That is the common track students at UWO take in the RTF department. This experience has the most impact on the students who enroll in these radio classes.
UWO maintains its station with the highest quality equipment. Ray said it’s “comparable to most professional broadcast facilities.” Students have the opportunity to be trained on equipment that they will be seeing if they get a job in the field. Ray also said that many UWO alumni end up working locally or regionally, doing what they were trained to do.
Five of the six executive board members at WRST-FM sat down with The Fourth Estate to discuss their roles. Deven Michalak is the sports director for the UWO station. He was always passionate about sports and played them growing up. After finding out about the RTF program and its history, he decided that it was the correct path for him. He talked about the uniqueness of traveling to away games to broadcast for the Titans. This is a factor that people who aspire to work in the sports field will need to take into account. Michalak said, “If I do want to pursue [a career in sports broadcasting] past college, I’m going to have to get used to driving or flying and staying in two-star hotels to call these games.”
Taycee Zach, on the other hand, did not have a distinct plan to enter college at UWO but became very invested in radio while taking the RTF 120 course. She is now the station’s program director. She talked about the rules the station must follow. Since it is an FCC-licensed station, it is a little stricter than Prowl Radio and Radio GBX, which do not have to worry as much about small mistakes on-air since they are streaming online only. To make sure the on-air talent is following the rules, Zach said she “wrote a WRST-FM Bible of sorts.” Students on-air can use this manual, which gives them a template on certain rules, like no profanity on-air. She also mentioned that Professor Ray teaches a class on FCC regulations that requires RTF students to keep them up to date on FCC rules and laws so they can apply that learning while on-air.
WRST-FM’s production director followed a different path. Alex Walczak is a non-traditional student who has worked in the audio space for the last decade. Walczak originally went to UWM for audio but found the RTF program with an opportunity to work behind the scenes at the radio station. He emphasized that students have creative freedom, to a point. He said, “If you wanted to do your own music show, you have to have the music.” he added, “Because we don’t have the music, it allows them to, I don’t wanna say do whatever they want in terms of music selection, but the world is your oyster.” This gives students an idea of what it’s like to curate a selection and then put that selection over the air.
Dylan Eckhart is the News Director at UWO’s radio station. Eckhart is in charge of training all of the station’s newscasters, as well as ensuring the news is up to date. Eckhart also produces a weekly news magazine program called Weekend Review, which is released every Friday. Eckhart also co-hosts a sports show with fellow board member Deven Michalak. Eckhart began his time at WRST-FM with a desire to broadcast sports. After going through RTF 120, the news director position opened up, which presented an opportunity for Eckhart to gain “experience across the entire spectrum” while still allowing him to broadcast games and co-host a sports show.
Teagan Tolley is the person who keeps the WRST-FM train on the tracks. As the station manager, she is also the main representative for people to reach out to if they want to contact the station. Tolley climbed the ranks since she started at UWO. She started as a student in RTF 120, then applied and received a position as the digital content manager, and then became the station manager. Though she is not the ‘leader’ of the board, she oversees the hiring process. Every semester, director positions become available, and students can apply. Tolley takes on the responsibility of making the hiring decisions. She said most of the time, “[students] get the job based off of experience.” So, students can work their way up from RTF 120 to a director position to a board member, and then eventually, they could have an opportunity to fill Tolley’s shoes as the station manager.
The Snake on the Lake
UW-Madison also has a student-run station, identified as WSUM. It started in 1952 as WLHA, which was named after a dormitory on campus, and went off-air in 1993. The station started back up in 1998 under the care of Dr. James Hoyt and Dave Black as an internet-only broadcast. The station was named WSUM, which gained terrestrial broadcasting in 2002 and has held an FCC license ever since.
The Madison station has two full-time professional staffers. Those are general manager Kelsey Brennan and an IT engineer. Brennan was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) from 2010 to 2014. During her time at UW, she was a traffic director at WSUM for less than a year and a program director for about a year and a half. Today, Brennan manages the station, which employs 17 paid hourly student positions and has a volunteer staff that can range upwards of 200 people. WSUM runs a training program that reaches out to not only students but also the community, which is where the volunteer staff comes from.
One of the station’s primary goals is to provide outreach to their community. WSUM has an FCC license as a non-commercial educational station. So, training the volunteer staff is a part of that, but they also do so much more. WSUM also runs a lot of public affairs programs, long-form news reporting, and in-person events like their Snake on the Lake festival. The station also partners with Second Harvest, collecting and donating between 400 and 500 pounds of food.
Another part of their mission statement is to provide an alternative source of programming, information, and entertainment to their community. To achieve this, they try to play music that a listener would not hear on other radio stations. In essence, they do not play Top-40 tracks. Sports programming plays an important role in their identity, which includes play-by-play and color commentary of Badger games, which is provided by UW students. The station runs music about 75% of the time and talk radio, public affairs, and news reporting the other 25% of the airtime.
UW hosts two different radio stations. The terrestrial station is WSUM, which is 91.7 FM, and the counterpart is Freeflow, which is their online streaming station. Freeflow is mostly a music station with a few talk shows. The biggest difference between the two is that Freeflow is not FCC-regulated, so the DJs can play whichever music they want, including explicit songs. WSUM still has rules with Freeflow. Brennan said, “On Free Flow, people can play pretty much whatever music they want, but from a professionalism standpoint, that host or their guests couldn’t get on the mic and start using indecency, profanity or obscenity.” DJs have more leeway with Freeflow. If they make a mistake and use profanity on air, they don’t have to worry about the FCC shutting them down, but it is still discouraged by the WSUM staff.
Final Thoughts
Hands-on experience is one of the most important parts of student-run radio stations throughout the state of Wisconsin. Students are allowed to get into the booth and learn what it’s like to be a DJ, a talk show host, play-by-play, color commentary, news, and much more by participating in their student-run radio stations. Students can find roles in managerial positions and learn the ins and outs of running a station while also working with others to make important decisions for their respective stations. Radio may be a valuable medium for sharing knowledge, stories, and culture. But it’s also an extremely valuable learning experience for the students, which leads to a passion that extends into their surrounding communities. The learning is infectious, and the positivity cultivates excitement up and down the ranks of each station.
