College Radio Saves the Day

Independent Stations Stay On Air During Hurricane Katrina

Unlike a lot of my friends, I continue listen to the radio when I’m driving. I’ve got the standard AM/FM radio that came with the vehicle and I prefer that to my other options. I had a cassette player in my previous car but I soon learned that cars are where cassettes go to die. They free themselves from their cases, slip under the seat, and slowly unwind until nothing is left but a piece of faded plastic with a mile-long tangle of tape sitting next to it.

I shudder to think what a car would do to my CD collection.

Some of my friends are hooked on satellite radio but as I look over the menu of stations available in that format I can see that it suffers from the same problem that regular radio does: a preponderance of stations dedicated to music that is at least 25 years old.

I call most commercial radio formats “death by nostalgia” and I think the term is certainly as apt as “classic rock.” Especially when the stations touting themselves as classic rock are playing songs like Kaja-Googoo’s “Too Shy” and other songs that should have died with the 1980s.

Thank heaven for college radio stations. They are about the only place where you can hear new music these days.

College radio stations are also just about the last radio stations in the country to carry some semblance of a news crew. As large corporations have been buying out independent radio stations across the country and making them “streamlined and profitable,” one of the first things they do is cut out local news. They then replace it with generic national and world news that they buy for a few bucks from syndicated wire services.

Most of the time this lack of local news on the radio is not even noticed by listeners. But when an emergency strikes, such as the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the Gulf Coast area, this lack of local information can have life or death implications.

As it turns out, college radio stations played a big part in getting news and information to people who had portable radios as their only means of communication with the world during the aftermath of Katrina. College students from Xavier, Tulane and other campuses hauled portable generators to their respective stations to keep them on the air and sent other students around New Orleans to find out where the supplies of fresh water and food were coming in. They then broadcast that information to people listening on the radio. It was a valuable service that the Internet, TV news, and mainstream radio were either unable or unwilling to provide at that crucial time.

The lesson learned from this episode is that we should support our college radio stations and insist that commercial stations make a commitment to local news.

Here in the High Country we have some pretty good college stations to call our own. Appalachian State’s WASU-FM is an interesting, if inconsistent, listening resource. Of course, its biggest liability is the fact that it has so little power that you can’t pick it up past the Wendy’s in Boone.

WNCW-FM, from Isothermal Community College in Spindale, seems to be the big draw on the FM dial in the High Country. They do a good job of balancing eclectic music with news and other programming. I love WNCW during the week but on the weekends they devote way too much airtime to bluegrass and Celtic music. They have a weekend show called Celtic Wind where they play penny whistle and bagpipe duets for eight straight hours…or until your ears bleed, whichever comes first.

One of the best of the college radio stations in western North Carolina is WSGE-FM, beaming out of Dallas, NC as the entertainment and media arm of Gaston College. I discovered it on the left side of the FM dial at 91.7 on a recent trip to Charlotte and I tune into the station whenever I am down that way. You can pick it up from Lenoir all the way to the south side of Charlotte making it one of the stronger college station signals in our state.

WSGE has an open format with an emphasis on new Americana and alternative adult music. This week as I was traveling from Charlotte Douglas Airport to Boone, Cliff was the DJ on WSGE and he played a fantastic set of songs that included James McMurtry’s “Bad Enough,” Chuck Prophet’s “What Makes the Monkey Dance,” Jackson Browne’s “Casino Nation” plus tunes by The Clumsy Lovers, Patty Griffin, Rosie Flores, Whiskeytown, Dar Williams, The Waterboys and Robbie Robertson.

If you don’t recognize most of those names it’s probably because commercial radio is fixated on the past, except for the 25 or so new songs that they play by Brittney, Mariah, Celine and Avril.

WSGE also has a killer blues show on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings called Highway 321 Blues, plus a beach music show and a Sunday night salute to oldies called Retronomics.

The next time you take a road trip to Hickory or Charlotte, be sure to check out 91.7. You’ll probably hear some local news or new music that you wouldn’t have heard anywhere else…including on that fancy new satellite radio of yours.