Doing Radio in the Digital Age
By Buff Lindau
Winning a nationwide myTracks music contest is only part of the way WWPV, the college’s 50-year-old FM radio station, is displaying its prowess in the digital world. The station’s eight-member executive board invited the campus community to register on the online music web site myTracks.com. WWPV got the most registrants per capita of any campus radio station in the country, and came out winners of a concert.
With their $5,000 prize, the station sponsored a P-Day concert by State Radio, called the best live act on the East Coast by the Associated Press. State Radio rolled into Colchester along a 37-stop tour from Europe to Canada to Vermont and to the famous Bonaroo Music Festival in Tennessee.
A State Radio concert is right in sync with the vibe at WWPV, whose online schedule includes such programs as Burning Down the House, The Kitchen Sink, Adam and Gene, Last Dance with Mary Jane, The Other White Meat, Powersurge and much more. Students as well as several faculty and staff regulars fill every time slot from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., and they are in negotiation with the college administration to fill the remaining eight hours each day with WWPV-style programming using automation software.
“We are ready to be a 24-hour-a-day, all-Saint Michael’s station,” said Kyle Chadburn ’08, station manager. Currently, Vermont Public Radio broadcasts BBC programming on WWPV’s frequency, 88.7 FM, when students are on vacation, and from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Student DJs maintain high professional standards and want to control the full 88.7 FM schedule. DJs report their playlist after every show to College Music Journal online so that proper royalties can be paid to the artists, and to keep promotional companies sending new CDs to the station. DJs attend a training session on FCC and station rules, and sign a contract regarding rules and decorum before they go live.
Once certified, DJs create their own programs, which they typically bring to the studio on laptops or iPods. (Spinning vinyl is not happening, and even inserting CDs happens less and less these days.) But, as with an old-style radio station, being a DJ on WWPV today gives students excellent public-speaking practice, exposure to the field of broadcast journalism, high-tech savvy, and a great resumé entry.
WWPV’s presence has grown considerably through broadcast over college TV channels 4 and 11 and its online streaming broadcast at http://personalweb.smcvt.edu/wwpv/Index.html which enables students studying abroad in New Zealand or Argentina, friends attending other colleges, alumni in distant states, parents, and others to tune in the eclectic music of WWPV from anywhere in the world.
