When WSUM takes to the air this afternoon, another station hungry for market share will join local broadcast veterans.
Other local radio stations, both commercial and nonprofit, are supportive of WSUM.
“Every signal is competition, but I think it’s fabulous,” said Mike Ferris, production manager for WIBA-FM in Madison. “It gives students a chance to get broadcast experience, it gives listeners another choice, and it forces everybody on the air to perform at a higher level.”
WSUM’s student-oriented market does not restrict it to the campus community; the station has the opportunity to gain a citywide audience, said Randall Davidson, production manager for Wisconsin Public Radio.
“When I was in college in Indiana, we found our radio station didn’t do very well with the college market at all, but we were big in the community at large,” Davidson said.
WPR’s Madison affiliate, WHA, is one of two other Madison-area non-commercial radio stations.
“We’re thrilled for [WSUM], and we will offer to help them in any way we can. A lot of us started in college radio, and it was a great way to gain experience,” Davidson said.
Davidson said he felt the markets for the two stations will not clash.
“We have one service that focuses on call-in issues, another for news, and we provide classical music,” Davidson said. “How that will conflict with a station doing college rock, I don’t know.”
Jill Hopke, news director for WORT, a local nonprofit radio station, said WSUM is beneficial to the community.
“I personally don’t feel that there will be any competition between us and WSUM,” Hopke said. “I feel that having another community radio station isn’t competition; it will only serve to enrich the Madison community.”
Hopke said WORT, a volunteer-dominated station broadcasting since 1975, has a diverse programming schedule.
“WORT is a non-commercial community radio station broadcasting music, news and public affairs,” she said. “We play everything from jazz to hip-hop to rock to alternative to classical, and we get over 60 percent of our funds from the public.”
In addition to a small professional staff, WORT also employs a few students as volunteers or interns.
Davidson said Madison has the oldest continually operated radio station in the country.
“There were many stations on before us during World War I around the country,” Davidson said. “During the war, the federal government ordered all AM radio stations off the air because at night, AM radio bounces, and they feared messages could be picked up by the enemy.”
The one radio station left on was in Madison because it was engaged in communications with the Navy.
Davidson said he is confident WSUM will build on the Madison radio tradition because the station is expanding the listening market in Madison and playing music nobody else is playing.
