After more than a generation of legal tussles and administrative wrangling,
UW-Madison will cease to be the only Big Ten university without an on-air student radio station Friday.
WSUM, FM 91.7, will begin live radio broadcast at 2:22 p.m. on 2-22-02, after a long struggle to free the station from the constraints of Internet broadcast.
Technical manager Greg Knowles said the mechanics of WSUM are set to broadcast student music and talk across the Madison area.
“I spent the last week and a half re-wiring the entire station,” Knowles said. “Once we’re on air, we can’t go off to do repairs anymore.”
Knowles said although only minimal changes will stem from the switch from online broadcast, he is still nervous.
“I’m a little worried about if things go wrong around the station,” he said. “But other than just basic FCC regulations, the broadcast will remain pretty much the same as it has on the Web. We have to do station identification and emergency broadcast tests, but we should be set to go as always.”
Madison, the city where radio was invented, has been lacking a student radio station since World War II.
Since 1952, university residence hall radio stations have broadcast off and on. Charles Bartelt began the first broadcast of the new radio station, WMHA, from Gilman Hall in the lakeshore area.
After several years of internal turnover and struggle, WMHA switched call signs to WLHA, still broadcasting from the Lakeshore residence halls. WLHA, an AM station, later switched to low-power FM, a practice in direct defiance of FCC regulations. In 1993 the feds became aware of the infractions, and student radio went off the air.
Despite the existence of student radio in Madison in various forms, none of the previous stations were endorsed or supported by student government or university administration.
In the mid 1990s, technology became available to broadcast a student radio station over the Internet until a tower could be secured. The Associated Students of Madison endorsed the station, which is now funded in part by student segregated fees.
Following bitter legal disputes with the town of Montrose, the only location the FCC deemed suitable for a new radio tower, WSUM eventually prevailed and construction was completed late last year.
Chris Martel, WSUM DJ and co-host of “Trashy Trompin, Sleazy Stompin,” a rock show airing from 10 p.m. to midnight Monday, said he looks forward to plying his trade in front of an expanded audience.
“We’ve been doing the show for two years straight [on the Web],” Martel said. “We play rock ‘n’ roll, some punk rock, some old stuff. When it comes to the show, I play my own music out of my own collection.”
Martel said his mission as a DJ has not changed: to get classic music to the ears of the public.
“We’ll play anything from the Oblivion to the Ramones — some ’70s punk, nothing political,” he said.
