A piece of UW-Madison history will be written Friday as WSUM 91.7 FM becomes the first licensed, student-run radio station ever to be transmitted on air. The station will service the entire campus, as well as the surrounding area.
When the station begins broadcasting live at 2:22 p.m. Feb. 22, UW will lose its status as the largest university in the nation without an on-air radio station. The first show to air will be “Welcome to WSUM,” hosted by WSUM Sports Director Evan Cohen, who said the 38-minute segment will be an introduction to the station.
“Basically, it’s going to be a retroactive piece on WSUM with a great deal of history,” Cohen said. “We’re going to break down each department and allow people to introduce themselves.”
As the moment looms, Station Manager Rod Swims said he is experiencing conflicting emotions.
“There’s the excitement of going on the air, and there’s also the anxiety of trying to make sure we’re managing everything correctly,” Swims said. “But overall, we’re all excited.”
WSUM General Manager Dave Black agreed, saying the transition is somewhat surreal.
“It’s not real to me yet,” Black said. “I’ve been working on this since the summer of 1993. I had a whole different career path laid out for myself, but my life has taken an unexpected but wonderful turn.”
The station’s primary mission is to provide a service to the campus and community and to provide an educational environment and hands-on experience for students who have an interest in broadcast communication or a similar field.
Also, WSUM will provide an alternative source of music entertainment.
“WSUM will provide what isn’t available to listeners now,” Black said. “If you look at the genre of hip-hop and rap, or electronica, that’s not here. Demographics leave out the 16-to-25 year olds, people who are older, who aren’t interested in Britney Spears, *NSync and the Gap.”
“To some extent, I think we are going to hit the alienated, the disenfranchised, anyone who feels left out, who doesn’t want to be homogenized. At other stations, sponsors direct what gets played, but here, we play what we want to,” he added.”
Black also explained the intent of WSUM is not just to help some students gain experience working at a radio station.
“This is an opportunity for people, mostly aged 18 to 21,” Black said. “This may be their only experience at creating media, and this makes them more critical consumers. That’s more important than trying to train the next host for ‘Good Morning America’.”
Since the mid 1990s, WSUM has broadcast on the Internet and may continue to do so even after going live on the air. Communications Director Rob Cohen said the format of the shows is not being altered.
“We’ve been preparing for this switch [from Internet to radio] and our show isn’t going to change,” Cohen said. “It’s just that more people will hear it.
Music after dark: the early days of student radio
1950s
Dating back at least to World War II, the UW campus has never had a truly campus-wide station — though not from lack of effort.
The first attempt at creating a radio station on campus was made March 29, 1952, in the basement of Gilman Hall, which was then one of the Lakeshore-area UW residence halls. Engineering major Charles Bartelt began the first broadcast of a radio station, dubbed WMHA.
The acronym “MHA” stood for Men’s Halls Association, which was the governing body for the Lakeshore halls at the time.
In those early days, the local Public Radio Station, WHA, went off the air every evening at sunset. Bartelt and his partner Richard Greiner’s primary goal in starting the station was to continue broadcasting the same type of music after dark.
Gathering the equipment, as well as support from the public radio station and a grant from university alumni, they began to create a studio.
When Bartelt graduated later that year, he left the equipment and a grant of $50 for future students to keep the station running. Between 1952 and 1956, the station met several problems — primarily with the FCC, which declared in 1956 the radio wiring in the Lakeshore dorms was illegal.
The station moved in 1959 to a studio on Elm Drive, where it managed to broadcast for nearly 35 years, eventually changing its name to WLHA, for Lakeshore Hall Association.
1960s
By the middle of the 1960s, radio listenership was at an all-time high, and WLHA was legally wired into every room in the Lakeshore dorms. The format, previously jazz and classical, became dominated by rock ‘n’ roll, and it took nearly 100 volunteers to keep the station playing about 100 hours of music per week.
The station was so popular it was taking in approximately $100,000 in advertising revenue annually.
The success of this exclusively Lakeshore-area station caused a second station, WSRM, to be born in the Southeast residence halls. Initially, WSRM battled a lack of student, financial and technical support, but in time the station went on to become equally as popular as WLHA.
1970s
In June 1970, the stations’ business departments merged in hopes of creating a single, self-supporting, campus-wide entity. The ’70s were hard times for these stations, as the newly developed FM band increased in popularity, and student listenership on the AM band dropped.
Funding and advertising revenues fell accordingly, and the stations began to face difficulty.
In an attempt to maintain listeners, the radio stations began offering call-in contests and scavenger hunts. In one of the earliest contests, WLHA challenged students to see who would be the fastest to find out the telephone number of the “Morgue Bar in Slab City, WI.” Without conveniences like online telephone directories and dialable yellow-page services, students reportedly tied up the state patrol emergency phone line trying to find out the right answer. However, over time, the station lost popularity, money became tight, equipment became outdated and student radio began to decline.
1980s
In May 1981, WSRM succumbed to financial pressures, leaving WLHA once again the sole radio station on campus.
In 1984, WLHA installed an FM transmitter and began broadcasting at 1.5 watts on 91.5 FM. The weak broadcasting signal meant the listening range was very limited and listenership was low.
The station also made negative comments about UW’s administration, making Bascom bureaucrats reticent to support the goal of a campus-wide station.
Over the next several years, the station struggled to gain listener support and faced licensing problems from the FCC. The station also insisted on remaining independent from the administration, thus disqualifying itself from student fee subsidies
1990s
In 1992, the station began to market aggressively on campus, joining in the Homecoming parade for the first time and hosting a dance, among other activities.
However, in 1993, when the Associated Students of Madison took over as UW’s student governing body, WLHA found an ally with a seat at the UW administration’s table.
With a newfound popularity stemming from the marketing tactics and support from ASM, the station made an error that proved fatal.
Turning up the power on the FM band, WLHA hoped to improve broadcasting capabilities to reach the entire campus.
Shortly thereafter, an anonymous call was placed to the station, ostensibly from a member of the FCC, who informed them that they were not licensed and suggested they shut down before being fined. The call was initially treated as a hoax, but this proved a fallacy.
In spring 1993, the station succumbed to legal pressure and voluntarily shut down after 41 years of broadcasting.
Over the next few years, WLHA was off the air but did not disappear. The station hired new management and fought to gain funding for the radio station through student segregated fees.
In July 1995, with backing by the Student Services Finance Committee, ASM and many students and staff, the Board of Regents approved funding for a student radio station and agreed to hold the station’s FCC license.
The station, which became known as UW-Madison Student Radio, landed at its current location in the Towers apartment building on State Street. In October 1996, it was granted a broadcast license by the FCC and gained the call letters WSUM.
However, WSUM needed a radio tower with a directional antenna capable of beaming a signal to the entire Madison area.
The federal government requires radio towers be constructed outside of city limits. In order to keep the tower within the necessary four-mile radius of the broadcast center, the only viable location for a tower was in the nearby town of Montrose.
In the meantime, netcasting commenced in an attempt to prepare students for the station and to keep patient those who were getting frustrated with the delays.
Finally, WSUM struck a deal with a dairy farmer in Montrose, leasing a portion of his land for the tower site. Over the next several years, many members of the town fought hard to keep the 4-foot-wide, 403-foot-tall tower from going up, calling it an eyesore.
After years of court battles, WSUM won the rights to lease the property for $1000 per month.
Looking beyond a tumultuous history
Culminating decades of work, WSUM will finally begin broadcasting live on the air Friday. While many of the struggles lie in the past, staff members at WSUM admit some problems may still lie ahead, but they look forward to these challenges.
“We need an infrastructure,” Black said. “We need to develop a system that will create a tradition that works in each of our departments.”
However, Black said, there will be other challenges that will take more time, such as initiating the presence and strength of WSUM on campus.
“Certain things sound better on the radio than in print, and sometimes you can get into deeper issues. You need radio for highly interactive communication media. You can call in, have a moderator focus — but not control discussion — and respond in real time.”
He said the variety of alternative music shows is not the only public service feature of his vision for WSUM. Black said he envisions political discourse and social commentary to help UW’s campus climate.
“Things look different in print than they sound on air. WSUM will be a necessary complement for campus discourse,” he said. “We’re not here to fill in the blank spaces between advertisements. We’re here for ideas, debate and discourse. We need to be the C-Span of radio.”
