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Favorite College Station

C

CleveFan

There seems to be a lot of creativity coming from the far left side of the FM radio band. What would be your favorite college stations in Northeast Ohio?

My pick (and I've mentioned it before): WJCU 88.7 FM from John Carroll University. Big fan of the "Heights" programming and the "Retro Radio" program. Good station overall.
 
WZIP 88.1 is a nicely run station. The GM/Professor Tom Beck makes sure that it is a classy and professionally sounding station. It sounds better than many of the commercial stations in the area.
 
Here is another vote for WJCU (John Carroll). Saturday afternoons are pretty good with Mike Young's Music and Memories and Jumpin' Joe Madigan's Retro Radio. I also tune in to Uncle Fred's folk program on Sunday night.

WBWC (Baldwin Wallace) has some good oldies shows on Sunday evening and also Trop Rock on Monday night with Dennis King.

On WRUW (Case) I sometimes listen to Dr. Polka on Thursday evening, but very little else.
 
WCSB, still live and local overnights (God knows what sort of discussions or music might be heard, which is half the fun).
 
WBWC is great, basically playing the new alt rock that The End would be playing if it hadn't been flipped to hip hop all those years ago. Since the demise of V107.3 I'm not sure the commercial dial has ever been more stale than it is right now.
 
Best stations on the dial...91.3 the Summit in Akron, 88.7 the Heights in Cleveland, and NPR. Only things I find worth listening to on the commercial side these days is Alan Cox on MMS, or the Lake for 80s and 90s retro rock fix. (Unless you count the 10 or so rock formats on Sirius) If radio doesn't figure out a way to promote excitement about new rock artists, rock radio will go the way of smooth jazz, easy listening and adult standards
 
drbob932 said:
WCSB, still live and local overnights (God knows what sort of discussions or music might be heard, which is half the fun).
Click to expand...

Yeah...for me, absolutely nothing beats WCSB late at night. Especially the call-in shows. There is nothing else I've heard anywhere (except 'RUW) that sounds anything like it. 669 on Friday nights / Saturday mornings carried me through many late nights/work shifts in the past (I have to time-shift it more often than not now...I have literally cartons of old 669 episodes on VHS). And WRUW's late-night music programming is great.

I'm not a big fan of WJCU's automated Heights format, but that has more to do with my musical taste than their execution of the format, which is really well-done. I love their non-automated lineup (Bill Peters, Music To Break Things By, Retro Radio).

I remember WBWC was my go-to station in early 2001. They just increased power, so I could finally hear them in Euclid, and 92.3 hadn't yet switched to nu-metal-centric alternative. They always had a spot on my presets...until 88.3 from Painesville blew them out of the listenable water in my part of the world.

And man, did I love WSTB 88.9 in the late 90s when they were V-Rock. I couldn't get their signal at all in Euclid (and I tried everything), but they were all I listened to when I worked in Twinsburg. I remember thinking that this station was absolutely too good to be true. Not too far removed from 92.3 Extreme Radio, but heavier and with more obscure stuff (they'd play stuff like Stuck Mojo, Pantera, and Deftones alongside old Beastie Boys songs, which to my 18-year-old mind was the greatest thing ever).
 
I'd say WJCU also. As others have mentioned, Retro Radio (as well as other shows) is great. I let Jumpin' Joe borrow a few of my 45 RPM records in the past when he was first getting going, but now his own collection has very few "holes" in it. If you happen to miss one of Joe's shows, or would like to hear some of them again, I have been archiving the Retro Radio shows here (2011 -2012 so far):

http://www.rockcityradio.com/Retro_Radio/2012/index.html

Here's some old record surveys (mostly WIXY-1260 that I used to have when they published them in the Cleveland Press:

http://www.dannykewl.com/surveys/index.html
 
DrC said:
Yeah...for me, absolutely nothing beats WCSB late at night. Especially the call-in shows. There is nothing else I've heard anywhere (except 'RUW) that sounds anything like it.
Click to expand...
I took a long time off from WCSB overnights until the last few years when my kids were born (and subsequently keeping me up all night again). Couldn't believe that a lot of the hosts were still around, which I thought was great. I like just about every night's programs on some level, although I still find myself having no luck painting an accurate picture of Dricore's show for anyone. It sort of has to be heard (repeatedly) to be believed.

669 on Friday nights / Saturday mornings carried me through many late nights/work shifts in the past (I have to time-shift it more often than not now...I have literally cartons of old 669 episodes on VHS).
Click to expand...
That's awesome. Re: 669 - I had to explain to my wife that she shouldn't be offended, and it's really not her if she wakes up hearing me laughing out loud in bed in the middle of the night on Friday/Saturday. If you didn't see it, this link that WCSB put out on Facebook recently might certainly interest you: http://db8.ca/radioarchive/csb/ (or is that your collection? :) )

...when I worked in Twinsburg.
Click to expand...
Speaking of, we live in Twinsburg, and I can't say that I've ever had better luck getting *all* the stations on the far left of the dial as I've had here. The engineering people can help me out, but I'm guessing it's some location/elevation combo? Granted I'm almost always streaming them in the house nowadays, but if I ever have to roll with the clock radio (or certainly in the car), I don't have much trouble picking up any of them.
 
drbob932 said:
I took a long time off from WCSB overnights until the last few years when my kids were born (and subsequently keeping me up all night again). Couldn't believe that a lot of the hosts were still around, which I thought was great. I like just about every night's programs on some level, although I still find myself having no luck painting an accurate picture of Dricore's show for anyone. It sort of has to be heard (repeatedly) to be believed.
Click to expand...

There's no explaining any of those late-night WCSB shows to the uninitiated. It is amazing to hear so many personalities on that station who have been around for much longer than their four-year (or five-year) plan.

That's awesome. Re: 669 - I had to explain to my wife that she shouldn't be offended, and it's really not her if she wakes up hearing me laughing out loud in bed in the middle of the night on Friday/Saturday. If you didn't see it, this link that WCSB put out on Facebook recently might certainly interest you: http://db8.ca/radioarchive/csb/ (or is that your collection? :) )
Click to expand...

Ha! Thankfully, I haven't needed to explain 669 to my wife yet...that might be a long, awkward conversation. That's not my collection out there, but I am looking forward to checking it out (although I think I'll need to get out from behind this firewall first). I have a lot of 2008 and 2009 episodes digitally encoded, but the older ones (2003-2005) are just sitting in various boxes right now. I'll see if I can fill in any gaps for them...

Speaking of, we live in Twinsburg, and I can't say that I've ever had better luck getting *all* the stations on the far left of the dial as I've had here. The engineering people can help me out, but I'm guessing it's some location/elevation combo? Granted I'm almost always streaming them in the house nowadays, but if I ever have to roll with the clock radio (or certainly in the car), I don't have much trouble picking up any of them.
Click to expand...

I live in Twinsburg (actually Reminderville) now, and I don't have much trouble getting any of the "left of the dial" stations in Cleveland or Akron either. Even WRUW, which is tough due to its directional pattern, comes in fine on my circa-1993 Aiwa boombox with the antenna positioned just so. 91.3 WAPS is also kinda tough with 91.5 right down the street in Bainbridge, but they are receivable with a good tuner. Elevation is a big part of it - driving on Glenwood near 91 and looking northwest, you can see the Cleveland skyline in the distance pretty consistently. Certainly solves the line of sight problem you get in a lot of the far suburbs...
 
Anybody know if WBWC's transmitter is the one on the top of the apartment building near Great Northern Shopping Center? I assume it's them, right? Thanks.
 
Tim said:
Anybody know if WBWC's transmitter is the one on the top of the apartment building near Great Northern Shopping Center? I assume it's them, right? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's them.

They are directional from that building, with a cut toward the East to protect the Painesville station on 88.3.
 
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