Has WUMB abandoned nighttime live hosts?

[notlob]

While driving home from my own program this evening about 9:50pm I heard Brendan Hogan speak the parting words of his shift about Richard Manuel and the Band (see playlist below). Ever since WUMB has been all music and recorded program bumper/station brakes. No live human voices at all. Quite frankly, I am enjoying the music (it's not the usual over-played heavy rotation pop/AAA crap played weekdays 6am-10pm) and especially enjoying not hearing the usual scripted trivia and worn out cliches, not to mention the call sign not being mentioned at least 4-5 times every set break.

Did UMass Boston run out of students to host the 10pm to midnight shift?

It's as if a student has hacked into the WUMB computer and replaced it with his or her ipod on shuffle mode.

What happened to the highly touted student DJ development program?
REF: Student DJs Host Weekly Shows on WUMB
October 31, 2011
Colleen Locke
http://www.umb.edu/news_events_media/publications/the_point/student_djs_host_weekly_shows_on_wumb/

From http://wumb.org/cgi-bin/playlist1.pl
11:12 pm Steve Goodman
Old Smoothies (from Affordable Art)
11:08 pm Winterpills
Pretty Girls
11:05 pm Little Feat
Candy Man Blues (from Rooster Rag)
11:02 pm Lyle Lovett
Brown Eyed Handsome Man
10:59 pm The Lovin' Spoonful
Summer in the City (from John Sebastian: Life and Times 1964-2003)
10:54 pm Yusuf
Heaven/Where True Love Goes (from An Other Cup)
10:50 pm Gretchen Peters
Paradise Found (from Hello Cruel World)
10:43 pm Richard & Linda Thompson
Just The Motion (from Shoot Out the Lights)
10:40 pm Sara Watkins
Lock and Key (from Sun Midnight Sun)
10:38 pm Iron & Wine
The Devil Never Sleeps (from The Shepherd's Dog)
10:36 pm Jonathan Edwards
Everybody Knows Her (from Jonathan Edwards)
10:33 pm Alabama Shakes
Hang Loose (from Boys & Girls)
10:30 pm Son Volt
Jukebox Of Steel (from American Central Dust)
10:26 pm Robert Randolph & Band
If I Had My Way (from We Walk This Road)
10:22 pm Zoe Muth
Walking The Line (from Old Gold)
10:18 pm Eric Clapton & Duane Allm
Mean Old World (from Crossroads Box Set)
10:15 pm Ellis Paul
Heaven's Wherever You Are (from The Day After Everything Changed)
10:12 pm The Civil Wars
I've Got This Friend (from Barton Hollow)
10:09 pm Turnpike Troubadours
Blue Star (from Goodbye Normal Street)
10:06 pm Amos Lee
Say Goodbye (from As The Crow Flies (EP))
10:02 pm Suzanne Vega
Small Blue Thing (from Suzanne Vega)
9:58 pm Patty Griffin
The Cape (from This One's For Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark)
9:55 pm Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited (from Highway 61 Revisited)
9:52 pm John Hammond
Found Love (from Found True Love)
9:47 pm The Band
Stage Fright (from Stage Fright)

Tried to update the playlist captured a few minutes ago before posting, the site returned this error message:
Can't open dbi:mysql:rbds1:205.178.146.84,playlistarchives,Pl86337463

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Did UMass Boston run out of students to host the 10pm to midnight shift?

What happened to the highly touted student DJ development program?

I don't know what happened to that program in which students were announcing from 10pm to midnight Mondays through Thursdays, but I can tell you that they weren't live. Their shows were voicetracked earlier in the day (or perhaps week).

Perhaps the program may be off for the summer, and may return in the fall when (more) students come back? I really don't know.

 

[WNTIRadio]

More interestingly, there is an application to move it to that big tower next to 93 in Quincy... 160 watts ERP, way higher than they are now. Should get them over Blue Hill.

There is also a coordinated power reduction by a few hundred watts with the 91.9 on the Cape and 91.9 in Worcester.

 

[aaronread]

Fybush reported that move a couple weeks ago. 160 watts is far lower than I prefer to keep my stations; I'm of the opinion, take it or leave it, that anything under 1000 watts ERP...regardless of the HAAT...is going to have a lot of building penetration issues.

However, WUMB doesn't have that luxury since they were already below 1kW ERP. Assuming they're already more looking at in-car listening, this move ought to improve things noticeably. They'll be nearly as high up as WGBH and WKAF on Blue Hill. 160 watts at that height (189m HAAT, up from 63m) will get out pretty nicely. They'll still have issues with co- and adjacent-channel interference sources but at least most of those sources are running the exact same programming as WUMB proper is.

I can't say what the new tower rent would be vis a vis their existing rent. I imagine it'll cost more but I don't know anything for sure. But by all rights this should be a great move for them.

 

[notlob]

Prior two posts have nothing to do with the topic, the station going on auto pilot 10pm to midnight.

They would have merit of a separate discussion in a new topic.

 

[uncamark]

Prior two posts have nothing to do with the topic, the station going on auto pilot 10pm to midnight.

They would have merit of a separate discussion in a new topic.

I thought the moderators were still in Chicago.

 

[notlob]

George Knight is doing the 10pm to midnight shift.
So much for the much touted use of student DJ's at UMass Boston.

 

[WNTIRadio]

If you're a student that wants to be on the air, go to Dartmouth or Lowell. It's pretty clear that WUMB has gone the professional route.

Although, if there are student positions in the station working under professionals, they can learn a lot more useful skills than getting on the air and farting around with their friends.

 

[uncamark]

If you're a student that wants to be on the air, go to Dartmouth or Lowell. It's pretty clear that WUMB has gone the professional route.

Although, if there are student positions in the station working under professionals, they can learn a lot more useful skills than getting on the air and farting around with their friends.

I think notlob's too old to be a student. This is just the continued campaign of him and his band of aging hippie folkies to get WUMB to go back to being a 24/7 purist folk music station instead of the acoustic-leaning AAA it's been FOR FOUR YEARS. Ain't gonna happen.

 

[WNTIRadio]

No, it won't happen because there's no money in that format. I went to the Newport Folk Festival this year. Very little "folk" music, lots of AAA acts.

Best of luck with the effort to get them back to pure folk. Especially since they're in the middle of a mult-million dollar capital campaign.

 

[Signpost]

Most college stations have unprecedented student interest now. It's at odds with the declarations that today's youth didn't grow up with radio, but they're clamoring to get on the air and play their music on terrestrial FM's.

WUMB should let UMass/Boston students do shifts. The AAA programming replicates what WERS is doing anyway. Some fresh musical input would make WUMB far more compelling.

UMass WMUA in Amherst is a heritage college station run by students. Some of its' community programs have been on for decades, it's a fine, well run station.

 

[CTListener]

The AAA programming replicates what WERS is doing anyway.

No, it doesn't. It leans rock, while WUMB still leans Americana/folk.

I've been a fan of WUMB for many years and am getting tired of the constant drumbeat of "change format ... put the kids on the air ... change format ... put the kids on the air" on this board. UMass-Boston doesn't have a communications program, so what's the sense of letting the students do the announcing or programming? Yes, it's a school with a radio station, but it's not a radio school. If UM-B had a communications program, it would likely set up a low-power/carrier-current operation to give those students on-air experience, as BU has with WTBU, since WBUR has no need for undergrads in its news-talk operation.

The left side of Boston's radio dial is amazing just the way it is. Come to Hartford sometime and compare. Or better yet, go to Albany, where Christian contemporary outsiders have commandeered huge chunks of the non-comm band. And then tell me just how Boston radio would be better off if WUMB were to put non-communications majors in charge of playing music they know nothing about on WUMB. Or how WUMB would be better if the student DJs could play hip-hop or modern rock instead of folk, Americana and other AAA.

 

[kc1ih]

I went to the Newport Folk Festival this year. Very little "folk" music, lots of AAA acts.

In part that’s because there were two other major folk festivals in the northeast that weekend, Lowell and Falcon Ridge. Lowell specializes in international folk, but Falcon Ridge is the most pure in terms of American folk music.

 

[aaronread]

Most college stations have unprecedented student interest now.

I can't speak for "most" college radio stations, but certainly at the bulk of the college-owned/student-programmed stations I either work with or have regular interaction with, student interest is at an all-time low.

It is true that there are some colleges where there's been surge of interest in the college radio station. I've heard of a few where it's almost inexplicable in the last two years or so, where they've had hordes of kids wanted to get on-air; way more than usual. It doesn't seem to follow any particular pattern of type of college, curriculum, type of station (AM/FM, Part 15/Part 73, big/small). The only real determining factor I've been able to divine is that the surge of interest is only happening at stations where student DJ's have total control over what they play on their airshift...but that's kind of a big fat "duh" so I can't but much stock in it.

But to say that most "college radio" stations are experiencing that is very questionable without any proof.

 

[WNTIRadio]

Okay, so I looked. Lowell is a nothing festival with nobodies all weekend. Not going to impact Newport. And if you're an artist with a "conflict" as to whether to play Lowell or Newport, whaddya think they're going to do?

I'm aware of Falcon Ridge, used to give away packages at my old employer. They have a few more "names" and some of the folkies that have been making the rounds for 20 years or more.

Newport was PACKED. They're in the business of selling tickets. All of the folk acts don't draw like My Morning Jacket or the Alabama Shakes do. That goes for a festival and on the radio. There's a reason that Newport isn't super folkie and also doing very well these days. WUMB needs to survive, and being a more Americana/AAA blend will draw more audience than pure folk.

Both WERS and WXRV have gone a little more towards the rock end of the AAA spectrum now that WFNX is gone. That actually leaves WUMB with a nice format hole to fill.

 

[4CX1000A]

Huh?

Five years ago weekday evenings were all syndicated shows like WXPN's "World Cafe" and the likes of "Tent Show Radio" and "The Greatful Dead Hour". Now it's almost all local stuff.

 

[CTListener]

Huh?

Five years ago weekday evenings were all syndicated shows like WXPN's "World Cafe" and the likes of "Tent Show Radio" and "The Greatful Dead Hour". Now it's almost all local stuff.

Yes, but notlob's complaint is that those evening shifts are being filled by professionals rather than students, just like the daytime shifts.