PAT MONTEITH, GET RID OF YOUR MUSIC MIX!

[notlob]

What kind of music do you think the students would put on--would there be alternative rock,
rap/R&B, specialty shows for jazz, folk, blues, etc.?

I have no idea, but suspect it would be something along the lines of what sister student/community and NON-NPR stations
WMUA - UMass Amherst -http://www.wmua.org/programming
WUML - UMass Lowell - http://wuml.org/schedule.php
WUMD - UMass Dartmouth - http://www.893wumd.org/programs.html
...are doing.

 

[uncamark]

What kind of music do you think the students would put on--would there be alternative rock,
rap/R&B, specialty shows for jazz, folk, blues, etc.?

I have no idea, but suspect it would be something along the lines of what sister student/community and NON-NPR stations
WMUA - UMass Amherst -http://www.wmua.org/programming
WUML - UMass Lowell - http://wuml.org/schedule.php
WUMD - UMass Dartmouth - http://www.893wumd.org/programs.html
...are doing.

Do students actually listen to those stations--or ANY college station, for that matter? Back when college students still listened to radio, they didn't listen to college radio. What makes you think they will now?

And if WUMB becomes a student station--and they won't--if you think your precious folk music on your label's going to get played on a student radio station, you are really out of it.

 

[raccoonradio]

Maybe on specialty shows. Otherwise, alternative...?

http://www.cmj.com/charts/ (Whoa, Dr John is #10? Who Dat!)

 

[blackgold]

Face the facts! With WFNX being swallowed up Clear Channel, we're gonna need a showcase for local bands.

 

[fybush]

WUMB is operated under license granted to UMass Boston, an educational institution, but I personally believe it is not run in the interest of the UMass students and the area "urban community."

Without expressing an opinion one way or another on your initiative, I'd suggest that in the interest of accuracy, you carefully examine the licenses for WUMB and its satellite stations with a close eye toward the named licensee.

 

[CTListener]

Face the facts! With WFNX being swallowed up Clear Channel, we're gonna need a showcase for local bands.

WMBR, WZBC and WMFO come to mind.

 

[raccoonradio]

WAAF Bay State Rock...WMWM...etc

 

[aaronread]

I have no idea, but suspect it would be something along the lines of what sister student/community and NON-NPR stations
WMUA - UMass Amherst -http://www.wmua.org/programming
WUML - UMass Lowell - http://wuml.org/schedule.php
WUMD - UMass Dartmouth - http://www.893wumd.org/programs.html
...are doing.

Oh, you mean stations with worse ratings, smaller audiences, and far, far worse cash flow than WUMB? I'm sure UMass Boston is really looking to replace a station that at least has a chance of being fiscally self-sustaining (and by all rights, is at least that much) with a model that's a guaranteed drain of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

If WUMB went all-student, that would make them a very expensive version of WMBR or WZBC...what with a network of multiple transmitter sites that need maintenance and STL's. Not exactly a recipe for serving anyone's interests.

WUMB is operated under license granted to UMass Boston, an educational institution, but I personally believe it is not run in the interest of the UMass students and the area "urban community."

Clearly you haven't worked for a college. The core mission of any college is education. First and foremost, check out UMass Boston's course list. Is there a single class about radio, broadcasting or even broadcast journalism? Nope. (there's a Communications minor but it's as much about interpersonal communication, a la conflict resolution, as it is about media)

Next check out their Vision Statement. It contains statements such as: we must also move forward as the increasingly sophisticated research university that we are and continue to become. and we will expand our teaching and learning activities to prepare students to succeed in a transnational world. and We will graduate greater numbers of alumni to meet the demand for a well-educated workforce (emphasis mine) Providing a student outlet for broadcasting on WUMB has zero relevance to any of those talking points. Radio has no relationship to being a research university - no research (in this context) is being done, or can be done, at a radio station. As a purely local enterprise, it has no basis in helping students in regards to a transnational world. And given the state of broadcast media, it's laughable to suggest that UMB's goal should be preparing them for jobs in an industry that's continuously laid people off for more than 15 years.

When UMass Boston talks about "serving an urban populace" they're talking about EDUCATING an urban populace. Programming a radio to "serve an urban audience" (which is mostly a euphemism for "targeting an African-American demo") doesn't accomplish anything in terms of education, so it doesn't fit with their mission.

If you want to have a broadcast outlet as a fun student activity, there's an argument to be made for that. But it's not an argument you're going to win in the current budget climate. A mission of being a "fun student activity" is fundamentally incompatible with the necessary "serving your audience's needs" mission of a fiscally-self-sustaining radio station. So any student-run/programming WUMB would require substantial fiscal subsidies; well beyond what UMB does now. It's a hard sell to offer substantial subsidies for an activity that has no relevance to their core academic mission. Especially considering that, when executed properly, a web-only "radio station" can accomplish all the goals of a "fun student activity" for far less subsidy and far less legal liability.

Face the facts! With WFNX being swallowed up Clear Channel, we're gonna need a showcase for local bands.

Have you asked the local bands about that? I think most bands are more concerned with their social media marketing than on radio these days. Bigger reach, more control, more interactive. (shrugs)

 

[raccoonradio]

>>If WUMB went all-student, that would make them a very expensive version of WMBR or WZBC...what with a network of multiple transmitter sites that need maintenance and STL's. Not exactly a recipe for serving anyone's interests.

That's why WUMB went that route, and WBUR did the same in the 70s or so. A public station which happens to be at a college. One could argue that public radio can educate in such things as
airing "roots music"--folk, New Orleans, blues, Latin, etc. (So can college radio. And college
radio can air stuff like alternative rock that may not necessarily be heard on public. Needless
to say, college stations don't quite have the power, or fancy equipment, that a big public
station would have.)

>>cash flow
It may seem weird to talk about that in terms of "non-commercial radio" but public stations do
pay attention to that. It was a little jarring in some ways to read a recent WaPo article about
how NPR is suffering from a downtown in "advertising revenue"...huh? It meant things like
corporate giving: huge companies donating to them. A 2008 list of such companies included
everything from movie studios to, horrors, "Fox Broadcasting Company". Then there's some
money from the CPB and from Listeners Like You.

From WBUR entry on Wikipedia:
>WBUR first went on the air March 1, 1950. Initially, most of WBUR's staff were Boston University students and the station broadcast a number of BU sporting events. By the 1970s, WBUR began receiving funding from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting and became a "public radio station" with a professional staff. During the 1970s and 1980s, the station had several jazz music and classical music programs. The disc jockeys demonstrated a broad knowledge of composers, performers, and the execution of jazz

There we go, education via public radio. As Bill Cosby used to say on his cartoon show,
"...with music and fun and if you aren't careful you might learn something before it's
done. So let's get ready, OK? Hey hey hey."

And I'm sure WUMB does do its share of public service/public affairs, etc.

 

[aaronread]

That's why WUMB went that route, and WBUR did the same in the 70s or so. A public station which happens to be at a college.

This speaks to something I mentioned in another thread: the disparity in missions between WUMB the radio station and UMB the college is comparable to many, many other radio stations based at colleges. This is a common "problem" and it's become acute in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession which is still causing a lot of colleges to bleed red ink, especially state schools. In response, a lot of colleges are realizing that owning and operating a radio station has too little relevance to their educational mission and they're simply selling off the licenses. Or otherwise ridding themselves of it through an LMA or something similar.

So yes, I would say this: that if people argued that given how UMB has no curriculum for broadcasting, and thus no commitment to making WUMB part of its educational mission...then UMB has no business owning a radio station these days, and should divest themselves of it. I would say that's a valid argument. I wouldn't necessarily AGREE with it, but I'd say it's valid.

 

[fybush]

This speaks to something I mentioned in another thread: the disparity in missions between WUMB the radio station and UMB the college is comparable to many, many other radio stations based at colleges. This is a common "problem" and it's become acute in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession which is still causing a lot of colleges to bleed red ink, especially state schools. In response, a lot of colleges are realizing that owning and operating a radio station has too little relevance to their educational mission and they're simply selling off the licenses. Or otherwise ridding themselves of it through an LMA or something similar.

So yes, I would say this: that if people argued that given how UMB has no curriculum for broadcasting, and thus no commitment to making WUMB part of its educational mission...then UMB has no business owning a radio station these days, and should divest themselves of it. I would say that's a valid argument. I wouldn't necessarily AGREE with it, but I'd say it's valid.

There's a counter-argument, too, at least with respect to many of the land-grant schools (Wisconsin and Iowa come immediately to mind) that pioneered "educational radio" in its earliest days (in the case of Wisconsin, as far back as World War I): stations such as WHA and WOI have never been programmed as "student stations," nor have they operated as part of broadcasting/communications academic programs. Instead, they were understood from the beginning to be part of the universities' extension missions, evolving over the years from carrying academic lectures to becoming the progenitors of today's "public radio" news/talk and classical formats. To the extent students were involved, especially in the earliest years of WHA, it was on the technical side via the schools' engineering programs.

It seems to me that those schools (not just Wisconsin and Iowa, but also Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska and others) have often had an easier time continuing to justify their involvement in broadcasting than we've seen at other institutions (like Rice and Vanderbilt) where stations with big signals have been used mainly as student-programmed freeform outlets without a community-extension mandate.