And when I went to broadcasting school, if I remember correctly, it was $2,000---mid/late 70s. A friend went through it about 10 years or so ago, $14,000. Someone said they were thinking about going there [it's changed names a few times I think] but it was around $20,000. I wouldn't advise ANYONE to go into radio broadcasting today and pay that ungodly sum to a broadcasting school, told him go to college, take a mass media communication [or whatever it's called today] program specializing in ALL broadcast mediums and have a back-up plan for a secondary degree.
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WCSB - college station that flipped to jazz
- Thread starter b-turner
- Start date
Getting further off topic: a media degree should be accompanied with a shared major or a strong secondary specialization in something like computer science or the social sciences.
I have a different perspective than most, as I went to college about 10 years after dropping out of my junior year in High School to go and play with a radio station. So when I had the free time while working as a consultant (Lotus: KWKW, KRUX, KTKT, KENO) I went for the stuff that I was not skilled at such as finance, accounting, business law and the like. I shared that with sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology and the like.
I only took one broadcast course, "broadcast management". I did a paper (in about 1974) about better ways of developing what we now call Adult Contemporary. I got the lowest grade of anything I had done in my college experience. I was hired in my last semester to rebuild a station in market #12 and applied my term paper concepts and got my real grade: #1 adult women in first book, #2 overall.
Alzheimer's affecting my memory of what school it was but back in 75/76 I had a scholarship offer to the top college/university for broadcast journalism, I believe it was somewhere in St. Louis. Somehow or other the scholarship got screwed up so I ended up not going there and went to broadcast school instead. There were a lot of auxiliary classes that you had to take to get your degree and a couple of foreign language ones along with some type of minor math classes that, to me, seemed totally bogus so I didn't really mind that it went kablooey. If I could get my arthritic knees to bend backwards, I'd still be kicking myself in the ass for not going or figuring out a way to go there or any other college. If I had, I might have retired from radio or at least set a record from being fired from stations.
And along a similar route, had a scholarship offer to a college in Dayton for photography but the pro photographer that had gotten me accepted screwed up and sent it in a month late so that fell through also.
As it was, after done with broadcasting school, they got me an offer from a station in Bartow, Florida but after doing what little limited research on it that I good back in the pre-internet days, I turned it down. Again, I should have 3rd degree bruising all over my buttocks for that idiot decision.
And along a similar route, had a scholarship offer to a college in Dayton for photography but the pro photographer that had gotten me accepted screwed up and sent it in a month late so that fell through also.
As it was, after done with broadcasting school, they got me an offer from a station in Bartow, Florida but after doing what little limited research on it that I good back in the pre-internet days, I turned it down. Again, I should have 3rd degree bruising all over my buttocks for that idiot decision.
A decade prior, I looked at three schools that were ranked at the top for broadcasting. First was the Newhouse Shool in Syracuse, then the University of Wisconsin at Madison and, oddly, little Ripon College in Ripon, WI. I visited the first two before deciding that I wanted none of it.
Of course, this was after about 5 years working as a gofer, board op and whatever at WJMO and WCUY in Cleveland. Instead, I managed to get what was the equivalent of an American apprenticeship at Organización Radio Centro in Mexico City.
Another sorta radio job related screw-up: 75/76, Took an exam [or whatever it was called back then] for entrance into the U.S. Navy. Something the high school encouraged and tried to shove "undesirables" [read: Students that wouldn't do as they rigidly demanded] into military service. Two weeks after the test I'm in the library at school and see the recruiter walking up with a Lieutenant Commander and I just thought "Uh Oh'" 15 minutes later I get called to the office and they said that I had gotten the highest test score of anyone in the country over the last four years. My principal is looking at them with a look on his face like "HIM? Are you kidding?" and I was thinking "Of anyone in the country? Just how stupid were these other people taking the test?" They basically offered me the moon. I could skip basic training, go directly to officer candidate school, take whatever course of interest I wanted {BINGO! Broadcasting here I come!]....basically just about anything except a hand job. Since this was just after the Vietnam war had ended and around the same time as the Mayaguez incident, my mom went into histrionics and had a complete meltdown and would disinherit me, have me disemboweled and burned at the stake if I went in cause she was afraid I'd be killed or worse. Since I was waiting for a call from another job offer, and a date to be sworn in for the navy I told her whichever called first, I would take. The first job offer called so I took that and the Navy called a day later and told them what had happened. I don't know who had the worse meltdown, them or my mom. Another massive mistake on my part.
Here's another example where a student run FM station was turned over to the local public media organization. This happened in 2019. The difference here is that the student station was continued on the FM's HD-2 signal. That happened because the school's communications department was willing to oversee it. That wasn't the case at CSU:
news.lehigh.edu
Lehigh and Lehigh Valley Public Media Announce Radio Partnership
Collaboration will enhance student educational experience while continuing WLVR’s student-driven music programming.
news.lehigh.edu
In Ohio today, I'd say that Ohio University in Athens probably has the best program for broadcasting.
Here's another example where a student run FM station was turned over to the local public media organization. This happened in 2019. The difference here is that the student station was continued on the FM's HD-2 signal. That happened because the school's communications department was willing to oversee it. That wasn't the case at CSU:
Lehigh and Lehigh Valley Public Media Announce Radio Partnership
Collaboration will enhance student educational experience while continuing WLVR’s student-driven music programming.
It was brought up to the ex-staff at a meeting about continuing on an HD-2. I was told by the ex-general manager that the station is too weak for an HD! Some facility this is.
The main signal is only 630 watts. An HD signal operates at about 10% of that, so it would be very low wattage.
My point is that the XCSB staff is fighting for a weak FM signal that you can't even do an HD on and whose coverage area is pretty small. Add that to the fact that less and less young people are listening to FM. Why did they not immediately go online where the young listeners are instead of wasting time fighting for a weak FM signal?
Because they aren't really interested in radio. They just want to create a social issue to fight about.
Somebody with an engineering background is going to have to explain to me why the HD 2-3-4-etc. channels have lower wattage then the main channel. That probably explains why WQAL's HD2 channel has lower volume and flat out disappears every once in a while. I come from the days of analog and if you wanted to hear something other than what was on the main frequency, you opened a station window and screamed out of it.
Digital signals have different characteristics than analog ones.
Wattage output has nothing to do with volume when it comes to a digital broadcast. More than likely WQAL's HD-2 is lacking the proper processing equipment to maintain volume levels, or something changed on their end and nobody there has noticed as HD subchannels are not their main concern.
I'm a dinosaur and I haven't kept up on what's going on equipment/frequency/digital VS. analog. I'm sure if I walked into a station today, I would more than likely be lost for the first few days. Probably be screaming "Why does this console have no dials? Where are the cart machines? Where'd they hide the turntables? How come the reel-to-reel machine is missing? What happened to the tar & nicotine stained walls? And why does the chair actually smell decent and nor like a roasted dead platypus when you sit down on it?" What happened to the 45s?"
And I thought that those mikes came from the factory with a golden brown tint!
Where is the transmitter log, and the FCC First Phone licenses hanging on the transmitter room wall?
Transmitter log is in the filing cabinet under "F" for falsified. First phone licenses were used as TP thanks to the cheap station owners.
The worst case I saw was at a directional AM in the Washington, DC market. The night jock saw the DA parameters were way off, and since he had a perfectly valid 6-week memorization class in Fredericksburg, he adjusted the phasor himself. At some point, the transmitter took a dislike to the SWR and shut off.
Jock fired, thousands spent on having a consulting engineer come in to readjust the DA.
I think I've mentioned it before but one station I was once at had a super narrow nightime pattern [literally 10-15 miles wide east to west] to protect adjacent frequency stations in VA & WV, if I remember correctly. One night, I could hear them all the way into an adjacent county so I called the evening DJ, who was responsible for reading the transmitter parameters in the studio-once an hour, and said "Hey, the daytime pattern appears to still be on, I'm hearing the station where I shouldn't be hearing it." He checked the transmitter readings and said "It's showing fine to me so it's not my problem." This went on for close to a week and was finally fixed. What I heard was that one of those stations in VA or WV--who was way bigger signal-wise and owned by a mega-corp.---called the station and complained and it was fixed pronto. Never heard if the DJ got yelled at for not telling the GM/PD or the CE. If I had been the other stations, I wouldn't have played nice and just filed a gripe with the FCC.