Tag: radio

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Culture

Across the board: Local radio stations adjust to keep listeners informed and uplifted 

Local radio stations are still on the air, but station managers and on-air hosts have had to make some changes in how (and where) they broadcast. Illustration by Mike Gorman

Radio is easily taken for granted, in part because it’s invisible and, in most cases, ubiquitous. Program hosts and DJs keep us company in rush-hour traffic or during the workday. They keep us informed when the power’s out or the internet’s down, but the transmitter’s still going. Radio is as essential as it is entertaining, and as the COVID-19 pandemic goes on, so must the shows.

Local stations are taking safety precautions like limiting studio access and suggesting hosts wear masks and gloves and wipe down mics, headphones, and other surfaces with disinfectant before and after their shifts. But each station is unique, and other tweaks vary depending on a station’s size, reach, and what sort of programming it offers.

Since March 12, WNRN 91.9 FM jocks have worked almost exclusively from home, says station General Manager and Program Director Mark Keefe. The locally owned nonprofit station broadcasts from multiple transmitters—in Charlottesville, Richmond, and Lynchburg—and already had a system in place, as well as enough spare mics, consoles, and cords to get DJs on the air from anywhere with an internet connection. (Volunteer DJs did not get a rig, so on-staff folks are now covering those slots.)

In the absence of the live in-studio sessions with Virginia bands, WNRN upped its play count of local acts like Lowland Hum and David Wax Museum. It’s not the same, says Keefe, but it’s something.

Things haven’t changed much at WCNR 106.1 FM The Corner, another adult alternative station, owned by national media company Saga Communications, which is headquartered in Michigan. Morning show host and Program Director Kendall Stewart, as well as her counterparts, could work from home, but are still going in. Stewart’s “Community Corner” segment now highlights creative ways folks are helping each other out during the pandemic, while news breaks are solely about COVID-19, and pandemic-related PSAs by major label artists like HAIM and Leon Bridges are aired. 

She’s had to re-think the station’s “Corner Lounge,” which previously brought touring artists into the station for a live set before a show at an area venue. Now in the “Long Distance Lounge,” she hosts bands like Best Coast and Illiterate Light over the phone or via Instagram Live. “I’m not about to let that go away,” says Stewart. 

Nathan Moore, general manager of WTJU 91.1 FM, a non-commercial station owned and operated by the University of Virginia, agrees that continuing to provide a sense of normalcy to listeners is paramount, though it’s taking a bit of radio magic.

WTJU is a freeform station, which means individual DJs in the jazz, classical, folk, and rock departments have complete control over what they play on their shows. It broadcasts live 21 hours a day, with the help of six paid staff members and dozens of volunteer DJs (including this reporter). Some DJs go into the station, while others create their shows in advance and stream that file into the on-air studio. Some broadcast live remotely, using personal computers and headphones, in addition to pretty intricate tech workarounds developed by station staff.

WPVC 94.7 FM, a progressive nonprofit community station that airs a variety of news, talk, arts, and music programming, including Spanish-language material, may be one of the hardest hit of our local stations—it’s had to adjust both its show schedule and its personnel. “A lot of our volunteers are either in the high-risk category due to age or pre-existing conditions, or they care for someone who’s high risk,” and have to avoid the station, says co-founder and manager Jeff Lenert. Instead, WPVC now carries a mostly automated, non-commercial stream from Free Speech Television, which includes some of the shows already familiar to WPVC listeners, such as “Democracy Now!” and the nationally syndicated “The Stephanie Miller Show.” 

But the station—which has seen its already lean rainy day fund depleted by legal fees incurred in an ongoing FCC lawsuit brought against it and four other locally owned, low-power stations last fall by Saga Communications—is “struggling,” says Lenert. “We might not be on the air next month.” 

Lenert’s in a difficult position. He doesn’t feel right asking for money from underwriters who are in dire financial straits themselves, or asking for donations that could go to a food bank instead. If WPVC goes off the air, there will be fewer black and brown voices on local airwaves, and the community will be without its only Spanish-language radio news outlet. “I lose sleep knowing that,” says Lenert. 

The other stations we spoke with are bigger than WPVC and don’t yet share Lenert’s financial worries. And both WTJU and WNRN, who rely on listener donations for much of their operating budgets, held rather successful fundraising drives in April. 

“People want something reliable” right now, says Keefe. When “the reliable disappears, it becomes even more bleak.”

 

 

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Culture

Pick: WTJU Rock Marathon

Staff Photo

Can’t fight this feeling: Connecting through music has always been a comfort in troubled times. This year, WTJU’s Rock Marathon affirms that connection with a transcendent dose of specially curated programming filled with the deep dives, obscure tracks, and whimsy we’ve come to expect from the station over the past 60 years. Tune in to discover classical music DJ Uncle Dave Lewis’ formative role in Cincinnati’s punk rock scene, explore popular songs written by Bertrand Russell Berns, whose credits include “Twist and Shout,” “Piece of My Heart,” and “Here Comes the Night,” and soak up “The Return of the Guilty Pleasures” show, which offers “a safe space for your admiration of Britney, REO Speedwagon, or the ‘Theme from The Love Boat.’”

Through Sunday, April 19. 91.1 FM in Charlottesville, online everywhere at wtju.net.

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Arts

Alternative rock: WTJU and UVA Drama collaborate on a wacky new audio drama

Denise Stewart, Mark McLane, Randy Risher, and Jess Littman are some of the voices in “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” a podcast that sound designer Lewis Reining describes as “a zany, witty series that transforms the mundane into a riveting listen.” Photo courtesy Nathan Moore

Imagine that an enormous, totally round rock has suddenly appeared in Charlottesville. How would people react? Would the rock be considered a threat, a sign from God, or both?

Replace Charlottesville with the fictional Elkisbourne, and you’ve got “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” a new podcast produced by WTJU and UVA’s drama department. Early one morning, the title object materializes in the center of town. Within hours of its appearance, the residents of Elkisbourne start to project their own ideas onto the rock—using it as a metaphor for a failed marriage, constructing a religious cult around it, even attempting to grind it into an anti-aging cream.

Such an open-ended concept could go in countless directions, but director Doug Grissom says that he and his colleagues ultimately decided on an “all-out comedy.” This decision of tone was just one step in the creation of the podcast, a process that lasted more than a year.

Grissom, an associate professor in playwriting, wanted a reason to work with students in the MFA acting program. He submitted a proposal for a Faculty Research Grant for the Arts, only knowing that it would be an audio story co-produced with WTJU. Once funding was approved, Grissom and his students needed a big idea.

Brainstorming proved fruitful. “On Friday afternoons, we would meet and piece things together,” Grissom says, but their abundance of ideas made it hard to move forward. Winter had arrived by the time they decided on the rock idea, and the subsequent writing lasted through the spring semester. The past few months were spent recording and editing material at WTJU, with Grissom using local connections to fill spots in the cast left by any students who graduated last spring. On November 21, 10 full episodes of “The Perfectly Circular Rock” were released on RockDrama.org.

For the technical side, Grissom enlisted the help of WTJU’s national program producer Lewis Reining. Although Reining has worked in radio for around eight years and has wanted to create audio dramas since high school, “The Perfectly Circular Rock” is his first real chance to do so. In 2012, he co-directed and produced a modernized version of Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” broadcast, but the finished product was only about half an hour. “The Perfectly Circular Rock” episodes run roughly 20 minutes each.

The project brought some unique challenges. For one, most of its 25 voice actors were accustomed to the stage. “In some ways, there’s freedom—you only have to worry about your voice,” Reining says. “But at the same time, these mics are so sensitive that any sort of movement can come through.” He had to discourage the actors from gesticulating too violently or “pounding on the tables.”

His collaborators quickly learned the rules of radio, however, letting Reining focus on the details. Technically, the audio of “The Perfectly Circular Rock” is gorgeous. The podcast’s plot requires some pretty unusual stuff to be portrayed through sound—from a dog urinating on the rock to Slam Hammer, Elkisbourne’s Bogart-esque private eye, getting knocked out with a baseball bat—and in each of these circumstances, Reining delivered.

He loves the challenge of making bizarre sound effects seem realistic, and says he’s grateful for the freedom that modern sound editing technology grants him. Today’s audio dramas are heavily informed by their predecessors, he says, but adds that “you’re able to layer things with a granularity you couldn’t before.”

Even a perfectly edited podcast can fall flat if the content is lacking, though. In the case of “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” there’s no shortage of content—it just might not be what listeners are expecting. Both Grissom and Reining concede that “audio drama” is a misnomer, since the podcast is mainly composed of absurd vignettes created by Grissom and his students during brainstorming. Recurring characters are scarce. Aside from Slam Hammer, whose rambling, mock-noir monologues are some of the project’s funniest moments, the story is framed by competing radio personalities Moe DeLawn and Synnove Olander interviewing members of Elkisbourne about the rock.

Running jokes reappear more often than most characters, which provides a cohesion of its own. Listeners will want to pay close attention to learn if a perpetually unfulfilled request to hear “Stairway to Heaven” is ever granted, or if the rock is ever called “spherical” instead of “circular”—because, as several characters complain, “circular is two-dimensional…a rock cannot be circular.”

While this grant has ended, Grissom and Reining are open to another collaboration. “I loved doing it. I wasn’t sure I would,” Grissom admits. He cites the flexibility of creating an audio drama, as opposed to directing something onstage, as one of its greatest benefits.

“For the most part, it costs the same in an audio drama if you want to set it in space or you want to set it in an old-style Western,” Reining adds. “It’s so much easier to do. You have the freedom to go wherever.”

Categories
Arts

Uprooting radio: At WTJU’s new home, DJs spin records to break a record

WTJU began in 1957 as a classical music and education station and now includes jazz, folk, and rock, as well as community stories. The station launched from its new home in Ivy by breaking the Guinness World Record for most simultaneous DJs in a single show. Photo by Eze Amos

The broadcast to WTJU listeners on the afternoon of Saturday, March 23, began with one DJ announcing to a sea of others, “Here’s Ol’ Blue Eyes, spreading the news that we’re leaving today—Lambeth, that is,” followed by a snippet of Sinatra’s iconic “New York, New York.”

It was the first day of operations in its new Ivy Road home, and local station WTJU packed 82 announcers into the space. The crowd was diverse, composed of both student DJs and locals, but everyone had a common cause—to christen the new location with a momentous, Guinness World Record-breaking feat. Within two hours, each of the participants would sit in the announcer’s seat for less than a minute to introduce themself and play a sample of a chosen song, in a madcap game of music-lovers musical chairs.

Nathan Moore, WTJU’s general manager, admits that the record-breaking stunt was his idea, but the move to Ivy Road wasn’t. About two years ago, Moore was informed by UVA student affairs and housing that the station’s longtime location within Lambeth Commons, a home it had held for 19 years, must be vacated. “We hunted around for a lot of different spaces,” he says, but soon realized that not many spots in the city could accommodate WTJU’s needs. “Where can we find at least 2,500 square feet that we have round-the-clock access to, that students can get to readily, that can be slightly noisy…that has parking, that has visibility?”

Moore was pleased, and a little relieved, to find the Ivy Road real estate, which once housed beloved indie video store Sneak Reviews. Instead of DVDs, the building’s walls are now lined with WTJU’s massive record collection, most of which is housed on the second floor. While Moore is excited about this area, his passion is focused on the first floor, which he expects to be conducive to community building—an essential component, in his opinion, of the station’s future. “We have to be more than just a great place to spin records,” Moore says. “We also have to be a place where people experience music and arts and connection.”

Saturday’s event certainly fit this vision. The DJs took turns jostling their way to the microphone, contributing tunes and cracking jokes. The humor was unfailingly corny, but the music proved a bit more diverse. Aside from Sinatra, everything from k.d. lang to Still Woozy got airtime. The genres spanned classical to K-Pop, and local artists got some love too, whether a classic Landlords track or a song from Alice Clair’s new album—played by Clair’s mother and dedicated to the musician herself, present in the crowd.

The stunt was successful, beating previous record holders by 22 DJs, but it doesn’t erase the fact that some members of the radio community have concerns about the move. Audrey Parks (or DJ Al), a second-year at UVA and a co-rock director for WTJU, says she understands both the student perspective and the administrative side. As a local with a few years of radio under her belt, she also grew to love the Lambeth location. “I feel like the old station had such a personal value for me,” Parks says.

One of the students’ main worries—the distance from Grounds to the new location—is on her mind too. “For the late-night shows…that would be a pretty scary hike.” But even at Lambeth, she points out, “it was also kinda scary going back through frats at that time.” And she’s a fan of the move in that it sets WTJU apart as a community landmark. “It’s an interesting process‚ you know, still making it a UVA space, but being part of the Charlottesville community too.”

The station has become just as essential to the city as it is to students. Professor Bebop, aka Dave Rogers, hosts of one of WTJU’s longest-running shows—he initially got involved in 1973—and has witnessed several moves. “We were in Humphreys, the basement…then we moved to Peabody Hall,” says Rogers. Next was Lambeth, and now Professor Bebop finds himself spinning his signature mix of rhythm and blues on Ivy Road.

He says that the previous location changes “didn’t change the flavor of what we were doing.” Strong leadership is essential to keeping the same spirit, he adds, praising both former manager Chuck Taylor and Moore. “He continues to come up with great ideas that are really amazing ways of reaching out to community,” Rogers says, referring to Saturday’s event. “You’ve got people who haven’t been back in 15 years who came in to do this.”

The station will host its annual rock marathon from April 8-14. This year’s fundraiser T-shirt is a design by award-winning syndicated (and C-VILLE Weekly) cartoonist Jen Sorensen, and fans of Bowie, the Beatles, and Frank Zappa will be happy to hear that entire shows are planned around those artists’ music.

Change is inevitable, it seems, especially for a media outlet that wants to remain relevant and available to the community. And if their record-breaking event is any indication, the DJs of WTJU aren’t going to let a detour down Ivy stop their weird, eclectic mix of music from reaching Charlottesville. As Moore said near the end of the 82-person broadcast, “There are scant few institutions that still bring people together in genuine ways, in genuine community connections—and we’re that. We’re one of them.”

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Bobby Bones is the face of country radio

Since 2013, Bobby Bones' self-deprecating humor and candor about his personal life have accompanied the morning drive for millions of fans across the U.S., and now he’s dishing it live in a stand-up format on the Red Hoodie Comedy Tour. Publicity photo

One of the most popular syndicated radio shows in America is helmed by Bobby Bones, something that country music fans have known for years. The Arkansas native is funny, honest and unscripted—Bones once got Taylor Swift to offer dating advice to his show’s intern and do a reading from the Titanic movie script. Since 2013, his self-deprecating humor and candor about his personal life have accompanied the morning drive for millions of fans across the U.S., and now he’s dishing it live in a stand-up format on the Red Hoodie Comedy Tour.

Friday, April 6. $33, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

Categories
Arts

Local radio stations amp up the holiday content

Jeff Sweatman at 106.1 The Corner tries to program slightly outside of the traditional holiday songs. Photo by Amy Jackson

On December 24, 1906, Reginald Fessenden transmitted the first wireless public radio broadcast. It included Christmas songs, stories and, in Fessenden’s words, his own “not very good singing.” Today’s listeners have many—usually very good—derivatives of Fessenden’s holiday work, and here in Charlottesville the programming at local FM radio stations is no exception.

“Our perspective is that there are some really cool, different and newer takes on Christmas classics,” says Jeff Sweatman, the 106.1 The Corner program director and brand manager. His current favorite is a holiday album released last year by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. After Jones’ recent passing from pancreatic cancer, he says the album has stayed front-of-mind.

He also references tunes like Fleming and John’s “Winter Wonderland,” which mixes in “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin, and Spiraling’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” featuring bites from The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”

Sweatman says The Corner tries to be the antidote to sister station Z95.1, which plays Christmas classics 24 hours a day starting on Black Friday. He tells a story of airing Kasey Musgraves’ “Present Without a Bow” featuring Leon Bridges right after Halloween, which sparked a number of angry social media posts—some in all caps—from Corner listeners.

“I think of people stuck in their office listening to [holiday] music all day,” Sweatman says. “Even when we go all Christmas, we mix it up. There’s a couple of good Hanukkah ones in there, too.”

The Corner will “go all Christmas” on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day until noon, playing a mix of listener favorites such as Barenaked Ladies, Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Bareilles and The Ramones.

Mark Keefe, program director and general manager of WNRN 91.9, has a similar perspective and tries to “not overwhelm people with [holiday music].” What the station is really good at “is not making people who really don’t want to hear that all the time mad,” says Keefe. “You’re not going to get dogs barking ‘Jingle Bells’ here.”

From Christmas Eve through Christmas Day, each of WNRN’s specialty shows will present its own holiday program. One seasonal special that airs this month features tunes recorded in-house by Rob Cheetham, Lowland Hum and The Hill and Wood. “That concert was really cool,” Keefe says. “Having some good local takes on holiday tunes [makes it] pretty special.”

Keefe says the station will cap off 2016 with the year’s top 100 songs, as chosen by listeners. Voting via the WNRN website closes Friday, December 23, at 11:59pm and listeners can catch 2014 through 2016’s top tunes from December 28 to December 30.

“You get the cornucopia of holiday programming in Charlottesville,” says Josh Jackson, program director for public radio networks WVTF 89.7 and WVTW 88.5. Jackson says his listeners enjoy programs such as King’s College’s live broadcast from “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” which airs on WVTF from 10am to noon on Christmas Eve, and the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day broadcast from 11am to 1pm, featuring live performances of waltzes, polkas and other classical tunes.

On Christmas Day for the first time, WVTW will present “Tinsel Tales,” stories on the meaning of Christmas and other holiday stories, as told by famous public radio voices such as Audie Cornish, Nina Totenberg and David Sedaris.

Peter Jones, WTJU 91.1’s folk director and volunteer coordinator for the past 20 years, looks forward to similar storytelling programs. Jones oversees live music at WTJU, and says the station’s 200-plus volunteers and hosts bring something new to their programs for the season.

Jones also hosts WTJU’s “Folk and Beyond” on Thursdays from 4 to 6pm, and “Tell Us a Tale” on Sundays from noon to 2pm, which he says is the only children’s radio program in central Virginia. This Sunday, at noon, Jones says his listeners will hear Hanukkah stories.

“We just hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season,” WVTF’s Jackson says. “We love our listeners and we are a community.”

Tuned in to the holidays

WVTW Radio IQ 88.5

“Tinsel Tales,” holiday stories
from Audie Cornish, David Sedaris and more

Sunday, December 25, noon to 3pm

WVTF 89.7

“A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” live from King’s College

Saturday, December 24, 10am to noon

“New Year’s Day live from Vienna,” presented by the Vienna Philharmonic

Sunday, January 1, 11am to 1pm

WTJU 91.1

“Tell Us a Tale,” stories of Hanukkah

Sunday, December 25, noon to 2pm

WNRN 91.9

“Top 100 songs of 2014 to 2016”

Wednesday, December 28, to Friday, December 30

Seasonal music now through December 25

The Corner 106.1

Seasonal music now through December 25

Categories
News

Switching formats: WVAI picks up where WUVA left off

David Mitchell, WUVA’s new station manager, says country music is a popular radio format and should attract a large audience of both students and listeners. Photo by Ron Paris

On September 18, WUVA listeners who tuned in to 92.7 FM, the only urban station in Charlottesville, were surprised by the country twang pouring out of their radios.

“Obviously, the main reason is economic,” station manager David Mitchell says about WUVA’s sudden transition from one genre to another. Over the past few years, Mitchell says 92.7 FM’s 19-year-old urban format has failed to rake in the big bucks in Charlottesville’s competitive radio climate. In fact, it wasn’t making enough money to provide the financial stability the station needs. WUVA receives no money from the university.

“More revenue and success for 92.7 NASH Icon mean more opportunities for students to learn about how commercial broadcasting really works,” Mitchell says. “That includes online services and social media as well as news and public affairs. We think they will find the WUVA experience increasingly attractive and rewarding.”

Along with Mitchell, the station has hired two on-air professionals and a professional salesforce. The station was previously run by volunteers.

Mitchell says country music is one of the most popular radio formats and the feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive,” but some think the station’s switch in genre is just another way to marginalize the local African-American population.

“[The station] became a safe haven for cultural expression in a town that discourages black and brown people from comfortably living out our culture,” Kiara Redd-Martin and Kishara Griffin from Charlottesville’s Operation Social Equality said in a statement to C-VILLE. “To us this abrupt change is not only a direct attack on black and brown culture in this town but also a denial of our existence.”

Operation Social Equality is a grassroots organization, which Redd-Martin and Griffin started to end social inequalities that result from racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and ethnocentrism.

Pointing out that 92.7 was previously used by many black community leaders, such as City Council candidate Wes Bellamy and local preachers, the women wrote, “They positioned [themselves] as the face to our struggle, they became self-proclaimed voices of the black community, but what they failed to do was appropriately inform us of what was to come.”

Redd-Martin and Griffin say they will no longer listen to 92.7 FM, but are excited about a new 24/7 hip-hop and R&B station called WVAI 101.3 JAMZ.

Damani Harrison, a local musician and partial WVAI owner, is currently focusing on promotions for 101.3 JAMZ and says he found out about WUVA’s new identity the same way everyone else did.

“There were rumors circulating many months ago that a change might be made, but I don’t pay attention to rumors or things out of my control,” he says. “So when I turned on the station last week and it was country, it was new to me.”

Though Harrison is a longtime WUVA fan, he says he is happy that African-Americans will still be represented by his new station and he’s “excited for [the] community to come see what we believe is the future of Charlottesville radio.”

Mitchell says directors and owners of WUVA were aware that 101.3 JAMZ would soon be broadcasting on-air, which made the decision to switch genres easier.