The Story of College Radio Kickstarter

What a cool project! Thanks for posting, weedyburton79. 

I had a blast at my college radio station from 1991-1995, WQFS Greensboro 90.9 FM. I started out as a deejay my freshman year after sitting in on a friend's radio show first semester. I got my own show and mostly played punk and hardcore music. 

My sophomore year, I interned for one of the music directors. Then junior and senior years, I was one of three music directors. We received so much music every day it took three of us to listen to all of it. At least one mail crate per day. The cool thing was, we each had different musical taste. Alex liked stuff like The Cranberries, Bettie Serveert, and The Breeders. Louisa liked grungy stuff or weird stuff. I also liked weird stuff, harder stuff, or more shoegazey stuff. Who put Show in rotation when it came out? This woman.

We listened to every piece of music that was sent to us. We really did give everything a fair shake, even if we got some stuff that was really out of left field, like say if someone sent us some Tejano music. I will say that I could usually tell pretty quickly whether I was going to like something or not. I never really liked talking on the phone to the label reps who called because I'm not good with small talk, so I don't feel I was ever swayed by them offering me stuff. I got tons of cool promos and schwag, and could get on the guest list for any show I wanted but was too shy to ask, so only if they offered or one of the other MD's asked for me. 

As music directors, we got a free trip to College Music Journal's (CMJ) showcase in NYC each fall. Louisa and I stayed in the YWCA hotel (women's equivalent of the YMCA). It was always such an amazing and overwhelming long weekend. So many amazing shows for free. I was still very young, 19 and 20, when I went.

I can't remember if it was 1994 or 1995, and I can't find any record of it online now, but one of the years I was MD our station was distinguished by the Princeton Review as the #1 college radio station on the East coast. That was pretty good for a school with an enrollment of 1,300 students. 

College radio is important because it's independent and it's where people take chances on artists, giving them exposure. The deejays can largely play what they want, aside from many time slots having rotation requirements and the FCC regulations. Long live college radio!!!

They reached their goal