On Friday, Oct. 4, Wayne State College was one of hundreds of colleges and universities in 40 different countries to celebrate the 14th annual World College Radio Day.
According to the College Radio Foundation, the day is supposed to ‘raise a greater, international awareness of the many college and high school radio stations that operate around the world by encouraging people who would not normally listen to college radio.’
It is a day that is meant to encourage people to listen to college radio. The foundation also says it views college radio as important to the media landscape because it is ‘one of the last remaining bastions of creative radio programming’ and ‘its unique and fearless programming.’
The theme for this year’s World College Radio Day was ‘Defenders of Democracy.’ The College Radio Foundation says the theme is meant to encourage students to ‘create programming that explores the importance of defending democracy,’ since democracy protects your freedoms of speech and education.
KWSC-FM 91.9 The Cat is the student radio station at WSC. Students have the opportunity to be on-air talents and help decide what music gets played through the radio. To go along with the theme, KWSC aired a show entitled ‘Democracy Now’ to help students stay educated on what is happening around the country.
The station members took part in the day by setting up a table outside of the student center where Micah Bell, Ethan Bohnert, Grant Ferrell and Quin Otto took part in a live remote, where they broadcast live to the station. The other members helped to promote the station to any passerby.
“I have never done a remote [broadcast] like that,” Bohnert said.
Bohnert grew up listening to the radio, but not for the music. He liked listening to the people that talked about the music, the backstory and how the song came to be. Bohnert recognizes the importance of college radio and its power to highlight those smaller artists that deserve to have their music heard.
“College radio is important because it is that place where smaller artists can get their music out,” Bohnert said. “Radio stations now just play top 40. If you’re looking to find new music, college radio fits that niche very well.”
KWSC member Gabe TerWee also helped the team celebrate the day. He believes radio to be one of the lost arts and sees World College Radio Day as a day to show the value that radio still has, to celebrate the art of music and to find some new music to listen to.
“I feel like too often nowadays people get cornered into their own little genres in music and they never search to find anything new,” TerWee said. “Radio is just a great place to do that, especially KWSC.”
The KWSC team continues to push the importance of college radio outside of the World College Radio Day theming and all exemplify how radio is a still powerful art form.
