Tune in, tun on, drop out: a new WYBC

Sun., Feb. 1, 12:14 a.m. The
voice says, "Giraffes, as you
know, have spots. Lou Reed also has spots."

College radio. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes annoying--but always surreal. At least that's the way most college stations seem to sound on the air, with caffeinated student DJs
pushing eccentric playlists into obscene hours of the night, filling the dead time with on-the-spot, free-associative segues.

With the recent purchase of the bankrupt WNHC 1340 AM, Yale has a new outlet for student expression. There's already the enormously successful FM station, WYBC 94.3, oriented towards the New Haven commercial market rather than the interests of students.

The purchase of 1340 has generated much student interest, with enough new members to run shows for 12 hours or more every day and a spring training class of 60 students, about a quarter of whom are community members. However, 1340 also faces obstacles ranging from short-term listenership and equipment problems to longer-term questions about the station's goals.

Sun., Feb. 1, 10:11 a.m. "We can slip away/ wouldn't that be better/ Me with nothing to say/ And you in your autumn sweater."--Yo La Tengo

Sun., Feb. 1, 10:14 a.m. "Let her cry/ If the tears fall down like rain"--Hootie and the Blowfish

WYBC started in 1942, carrying news, war bulletins, and nightly Morse Code classes. Since then, the station's programming has been in flux, moving from news to classical to a groundbreaking free-form format in the '60s. In 1992, facing massive debt and low ratings, WYBC switched to a "core format" of R&B piped in from Texas. Two years later, the station signed a joint-sales agreement with local station WPLR, giving up control of ad sales in exchange for a stipend for operating costs.

In the midst of these changes, WYBC reduced student-selected programming to a few hours a day of blues, rock, and folk. In 1997, then-program director Emad Abdelnaby, DC '99, switched the station to "contemporary hits radio" (CHR), an R&B format that expelled the remaining student programming in order to improve the station's professionalism and ratings. The displaced DJs attempted to impeach Abdelnaby. This summer, in response to student demand, Yale bought the license and equipment to operate WNHC. The new AM station went on the air at the beginning of the school year.

For all the criticism of Abdelnaby, the most recent Arbitron report placed WYBC-FM second in the New Haven market, with its highest ratings ever, attracting 49,100 people weekly. This allows WYBC-FM to serve as a link to New Haven, giving students "access to the ears of the community," General Manager Ephram Lustgarten, PC '99, said. "We put on a very professional product on the FM [which] provides the strongest flagship college station in the country," he explained.

Sunday gospel programming, run by Jason Knight, ES '00, consistently outdraws the competition by 50 percent. The gospel format, which runs on FM and AM, employs students and local residents. "We work to give the community what they want," Knight said. Outreach plans include the "Power Hour," which will feature area ministers and appearances by the Yale Gospel Choir.

The AM station is not nearly as ambitious. In its short life span, WYBC-AM has surpassed traditional college radio, which, while intrinsically amateur, is rarely this hilariously amateurish. "We have four listeners, according to our calls," said Prudence Peiffer, JE '02. Or as Dan Silk, SY '01, put it, "We don't have a record collection. We have a $2 bin." At the last member meeting, even Lustgarten came down hard on mic breaks that consist of little more than reading things written on the walls.

Despite the station's initial difficulties, everybody agrees that the problems are temporary. "The new management is a lot more communicative," said Lucas Oppenheim, BK '00, one of Abdelnaby's harshest critics. "AM is still in a getting-started stage [and] it takes a couple of years to build up listenership. DJs seem satisfied with the amount of creative control."

Once the technical kinks are worked out, increasing listenership is the first thing on the station's mind. As ex-DJ Sean Collins, CC '00, put it, "It was hard to get my friends to listen to me," let alone random students. He gives the new management "kudos for trying, which is more than they did in my day." Yunji de Nies, PC '01, director of publicity, has 20 people working with her, and plans more live broadcasts, chalkings, posterings, and weekly schedules in campus newspapers. WYBC already sponsored the Vyrtigo fashion show and Winter Ball and leased a high-speed copier to print posters. The station also broadcasted live from Commons recently. "We're letting people know we're here," Lustgarten said. And for the first time in years, WYBC expressed interest in sponsoring student events and concerts.

Part of what's holding the AM station back right now is music, pure and simple. Half the day is filled with an automation system that alternates last year's indie hits with rotten pop chestnuts when nobody is around to DJ. Katherine Choi, BK '00, the new program director, plans to update the automation within a week. "We're going to start fishing out the old stuff," she said. But that still leaves the quality of the live shows up in the air. Rajeev Muttreja, SM '00, college rock director, had one request for the station's DJs: "Play more new music!"

The music directors and Choi are responsible for making sure the station's library returns to its former glory. Last year, Abdelnaby threw out the entire LP library, which comprised the bulk of WYBC's music archives. Muttreja is "in the process of contacting more labels. If you're going to play the music, the labels will send it to you," he said. WYBC is receiving some music now, but most of it's on the order of "Gimme a Lewinsky," Muttreja says.

In two weeks or so, Choi plans to institute a rotation system, the details of which have yet to be worked out. "Rotation is not designed to constrain the DJs," Muttreja said. "It's to get them to play more new music." DJs will be expected to play a certain number of songs from rotation CDs in their format. Right now, the choices include rock, punk/metal, electronic, and dance, but they're based on DJ interest rather than preset notions of what music should be played.

A decidedly unscientific survey turned up surprisingly little variety. Lots of U2, Yo La Tengo, and perennial Yale fave, the Beastie Boys. Basically, rock from various perspectives--with less electronica, and almost no hip-hop, folk, jazz, reggae, or experimental. Choi said, "That's the fun of radio, introducing people to new music," but it almost seems as if the DJs themselves need an introduction.

And www.wybc.com isn't much help either, with a schedule arranged by DJ names but no show descriptions. Perhaps, an influx of talent from the new training class and time to publicize the schedule will create more variety.

Mon., Feb. 2, 9:43 p.m. "We are getting new music in every day. Actually, we haven't got any new music, but we will."

What lies in the future of WYBC? Once the DJs have experience, the library is full again, and listeners are tuned in, what then?

While most college stations base their playlists on the charts in the College Music Journal, the most influential and interesting ones go off in their own direction. Columbia University's WKCR is one of the country's best jazz stations. It also has an influential underground hip-hop show, a very strong lineup of folk and experimental programming, and regular festivals devoted to important genres and musicians--but this quality comes at the expense of rock music. Pomona College's station, on the other hand, plays all kinds of music, but has an anti-major-label stance so strong that it excludes indie band extraordinaire Pavement. Dan Check, education director at Pomona's KSPC, said that without stations such as his, "we'd be living in Spice World, sold to us by Sony Entertainment, blindly happy but vaguely dissatisfied, unaware of what could be."

These choices are far in the future, but they could help make Yale's AM radio as vibrant and recognized as its theater program or its FM station. Until then, Lustgarten said he wants a station that gives students the chance to "explore their own interests and share Yale's resources with the community."

Graphics by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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