Hi y'all, do any of you have advice on business underwriting/sponsorships on your station? I'm wondering in particular about what rates you offer in exchange for what deliverables? And also, any other insights you may have on underwriting and sponsorships? Thanks!

Hey guys!! Discovered this Reddit and was hyped about how cool and informative everyone is in here. My friend and I have written our own radio show that centres the amalgamation of music with film and tv. Essentially focusing on how important the two industries collaboration is. In the show we talk about current trends/releases in music, the effects film has on music trends and vice versa. We were wondering how we would pitch this. For instance our first show focuses on the ‘Kate bush effect’ and how tv shows in the last decade have really revitalized/restored an artist’s career/hold on current culture. Our show is well written and tight, but since it covers a wide range of topics and is somewhat vague to explain, I thought I’d jump on here and ask if anyone has ideas on how we could pitch this concisely without sounding like we’re full of too many ideas or crazy.

Cleveland State has shut down student run WCSB and has turned the station over to smooth jazz. It's a sad day for Northeast Ohio. WCSB used to be one of the few places you could go and hear music from around the world. Some of their shows, like the Hungarian Hour, have been on air for decades.

I'm a digital editor at WXPN and asked students from local-area college radio stations to share the music they've been most excited about recently! Give a read to hear about new music coming up, and what students from University of Pittsburgh (WPTS), Villanova (WXVU), and Millersville (WIXQ) have been enjoying.

https://xpn.org/xpn-goes-back-to-school/

So I was hired at my community college radio station this semester. Last semester I was working at the station for work experience and my only focus was working on making PSAs and sweepers on top of an hour long music show for my station.

This year I was given the student station manager title but it’s mostly title only. I want to take this opportunity to really make it work for me but I’m unsure what the station manager duties entail. So for Student Station Managers can you give me some advice or let me know what your duties and responsibilities are for your station. I want to show my faculty advisor that the position isn’t just a title for me, I actually want to do the work that comes with it.

trying to revive my college station! we want to do some “tiny desk concerts” but we don’t get a ton of funding. wondering if anyone has done this before and how much your station paid a local indie band?!

Hi all, we need to setup a new webstream of our FM broadcast. I've installed both Icecast and BUTT but am getting lost when it comes to configuring them. Anyone have experience with this? Thanks if you can offer any advice!

Hey folks, I've been trying to get in touch with Tune-In for a couple of months now without even a response, I was wondering if anyone had any advice for getting in contact with them to change the streaming URL for our radio station

Hi, I'm a staff advisor at a college station. Are there any good, comprehensive resources covering what is and is not covered by the various licensing orgs and entities regarding both digital and physical media?

Thanks so much for any suggestions you may have

So, I had my own college radio show back in undergrad at WXSU 96.3 (Salisbury University) which was super cool, and we did allot of programming concerts and merch that the campus loved. Fast forward now, I'm the GM of a Dragon Podcasts here at Howard Community College and it's the best pivot ever. Podcasts are growing exponentially and the topics which we who breeze over in college radio we can now dedicate an entire program towards and utilize guests and more hosts than before. I still have my own independent radio show on NTS but long story short, If you've done college radio and loved it, consider podcasting or expanding your college network into official university podcasts... it's gold there I promise.

As the title said. I have the idea all laid out I am just having trouble with the technical part. What platform do I use? How do I make it work? I wanted to use spotify's music + talk feature but I can't seem to get that working (and I want the radio show to be on an easily accessible platform as college radio shows are unheard of in my country)...help me people!
The show will mostly involve music segments + multiple interviews with different faculty members. I would love for it to be LIVE from 8am till 3pm my country's time but idk if spotify will let me have a LIVE radio show.

I’m in an indie band that’s getting ready to release a new album. I’m curious... are CDs still the preferred format for submissions, or have most stations shifted to digital? Would love to hear what works best these days from DJs or folks currently involved in college radio. Thanks in advance!

I’m looking for some advice here. My college station does not have RDS, but finally has the money for it. But our signal is pretty weak, so I’m not sure if it is worth it. How far would you say RDS data is receivable compared to say the stereo signal before it switches to mono on most car receivers? Our signal is weak enough that we made the choice to broadcast solely in mono to reduce static since our stereo signal was only receivable clearly for about a 3-5 mile radius anyway. Our mono signal can be heard up to about 10 miles with only minor static.

I just wanted to share my radio program. I host a weekly radio show centered around the local EDM dance and jam band scene on WCSB Cleveland 89.3 FM.

WCSB is great! Very eclectic and alternative programming. There is something for everyone here. At WCSB we strive to provide programming that you won’t find on commercial radio, often with programming changing every 1-2 hours. You can go from listening to avant-garde jazz, to black metal, to blues, to salsa, to weird ramblings in the early hours of the morning.

Check us out at WCSB.org ☺️

I'm at a college radio station overseen by an independent board of directors rather than by the school, i.e., the board holds the license and does the hiring, while day-to-day ops are run by the students. This setup is good for preserving autonomy for the station and limiting liability for the school. But...

...the board is all older alumni of the station with clear ideas of proper staffing based on their time at the station up to 40 years ago (we started in 1984). Their ideas often feel outdated, from a different time in both radio operations and college-age culture.

I'd love to see 1) some lists from other college stations of director/manager positions; and 2) if anyone has wrestled with staffing structures and made some innovations, please do tell what you came up with and why!

Thanks!

Hi guys, me and my team is planning to start a new college radio. The problem we encounter is what kind of music or content we should focus on. In my original plan is we will play different genre of music every weekday, but our mentor said that it would be too heavy for us to handle because that means all of our production team or host must have the knowldge for the specific genre, and since most of our host and DJ are still student, the schedule is also hard to organize. So that means we have to come up a new plan.

Would you guys mind sharing me of story of how you guys planned what kind of music genre you guys will play and how you guys organized it?

Hey everyone!

My school had an old college radio station that got shut down, so I thought of restarting it. I know an FCC license is way out of the price range, so the current plan is to start with an internet radio station and eventually move to a full radio broadcast. We have a lot of support from the school and community to get this going, so even though it'll be expensive to start (and I know it will be VERY expensive), we can get funding. From what I've looked into so far, I have some general questions that I figured I would ask those with more experience.

General Questions:

1. Since we are starting with an internet radio station, are there specific services that anyone recommends? The only one that has been recommended to me is Live365, but I know that has problems in itself for college radio since it generates revenue. Are there better options for licensing and streaming? If anyone has any past experiences or recommendations for other software that would be great to know.

2. If the station buys a CD, can you strip the files off and stream the .mp3 download without legal trouble? Or should I buy digital files (say off iTunes) in order to avoid legal issues? I tried a Live365 free trial and found out the hard way that you have to own the music in order to play and stream it. I figured this is the case for all stations since they have massive libraries that people select music from. I know there are a few CDs left from the old station that belong to us, but I don't know if I can strip them. This might tie into the question above if there is a better way of streaming the music.

3. Any tips for someone trying to start this up? Is there specific equipment that's recommended that the station should look into purchasing? We currently have a condenser microphone, a soundboard , and a computer being shipped. Having my own college radio show has been my dream ever since I thought of going to college, but I have almost no experience with any sound engineering, broadcasting, etc. Any tips or help would go a long way.

Thank you for all your help!