Students: Reclaim Your Radio Station

Lying in Lerner is a jewel relatively unknown to the undergraduate population called WKCR 89.9 FM New York. At least, it was relatively unknown until controversy engulfed the station recently when it made the bizarre decision not to broadcast important basketball games.

WKCR has been the flagship station of Columbia sports for 64 years, and when Station Manager Matt Herman went against precedent by refusing to interrupt the annual Bach Festival for basketball, more than a few people were outraged. Herman’s justification raised even more eyebrows, when he claimed it was based on the principle of “undergraduate self-determination.”

WKCR barely serves undergraduates—it is a station dominated by alumni DJs. It has become an embarrassment to Columbia University with a near seven-figure debt. About the only way WKCR serves the student community is when the all-undergraduate sports and news departments air Columbia events.

It is time to call Herman on his hypocrisy and change WKCR in a way that should have been done years ago. It is time for WKCR to become a real college station, one with all student broadcasters, who play exactly what students want to hear.

Let’s bring college rock to Columbia. Let’s make WKCR a means to create a campus community. Let’s immediately force alumni DJs to get real radio jobs at stations like WBGO, WQXR, and WQCD, which all air the same jazz and cultural music that WKCR airs.

With a broadcast radius that reaches 11 million people, WKCR has the potential to be a powerful force for a scattered student body. Before 1970, WKCR was a student station. A Columbian could turn the dial to 89.9 FM every morning and hear a Howard Stern-type show. Rock and roll was heard just as often as jazz and classical music. The News Department aired programming relevant to student issues; it even won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1968 campus protests.

But in 1970, the attitudes of the time transformed WKCR into an “alternative music” station, one that played jazz and only programming which could not possibly be aired elsewhere. The result was a unique eclectic station that became the darling of effete culture snobs across New York.

By 2005, times have changed. WKCR finds itself with the same tired alums who have been on the radio for years. We hear jerks like Phil Schaap, who uses the radio as a platform to dis the University because he is bitter that Columbia no longer allows him to teach. While Schaap is considered a jazz legend, and his beef with the University is probably legitimate, he now acts like a child in the studio. He berates first-year programmers who come for scheduled pre-emptions of his shows, hijacks the microphone to openly cheer for Columbia’s sports opponents, and throws a fit when he doesn’t get his way.

It is people like Schaap, Cliff Preiss, and Ted Panken (who is not even an alum) who draw the most water at WKCR, influencing the undergraduate board to keep the station’s stale schedule. Sadly, the University has no idea what really goes on at WKCR. After the station lost its antenna on 9/11, it took over two years to get a new powerful transmitter because of an ex-Student Development & Activities administrator who lied about FCC paperwork. SDA recently appointed Ben Young to oversee the station, but as a former Jazz Department Head, and current alumni-DJ, he is personally invested in the status quo.

As WKCR finds itself embroiled in controversy, it’s time to ask the undergraduate population what kind of radio station it really wants. Does it want a radio station that serves the interests of alumni DJs stuck in the past? Or does it want a student station? It’s time we ask these questions—perhaps in the next CCSC election. That would be real undergraduate self-determination. ��