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Friday, February 01, 2008

WITT-FM 91.9 Community Radio 

WITT-FM 91.9 Community Radio

The Indianapolis region FINALLY gets a community radio station. I can't believe it. Hopefully it will reach the Southside.

Not to disparage our fairly mundane public station, WFYI, or WICR, the University of Indianapolis station, which offers some fine jazz and some rather interesting programming on Friday and Saturday evenings, but Indianapolis has been a radio dead zone for years.

While other cities both larger and smaller have a much better selection of not-for-profit stations providing a broad spectrums of viewpoints, Indianapolis has lagged behind. I have never been to a city with more high school radio stations in my life. Each of these 'Classrooms of the Air' plays the same mix of, well, basically high school sports and programming that high school kids think is cool. I am not saying that is bad, but how many stations do we need to have playing the same Fergie or Buckcherry songs? All of these high school stations removed the possibility of having a community radio station, until now.

For those who don't know what I mean by a community station, I am talking about listener supported radio, where most of the people that run the station and DJ are volunteers. People volunteer because they care about the music, a personal cause and the community.

Some stations start out with all volunteers and then add some paid personnel as they grow. Examples of stations that are a long this line can be found on the internet: Jersey City's great WFMU, Knoxville's wonderful WDVX, and from back in our days in Cincy, Cincinnati's Stepchild Radio, WAIF. Ab and I helped deejay a few times at WAIF.

Closer to Indy, Bloomington's WFHB belts out a variety of programming that provides a diverse voice for South Central Indiana. Hopefully WITT will follow in these other stations' footprints.

http://www.919witt.org/

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