| The Fight Against the iPod |
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| Written by Benjamin Ezekiel Holzman | |||||||||||||
| Monday, 07 April 2008 | |||||||||||||
From the Battle of Brown to the Streets of Montreal: Localism and the Fight Against the iPod  Image by Charles James Reilly III In the fall of that year, Brown freshmen George Abraham and Dave Borst strung a wire between their dorm rooms, attaching each end to a small homebuilt radio receiver and transmitter. Though the rooms were a quarter mile apart, conversation was easy. Word spread of the setup, and before long freshmen from across the campus were begging to have their own rooms hooked up to the budding network. As they expanded, Borst and Abraham maintained two lines: one open line for conversation among freshmen, and another for broadcast to the campus at large. Within months, the public broadcast wire was functioning as the nation’s first college radio station, carrying music programs, interviews, and even the inauguration of a University president to receivers throughout the school. The conversation line, however, remained a secret among freshmen. Luis M. Bloch, Jr., one of the first freshmen to get a wire in his dorm room, writes about the network’s role in the fall of the sophomore’s Vigilance Committee in his 1980 book, “The Gas Pipe Networks.” When the Vigilance Committee approached the dorms the alarm was raised over the conversation line. The freshmen were ready. Bloch writes, “As the vigilance committee moved from room to room and from building to building they were bombarded with water bombs…thrown from the rooms of the freshmen, down the stairwells and also from the roofs of the buildings. Their every movement about campus was reported and after that disaster for the vigilance committee, they were never heard from again.” In the years since the battle at Brown, much has changed in the world of college radio. Today, there are over 1,400 educational radio stations in the United States. Most focus on alternative music, serving as a testing ground for new sounds and new acts. Others offer local public affairs and sports programming, while still others play nationally syndicated NPR, PRI, and Pacifica programs. In a radio landscape dominated by tightly programmed corporate clones, college stations embrace their alternative status, seeing themselves as a refuge from the status quo. All is not well in radio land, however. Digital radio, satellite radio, webcasting, and podcasting challenge traditional methods of distribution. Listening habits, meanwhile, are also changing. While broadcast radio is still irreplaceable in the car, digital music players challenge radio for ear space on the sidewalk, in the gym, and at home. College stations are hit harder than most by these changes. Students have been the first to adopt the new technologies, both on the distribution and consumption ends. Digital music players are nearly ubiquitous on many campuses, and college students are skilled at finding music on the internet. Further, whereas a student fifteen years ago who wanted to share his musical tastes had few options but joining the college radio station, now he can produce his own podcast or run a music blog. Is college radio doomed to the same fate as the Vigilance Committee, made irrelevant by rapid advances in technology? Or, can fate be averted and the stations saved? ... While studying abroad in Great Britain, McGill University journalism student Tamara Kramer took an internship at a local college radio station. She wasn’t impressed. “It was totally a piece of crap,” she says of the station. “It was so tiny. Their music library was horrendous. They don’t care about college radio in the U.K.” For Kramer, the experience brought a fresh perspective on college stations back home. “You feel that [North American] college radio isn’t appreciated enough,” she says. “Then you look at other countries.” College radio stations in North America have never enjoyed a massive listenership. Rather, their value has been in their ability to appeal to niche audiences. Without the burden of a profit motive, college stations have had the luxury of targeting small subsets of interested listeners. In the past, these niche audiences have frequently been tied to musical categories. Of course, if there’s one thing a digital music player does well, it’s catering to niche musical categories. Years after her time at the British station, Kramer has become involved with a North American college station that has been among the most successful in finding and exploiting a new niche. Kramer is a host at CKUT, a Montreal station associated with McGill. Since its inception as a student start-up, CKUT has grown to become a true cultural landmark. By cultivating a deep involvement in Montreal’s cultural and political scenes, the station has taken advantage of the inherent localness of small radio stations. This intimate focus on the Montreal community gives a special advantage over the new digital technologies. Kramer is the host of Shtetl on the Shortwave, a half-hour program covering Jewish life and culture in Montreal. When she was first asked to become the host, she had her concerns. “[CKUT is] very well known for their activism. They are left wing, and that’s a huge part of their mandate,” she says. “Part of the reason why I haven’t been involved for a long time with the station is because I was a bit freaked out by their hardcore political views." “I've had people tell me, ‘I don’t want to listen to your show because it’s on CKUT and I don’t agree with their political slant,’” Kramer says. Still, she says she is no longer put off by the station’s politics. “I got back involved with them because people there are very passionate, very driven by ideals,” she says. “There is something very contagious about that is contagious and chaotic.” In recent years, CKUT has toned down some of its more extreme rhetoric. Still, political involvement remains a hallmark of the station’s identity. Hosts deal with a range of issues, many of which have a distinctly local flavor. Each year, CKUT runs a Homeless Marathon, a nightlong broadcast from the streets of Montreal in the dead of winter, meant to raise awareness about homelessness in the city. CKUT reporters are a common sight around Montreal. When researching this article, I chanced upon a group of station staffers who had set up shop in McGill’s student center and were conducting live interviews with students about their opinions on recent immigration legislation. “I get about ten emails every day from CKUT about events going on in the city,” says Kramer. “If you look at cultural events and political events going on [in Montreal], they are often co-sponsored by CKUT.” Kramer makes similar efforts to enmesh her radio show in the fabric of the city's Jewish community. In a city that was once one of the major centers of Yiddish culture in the world, there’s no lack of subject matter for a Jewish program. “It's about arts and culture, and I define that very broadly. I want the show, like me, to reflect a very open minded perspective on what it is to be Jewish,” Kramer says. Her programming highlights have included an interview with the Chabad director of a drug rehabilitation center in a disadvantaged community in Montreal and a feature about Jewish women from Eastern Europe who were sold into prostitution in Latin America in the early 20th century. All of CKUT’s shows are recorded and then uploaded to the internet for streaming. For shows like Shtetl on the Shortwave, broadcast between 11:00 and 11:30 on Wednesday mornings, this is fast becoming a primary outlet. … CKUT’s model does not call for a complete abandoning of the traditional music-heavy college radio format. In fact, the program schedule at CKUT is dominated by music shows. Still, it’s the emphasis on local issues and local culture that makes CKUT viable in the long term. No podcast from Los Angeles or satellite radio feed from New York or music blog from Toronto will ever steal listeners looking for political and cultural news from Montreal. The global reach of the new digital media technologies is not conducive to mimicking the distinctly local talk programs that can only be fully realized on noncommercial radio stations. As college radio looks for means by which it can stay relevant in the coming decades, CKUT’s model stands out as one that won’t be made obsolete by the water bombs already arcing out of the dormitory windows.
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