Is the fade-out of college radio bad for engineers?

12/16/2010 2:02 PM EST

It's always sad to see a valued and valuable technology fading, but I think it's inevitable. Things don't mean the same that they did years ago. What percentage of college students listen to college radio for how many hours a week now vs. a couple of decades ago? I don't know, but I suspect that it's a pair of considerably smaller numbers.

Bill outlines a number of real values to engineering students, but I doubt that those specific advantages are enough to keep the programs going in their current form.

It brings to mind the "Conan vs. Leno" brouhaha over the "Tonight Show" recently. To those involved, it was as serious and important as ever. To many, many of those on the outside, it was a debate not even worth following. The younger generation doesn't watch TV based on network time schedules. Other generations are learning to not care about network time schedules. The "Tonight Show" is becoming less and less relevant all the time.

I see it as the same with college radio. I spent many nights watching Carson after the news. College radio served a very valuable purpose. But that purpose is fading away.

12/16/2010 7:34 PM EST

I remember listening to KCPR (Cal Poly Radio) and it was part of the university experience. We had Wierd Al back then and it was pre-CD so FM broadcasts were considered Hi-Fi. My kids (two in universities and two in high school) DON'T listen to radio (although they do listen to and watch Conan, Dave, and Jay periodically, depending on who's on.) It's true that the DVR's and iPod's have put us in much more control of when and how we watch and listen. Even with my 1 hour commute each way, I don't EVER listen to radio. I have to much media "in my control."
Now it's video productions--it's common to make your own little broadcast via youtube and distribute....

12/17/2010 11:31 AM EST

I'm not too certain about the statement "students [perform] troubleshooting, debugging, and improvisation". In this everything-is-a-niche world, it is likely that liability-crazy bureaucrats don't even allow tools in the room, lest an "unqualified individual" makes some alteration to the equipment.

12/17/2010 6:23 PM EST

Bill, I'm not sure how much hands-on engineering opportunity is actually being lost here. Certainly student volunteers can learn how to be a DJ, put together a newscast, mix audio and gain other radio operations skills, but I never heard of a student volunteer at a college radio station being allowed to mess around with wiring, power supplies, transmitters or antennas. The stations generally employ a real engineer for such things, most likely for liability reasons.

12/19/2010 7:58 PM EST

I tend to agree with Frank. Much of the value of the college radio station was for those training to become Radio DJ's (and those are not usually engineers). Much of the practical "EE type" experience Bill mentions can be had by becoming a Ham Radio operator - wiring, power supplies, building antennas, cabling, etc.

12/20/2010 8:13 PM EST

I volunteered at a college radio station (KFJC in Los Altos Hills, CA) for a couple of years and helped teach the introduction class. At KFJC the DJs and support staff had the opportunity to learn about the 'hardware' but very few did (other than the front-end audio). Power supplies and antennas were for the experts (one or two people only). We did train everyone in the fundamentals however, and this did include some basic signal chain theory. It was a good intro for the non-engineers...

12/22/2010 11:32 AM EST

The problem with this "trend" (quotes deliberate) is that if no one is getting that kind of experience, where are the audio engineers for the future coming from? Someone has to do that kind of work whether it's good old KPOO down the street or XM in the sky. There will always be jobs for someone to run a recording session, after all.

John Amos
(Old audio engineer)

12/22/2010 12:21 PM EST

Fortunately the "Local Radio Bill" was removed from "Secret Hold" by Republicans beholding to the behemoth "ClearChannel Communications"
and passed this week.
So I think your predicition of the demise of college radio is a bit premature.
You can read about the bill here :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/the-little-bill-that-coul_b_798768.html

"This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations."

College and Independent radio has been under attack by the commercial telecom giants for years, and many could not afford the price of transmitters and maintaince with shrinking college budgets. Many have moved entirely to internet broadcasting.

This new bill has the potential to fundamentally change the local FM landscape.

12/22/2010 12:28 PM EST

Gee this all sounds so sad, back in my day at UKCRadio in Canterbury , England (late 1980's then back in mid 90's with instant promotion to chief engineer!) students (mostly undergraduates) did everything from building studios, decorating to making power supplies, installing mains wiring and repairing antennas on the college roofs (about 4 floors up and no handrails). We had a brilliant time, never mind that were legally allowed less than a watt of AM and nobody could usually hear us.. The whole place ran on UK £3K a year including buying all the records (45's in those days). Most of this seemed approved by the uni but I think they may have generally avoided checking on anything to save nightmares! Joining the engineering team was the only legal way to get access to roofs, cellars and plant rooms- anyone else found there got sent down! Membership was even free. Sadly it's all got a lot more corporate of late, the station amalgamated with another and covers all students including schoolchildren in the area but at least has a proper FM licence. I went on to become an engineer for BBC radio for a while then returned for an MSc. I do miss it!

12/22/2010 2:39 PM EST

As an undergraduate centuries ago the University Radio station was the only station that played study (engineering type) compatible music and information. We already have too many rap type stations.
Frank

12/22/2010 4:46 PM EST

The demise of college radio stations will hurt communications majors more than engineers. Once the equipment is installed and operating, it will be maintained by professionals, not students. The only real opportunity for engineers in this case is to learn from the professionals maintaining the equipment.

12/22/2010 10:07 PM EST

I think the style of college radio from my youth has lost the battle with technology. The station I volunteered with (and served one year as tech director) was carrier current AM so the only FCC constraint was keeping the signal inside the buildings. It was a great adventure in every way that Bill mentions, learned much form some really talented colleagues. One of the (non-tech) guys I got to rub shoulders with became an award-winning journalist for CBS News, and another became an Oscar-winning film director. None of us "techies" ever had our names in lights, as far as I know.

I graduated before the station finally got a broadcast FM license, which rewarded our successors with a rich education of another kind. What I see now instead is engineering competitions on projects like an autonomous underwater vehicle, a small-scale track race car, an autonomous model airplane, and most recently an autonomous, driverless full-size road vehicle. Not much lack of real schedule constraints, problem solving under pressure, etc.

There were always other ways into broadcast radio, though -- my younger brother self-studied for what was then a first-class FCC license and became chief engineer at a small AM station near the end of his time in high school. At least then, anyone who wanted to go on-air (e.g., a communications major) could get a third-class license with something on the order of a 20-question test. Are requirements much tougher these days?

12/23/2010 4:11 PM EST

I do not think it will hurt the engineers. I see no major effect. Technology is filling that void. Maybe they should look up to Apple to get a better equivalent.

12/23/2010 4:43 PM EST

My college radio experience was limited to newscasting at KSCU in Santa Clara, but my high school was fortunate enough to have an FM station and I learned a lot there about running a radio station. The student DJs had FCC Class 3 licenses and there was an adult advisor with a Class 1 license who acted as chief engineer, handling the transmitter and antenna issues. Here's some history on the station: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KSFH

12/23/2010 5:15 PM EST

Yes, it might be sad that college radio stations are fading away. But technology provides 2 viable alternatives that are even better: 1) set up a streaming "college" radio station of your own with internet resources only, or 2)set up a low power FM station at much less cash flow than a real high power station.

In either case, you have a better situation than the original. You do not have to bow to college bureaucrats...YOU are the ones in charge. You have no sensorship. You truly get to run the whole thing, both the technology side and the business side.

So, the king is dead, but long live the king!

12/23/2010 5:16 PM EST

BTW, leave it to an engineer to mispell censorship as "sensorship". Must have sensors on the mind.

12/25/2010 1:45 AM EST

I think the conventional radio will be a misuse of time as it goes on single entity driven broadcast. Today it is the time of Internet, Mobile Internet so the college community radio can be converted to online radios so that one can listen to the things of interest at one'e ease. This way the students will be coming across the internet technologies as well.

12/27/2010 9:22 PM EST

My college station "pushed the envelope" with new, unknown artists and new styles of mucic. This continues today to some extent at the local college station. I can hear old and new music, popular and obscure selections, and many different types of music. And I tell them of my approval with financial support.

I doubt the the station has many student engineers that don't have an appropriate FCC licence. A 33 kW transmitter in a shared facility is not where you want unskilled people learning the trade. The station does use students in the other aspects of station operation, management, and programming.

12/27/2010 11:38 PM EST

While I am not sure about the demise of college radio, I am sure that there are many more technically challenging and rewarding opportunities now that did not exist 10 or so years ago. I speak of you-tube, web-casts, IM, etc.. There are so many new things such as Kinects, quad copters, blue-tooth enabled devices to allow young engineers many opportunities to gain experience in multiple areas. I think today there are more possibilities than ever before.

12/29/2010 12:45 PM EST

The key factor is NOT the Technology, but the CONTENT - Howard Stern proved that - if you have marketable CONTENT people will support it. Students should NOT play music, but develop content people want to hear, whether it's investigative reporting, Interesting information, interviews, live radio plays etc.

12/30/2010 10:10 AM EST

The college radio experiences here span quite a range, depending on the age of the writer and the type of school involved. My college, Stevens Institute in beautiful Hoboken, NJ, ran a carrier-current operation, and was pretty popular. It provided an outlet for both engineering geeks and the students who were just a bit off center, who needed to express themselves. The college was located on the Hudson across from 14th Street of New York City, so getting a license to transmit was dicey in that environment. Of course, plenty of signal was radiated from the lights strung from mast to mast of our 350 foot dormitory ship sitting in the Hudson: at least until someone in South Carolina wondered why our signal was reaching them... Well, it just seems that technology and interests have moved on, and the quiet voice and the music during late night studying may have faded away, indeed. After all, what students study late at night any more?

1/5/2011 11:56 AM EST

College radio was instrumental in my own career path. As engineer for an AM/FM outfit in the 1970s, with a team of volunteer student-engineers, we maintained and expanded the station, and almost all of us ended up with careers in RF engineering in various industries and laboratories. Throughout the subsequent 3 decades that station has continued to churn out a steady stream of engineers, journalists, musicologists, and business people. This work remains one of the rare opportunities for students to get involved in a business that can give very practical experience beyond studies, without requiring to be selected, as in job interviews. Even internet radio and video media sources continue to stimulate the latest generation of techies.

1/12/2011 8:25 AM EST

I was on the staff of my college radio station too, had too many great experiences to detail here. But I wonder how many of these stations nowadays are availing themselves of the opportunity to simulcast on Internet radio? It gives them an outlet to the local community (announcing weather alerts, classroom assignment changes, sales by local merchants etc.) so they still attract sufficient numbers of "eardrums" (instead of "eyeballs" for TV) to be highly "relevant", a necessary if not sufficient component to attract a regular audience which is especially important if the station in question (like the one I worked at) is commercial and derives their operating revenue from the sale of advertisements.

1/13/2011 11:02 AM EST

I was chief engineer for Ga Tech's FM radio station for several years in the late 80's and early 90's. I worked along with couple of Tech alum as mentors and learned lots of things about electronics. We installed and maintained everything, including a 10KW FM transmitter, mixing console, tape playback automation system, etc.. Technology has changed and simplified many of the systems that I tinkered with and learned from. For example, a rack full of finicky reel to reel tape players, patch bays, and switching relays has transformed into a bunch of MP3 files on an SD card!
I do hope that present students get a chance to have a hands-on role in the technology of the radio station, whatever it may be.
I heard recently that the station got an approval to boost their power from 40KW ERP to 100KW, so that is exciting!

1/19/2011 4:37 AM EST

I think that collage/campus radio could benefit on what the latest technology has to offer, radio broadcast, still has its place in the campus, it is just a matter of appropriate programming, suited to the needs of modern levels of education, with digital modulation and subcarriers, I’m sure students would find something to put it into good use, couple that with wholesome entertainment and news programming. What about a project along that line?

1/19/2011 9:43 AM EST

FWIW: I live in Eastern Iowa, and College Radio is alive and well here. I listen to 2 of the 3 college radio services available in my area (1 from a Community College and 2 from State Universities), and all are available via on-line streaming, as well as off-air. The on-air folks are paid pros. I do not know if any students are involved with station operation or not, but as someone who has been out of college for 40 years, I can tell you that these stations provide a valuable service in this area. No commercial stations offer serious blues programming or an eclectic music mix to satisfy wide ranging audience tastes.

I served as a volunteer engineer at WPGU, Univ. of IL, back in the 60's, before they had an FM transmitter. All programming was on carrier-current AM back then. We student engineers built transmitters, operated studio and remote setups and equipment, and even did the on-air board duties. The experiences have stayed with me ever since. Like the oft-discussed demise of Heathkits, there is little doubt in my mind that the elimination of college radio stations (or the technical work at such stations, if done by paid professionals rather than students) is another severe detriment to the training of real-world engineers. While I fully agree that technology is marching on a furious pace, how can new engineers be expected to comprehend the application of their skills if they have not seen what it takes to bring a complete "system" (in this case, a radio ststion) on-line and keep it going?

I can also vouch for the fact that if an engineer is serious about audio, RF, or digital technology, then working at such a radio station will not only give him or her a big step up over competitors when it comes to job hunting, but it will also introduce the engineer to having fun with what you do. Yeah, you better damned well have fun at your work, because you are going to be at it for a long time.