Can College Radio Stay On The Same Wavelength As Young Listeners?

This morning I caught an interesting interview with college radio advocate Jennifer Waits, the blogger behind Spinning Indie. Given all the talk around here about the upwards trend of streaming music and the decline of commercial radio, my ears especially perked up when Jennifer answered the question, “Why is [college radio] still important today [when] we’re finding the current generation of college students often don’t listen to the radio and have never developed the habit?” Here was her response:

“I think where college radio and community radio excels is it can be curated music, hand-picked by a DJ, it provides filters. If you’re just going on the internet surfing through music blogs, it’s just a lot more overwhelming I think. And things like Pandora, there’s no human placing the music together… As a listener hearing things you didn’t intend to hear.”

I’m guessing Jennifer wouldn’t be happy to hear that the first thing her description brought to mind was music blog aggregator sites like Hype Machine and We Are Hunted that ascribe these same virtues of authenticity and passion to the process of curating the curators (Hype Machine even creates online radio shows with the results.) Then again aren’t college radio fanatics and music bloggers cut from the same passionate cloth? Aren’t both niche tastemakers bent on spreading the music and/or auditory culture they love to appreciative listeners? Aren’t many of them one and the same?

All this is NOT to question the need for college radio DJs, but rather ask how the traditional role can evolve to embrace this proliferation of music-discovering avenues on the web? I’m sure many are already out generating innovative solutions (that I’d love to hear in comments). To me, part of the key to differentiating the two worlds is college stations playing up the advantage of being hyper local and that personalization that makes a college radio station a physical presence on campus. Namely by bringing bands in for interviews or sponsoring shows or events on or in the vicinity of campus.

Another part of the puzzle is to overcome the main limitations of a terrestrial radio station, i.e., weak broadcast signals and the “tuning in” requirement of radio. I realize the move away from the dial can be a touchy subject for college radio purists, akin, I’m sure, to the sense of loss I felt when I heard the Arts section of my college newspaper had all but moved online. Still, if I set my nostalgia aside and put the irony that I grew up to become a professional blogger into perspective, it seems like the move to streaming shows online (that some stations have already made) and creating podcasts is an inevitable one that might even breed more professional opportunities for college DJs after graduation.