35000 Watts :: The Story of College Radio
A film about a radio revolution
The debut album by The Police would hint at the mash-up of styles that would eventually become their trademark (reggae and pop, for example), but as a product of 1978, it was most heavily influenced by the burgeoning punk scene.…
Radio programming is one of those things that falls somewhere between art and science. While many college radio stations are “freeform” stations, meaning the DJs choose to play whatever music they want, many others (and almost all commercial stations) are “programmed”.…
Our final interview of the LA shoot was with Allison Wolfe, an original riot grrrl and member of a laundry list of bands, including Bratmobile and Cold Cold Hearts. Her experience starting an all-girl punk band in the Pacific Northwest was an entirely new perspective to explore, and our interview touched on a host of interesting topics.…
On day two of our LA shoot, we sat down with Jennifer Waits, a college radio historian and the co-founder of Radio Survivor, a website dedicated to documenting the importance of radio in the past, present and future. Jennifer is a seemingly endless source of college radio knowledge, and we really only scratched the surface in our one-hour discussion.…
One question that gets asked occasionally that I didn’t initially anticipate is “What exactly is college radio?”. This has been especially true when talking with people outside of the United States, but even in the U.S., a lot of people aren’t familiar with the different types of radio stations out there.…
Our second LA interview was our first trip to a working college radio station, and it was a real treat. Erica Tyron has been the adviser for KSPC for thirty years, so she has an amazing depth of knowledge that we really only scratched the surface of during our one-hour interview.…
When you are making a music-related documentary, one of the first questions many people will ask you is “what is your favorite music doc?”. And, of course, you can never give a short, simple answer because there are so many amazing documentaries out there and choosing just one is impossible.…
Our first interview during our LA shoot was a big one, as I had the opportunity to sit down with Joey Santiago, lead guitarist and founding member of the Pixies. If you are reading this, then you likely need no introduction to the Pixies, one of the most influential bands of the late ’80s and early ’90s and an iconic band in the history of college radio.…
When radio stations refer to wattage (as in “100,000 watts of rock ‘n’ roll!”), they are referring to the broadcast “power” of an FM or AM radio station. More specifically, they are referencing the effective radiated power of the station, and it generally represents the station’s signal strength.…
First, this is only true in the United States, as other countries have different systems for assigning call letters (also known as call signs) to broadcast stations. When the US government began regulating the radio airwaves by licensing stations, they chose to assign each station west of the Mississippi River a four-letter combination beginning with K, while east of the Mississippi, the call letters would start with a W.