Talk:Campus radio

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1 Issues relating to United States history section
2 Notability
3 Page Title
4 Is 'Internet Radio from a campus' a 'Campus Radio station'?
- 4.1 Why this is a problem
- 4.2 Your reaction wanted here
5 WEXP
6 Merging Campus radio in India

[edit] Issues relating to United States history section

The article states that "College Radio" began in the 1960s. The article may be refering to low powered or carrier current stations. If this is the case, the title is misleading and should be changed. College radio had its beginnings long before the 1960s. It does state that "a small handful got licenses in the range of tens of of thousands" which makes me believe we are supposed to be talking about all college radio stations.

A few examples: University of Connecticut at Storrs, CT. Boston University in Boston, MA. (WBUR was on the air several years before I became very familiar with it in 1955. It was a student operated station until NPR came along. Now it is a primary source of NPR programming.) Emerson College (Jay Leno's alma mater), also in Boston, had WERS before 1955. WGBH (FM) was also on the air prior to 1955. WGBH (FM and TV) was owned by a consortium of colleges, including Boston University and the other leading colleges and universities in Boston. I believe there were 13 of them which participated in WGBH. I regret that I do not have the dates these stations first went on the air.

These stations were not carrier-current or 10 watters. WBUR operated with 20,000 ERP. I beleive WGBH was of a similar high power. That made WBUR a maximum power station because at the time, stations in New England (and west through Wisconsin) could have a power no higher than 20kw. During the late 1950s, Boston University did initiate WTBS as a carrier current station. Also, another college station came on the air from Harvard.

Another interesting note that might be added to this article. One of the first, if not the first, stereo bradcast was transmitted on WBUR and WGBH. One station had the left side, the other the right side. This included stereo microphones for the two announcers, one from each station. Music came from stereo tapes. I was there to see it happen. I only wish that I had had the exact date, as well as the event, seared into my memory. It was originated at the new (in 1957) WBUR studio. I would estimate that the most likely year would have been 1958. I do not know how the one channel was delivered to WGBH. It was likely telephone line. WBUR didn't have an STL (studio to transmitter link) problem as the huge transmitter was located in the next room.

[edit] Notability

Those interested in this topic may want to look at the new suggested guidelines for inclusion of radio and television stations in Wikipedia. The project is still in its earliest stages. Wikipedia:Broadcasting notability

NB this guideline is now considered historical cmh 16:01, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page Title

This article suffers from a US focus in the preliminaries that then leads to "unlike the US" for all the countries listed. I am going to reorg this page a bit right now, moving the common information to the top, and moving US related material into the US section. I really think this article should be under the title of Campus Radio and not College Radio as the US use of the word College is kind of unique. I would like to hear from people in other countries about whether you call it College radio there. cmh 04:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

If there is no debate I will rename this page to Campus radio. cmh 05:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Inserting this comment to ping watchlists. Barring any debate I will shortly move. cmh 05:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It has now been one week. I am moving the page. cmh 15:37, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, page is moved. Double redirects that were created have been cleaned up. Over time I will be going through the pages that link here to change the links to point directly at this page. cmh 15:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is 'Internet Radio from a campus' a 'Campus Radio station'?

[edit] Why this is a problem

An issue has come up at Fusion Radio about whether we should consider Internet Radio stations originating from a university campus to be campus radio stations. My first take on this is to say no, for the following reasons:

There is a clear phenomenon to be discussed here in the form of traditional campus radio which has a clear definition (through enabling legislation in countries, and generally through official relationships with the campuses in question) and a clear history.
Just because internet "stations" call themselves "radio" does not make them radio. An internet streaming audio feed is commonly called an "Internet Radio Station" by analogy; analogy does not truly mean these are "radio stations" proper. Therefore, just as Internet Radio is separate from Radio, so should "Campus Internet Radio" be a topic in its own right, and not mixed in with campus radio.
I do not question that some internet radio stations adopt a campus radio format. And perhaps that should be added as an article to Category:Radio formats. But sharing a format doesn't make them the same thing either.
There is a problem with the potential proliferation of Internet Campus Radio stations. What if the University of Foo's engineering society decided to open a series of internet radio channels. Would they all qualify as "campus radio stations"? Would they all qualify for the List of campus radio stations? What about internet feeds maintained for 5 years from the dorm room of a student? Is this too a "Campus Radio Station?" By sticking to "Campus Radio means Traditional Radio" we avoid this issue.
We are creating an encyclopedia here, and we should try to be deliberate about what means what as we give treatments of established topics. If there is a distinction to be made here — and I think there is — then we should help readers by showing the parallels between radio stations and internet feeds, but not conflate them.

I don't believe we should automatically include all internet audio feeds that happen to originate from university networks or student groups as "campus radio" stations. The clear line in the sand to me, then, is to include none of them... although I am open to suggestion. -- cmh 16:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your reaction wanted here

I realize that there is a problem in England due to their restricted licensing scheme, but I would be happy to include stations that broadcast even intermittently, on carrier current, etc. as campus stations as these fall under traditional radio regulation. Of course, many campus radio stations proper also broadcast their feed on the internet, and that's OK (these are then both campus and internet stations). -- cmh 16:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

As the person who originally raised the issue, I want to clarify that I'm not strongly wedded to the idea that they be categorized specifically as radio stations; my primary interest is in ensuring that they're categorized in a subcategory of Category:Student culture (and, in the case of Fusion Radio, a subcategory of Category:University and college media in Canada). If people think it would be a good idea to have a separate subcategory for "Student internet broadcasting ventures" or something to that effect, I'm entirely fine with that; I just don't agree with removing Category:Campus radio stations in Canada without a replacement category in place. (And, for the record, I'm not entirely convinced that a campus "radio station" airing solely on Internet streaming audio really merits an encyclopedia article in the first place, but I can't say I feel strongly enough about it to actually take on AFDing them all.) Bearcat 18:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Two things are clear to me. First, we are all alone here. Second, having reviewed your comments I'm not sure we disagree too much. I don't feel that strongly about the exact categorization. I think a specific subcat would be better as you mentioned, but I don't have the cycles to do that myself right now. For me at this point it's important that we keep a clear distinction here in Campus radio on the topic, and I will try to keep an eye out for that. But as for the cats and lists, well as long as Campus radio is clear on the point then most readers will discover for themselves that they are campus radio format and not campus radio. Sorry to get you all riled about about this, but I am glad at least that I put down the above points as I think they'll be helpful to others editing here. Cheers. -- cmh 02:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WEXP

Ok. Let's be clear here. The two unsourced statements that I removed have been around for a long time it is true. But time does not substitute for sources. Regarding WEXP, that link has not been around for a long time. It was added by 139.84.121.26 in March and removed 3 weeks later. You re-added it yesterday. There is a list of campus radio stations which already has WEXP (added by you?). This article does not need to duplicate the list, and great as the sports service may be — and as an editor not affiliated with the WEXP page — I feel it does not merit inclusion here. -- cmh 21:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

It was added much before that...was removed, an re-started in March. The article should touch on the "top" and "first/oldest" stations in my opinion. Top stations based on membership, signal (watts), sports, range, facilities, etc.66.30.130.133

I see that it was present on the page for four more months between November 10 and Feb 04, at which point it was quite properly removed by another editor because it was not a radio station. I have researched its current broadcasting status by

checking out the website (no mention of broadcast status)
checking out fccinfo data last updated May 11 2006
searching the FCC's website

I am not 100% positive that I did everything right, but I find no mention of any broadcasting over the air by a WEXP either at La Salle University or anywhere in PA. Can you point to any reliable sources that indicate that WEXP is a currently broadcasting AM station in PA with a license?

Regarding what is on topic for the article, this is an article that discusses the concept of Campus radio. I do not share your opinion that sports is in the same category as signal and range in a discussion about the topic of radio. In any case, I am not sure that it is a shining example of a campus radio station as it seems to be positioned as an internet station and is not attempting to attract listeners over the air. It may be an internet radio station with a college format, and it may be a great one, but stations linked to from here must be good examples of campus radio stations.

I realize that as a contributor to the WEXP article you feel close to it, and perhaps to the station as well. But IMO it is appropriately linked to from the list of campus radio stations and does not merit a mention here. -- cmh 14:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with cmh. I'd also add that we need to be careful not to overload basic overview articles like this with so much minute detail on every individual related topic that the article ceases to become useful. WEXP already has an article, so it's perfectly appropriate to mention its unique features there — but it's not quite the place of this article to start discussing every individual campus radio station in depth. I see this same thing happen, for example, at Music of Canada, where people have this ongoing habit of adding their own personal favourite artists even if they don't really fit (obscure folksingers listed as among Canada's most internationally successful artists, etc.) — and if this tendency is left unchecked, the effect is to turn the article from a half-decent overview into an eye-glazingly endless list of artists even though there's already a separate List of Canadian musicians for people who want that.

Nobody's saying that WEXP doesn't deserve its own article — but the point of campus radio isn't to get into paragraphs of detail about every individual radio station. There's already a list of campus radio stations to list and link to individual stations, so I don't see a convincing reason why WEXP deserves special mention in the overview article. Bearcat 18:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as the station's AM status, the proof is in the award that they just won. The Pennsylvania Association of broadcasters only allows stations approved by the FCC to be members.[1] The AM isn't listed on the WEXP site, because I believe it was just recently put into place on 1600AM. 192.160.62.60

While your statement lends some support to its status, the other issues remain, and I think WEXP is the right place for information on this station at present. -- cmh 15:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)