What Would You Do With....BYU Radio 107.9

[CAwasinNJ]

This one I'm going to need some help with. As an introduction to my question I want to tell you about one of my pet peeves. It's how some colleges and universities treat their radio stations like a side business with its own staff, operations, mission and so forth. There is really little connection between the school and the station other than the school owns the license and maybe gets some of the money from donations and underwriting. IMHO that's not how school-owned stations should operate. I believe that the primary mission of a school is the education of its students, who are after all paying for it. Anything else is secondary.

So my question is, how much of the operation of BYU Radio is actually handled by students and how much are professional employees? Obviously not everything can be done by students. Jobs like the top leadership roles or engineering would be difficult to impossible to give to students, but the majority of the work can and IMO should be done by BYU students. So is it?


[Coming up on Monday: What Would You Do With....Any of The Translators]

[oldiesfunhouse]

Are we headed to the AM dial after the translators?

[amanuensis]

I want BYU Radio to be the radio equivalent of KUEN (tvchannel 9), i.e., educational. There are already some shows on BYU Radio that kinda sorta fit that criteria such as Constant Wonder. But what I have in mind is kind of a "School of the Air". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air I picture professors giving lectures on the air on topics that they are doing research on, for example. But not all-work-and-no-play. I would keep the sports programming. I would air live concerts by BYU bands and orchestras, including experimental music. And on Sundays air nonstop choral music from BYU groups and the Tabernacle Choir.

Journalism students could participate by producing a daily M-F half-hour news show (like what they used to do on Channel 11).

[CAwasinNJ]

After the translators (that will all be on one day) there will be one day for the non-comms. After that will be one day for the AM's.

I think amanuensis has an interesting idea. Would something like that gather more interest than the current version of BYU Radio? On the other hand, Ch 11 has plenty of spare bandwidth. Putting a lecture/student station there would cost virtually nothing either monetarily or in taking a resource away from the group that already runs BYU Radio. That would be a no risk test.