My Adventures Over the Airwaves Part 3: "This is 64 WDCR, Broadcasting from Kennedy Union..."

One of the goals I had when I went to college was to experience some things that I knew I wasn't going to have a chance to do again. That explains why I decided to minor in History and Philosophy despite being a Physics Major*, and also why I took a class in Fencing my Senior year.** I also participated in Model UN for a few years as part of the delegation that UD sent to New York for the National Model UN Conference.

It also explains why I became a radio DJ for my Senior year.

No, this is not me, it's the late Howard Hesseman
in his role as Dr. Johnny Fever on the late 70s-early 80s
television show WKRP in Cincinnati.
From the New York Times' obituary on Howard,
who died in 2022 at the age of 81.

Although it's long since been replaced by WUDR "Flyer Radio" 99.5/98.1 FM, UD had a student run radio station on AM radio when I attended. The university actually owned a commercial radio station at the time, WVUD 99.9 FM, which broadcast from Kennedy Union, but by the time I attended the university the student-run Rock format had become a purely commercial enterprise with a Soft Rock format, which very few students actually listened to.*** 

But there was another radio station nestled in the student union, and that was WDCR, AM 640.

It was designed as a completely student run station, inheriting WVUD's old student-run design, and although it was on AM --and was only broadcast via carrier signal on the power lines to the Union and the university's dorm buildings-- you could sign up for a DJ slot and spin the LPs. The only drawback was that by the time I did decide to sign up for a DJ shift my senior year, the format had changed from "you can grab an hour or two and play what you want" to "we're playing a primarily Rock and Alternative format just like a professional radio station". 

Alas, I couldn't imitate this scene from WKRP. I did
look into my yearbooks to see if there was anything
worthy of a scan, but nope. One yearbook had WDCR
as "FM 64", not "AM 64". /sigh

Since I didn't really have any ideas about what to play, only that I wanted to be on the radio, I was fine with that. My freshman year roommate (and current housemate) and I secured a slot for a couple of hours in the mid-morning once or twice a week, and away we went.

Two of my other housemates had been DJs on the station already, so that helped to ease me into the job. The knowledge that people mostly heard us when they crossed through the lobby area of Kennedy Union meant that I didn't really have to worry about putting myself on the spot.**** I did come up with a name --'Mister Physics', which was actually one of the nicknames given me by my friends at UD-- but really, nobody cared what I was called as long as I worked the playlist and had a bit of banter here and there with my housemate as co-host. 

Although I knew about 2/3 of the songs on the playlist, that other 1/3 were a real eye opener. You'd think that Album Oriented Rock stations were all alike, and maybe they are now in the era of corporate sameness and station centralization, but radio stations even within the same format all had their own little quirks. For example, WTUE-FM in Dayton had a different enough playlist than WEBN-FM in Cincinnati that I enjoyed WTUE much more than WEBN when I visited home. 

This was the first song I ever played as a DJ;

I'd never heard it until that moment.

By the time I had a DJ shift, radio had been changing. While albums did exist, and I queued up enough records over my DJ tenure, the music had already been migrating to tape machines. I knew CDs weren't too far behind, given that WVUD did have a CD system in place --we got VUD's hand-me-downs for equipment-- and when I was given a tour of the WVUD studios I got to see the new systems in action. 

***

You know, having that one shift wasn't a big time commitment, but having it that last year of college meant everything to me. It was fun, it was relaxing, and I got to enjoy the illusion of being in control of what people listened to on the radio. 

We did have a cast of characters there at the station. There was the conservative commentator who couldn't crack a joke if his life depended on it, the one station higher-up who absolutely loved Duran Duran to the point of her following them when they went on tour over the summer, the news reader who read the news impeccably and was always dressed to the nines but had such a conceited attitude I still remember her to this day, and the fellow DJ who --if given the chance-- would queue up only Van Halen.

"How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"
From WKRP in Cincinnati.

Being a DJ meant I did have to do some work at the station other than just my shift. I was supposed to come up with a "promo" for my spot as well has do a couple of other odds and ends, but that never really happened. My mind kind of works in weird ways, and creative endeavors can take a while to finish. A common complaint about my projects over the years is that my projects look really disjointed and have huge gaps until I manage to pull it all together at the last moment. Yes, I know, it's crunch (to borrow the software development term), but it does work for me. However, I never got to finish up those other things as a DJ because I just never got a real deadline to work against. As for my promo, I had the idea of using Monty Python-esque voices over Sousa's The Liberty Bell March, but I never really sat down to work out how it ought to flow. The Station Manager wasn't pleased that I kind of half-assed it, but I had other priorities at the time and doing a promo wasn't one of them.

When I graduated, I explored working a shift at Dayton's local Fine Arts station, WDPR 89.5 FM (that was the frequency back then, I think it's 89.9 now), but I never got a callback. That was fine with me, since I had moved back to Cincinnati that summer and really never left. But still, I do have the radio bug in me, and it hasn't quite gone away.

In a quirk of fate, when my son went away to college, he decided to pick up a DJ shift at his university's radio station.***** Due to simulcasting over the internet, I got to hear his shift on Tuesday afternoons quite a bit while I worked. He kept that up for a couple of years until he spent a semester abroad at Lancaster University in England, but that my son walked the same path I did still makes me smile to this day.

*Yes, I minored in Math, because that was expected of a Physics Major. After all, you were going to take most of the classes to qualify for it anyway. As for Philosophy, the University of Dayton had a requirement of 12 hours (4 classes' worth) of either Religion or Philosophy, so it only took me two more classes to have enough to minor in it. History, however, was something I geeked out over and so I took as many classes as I could.

**I was told that if I wanted to meet girls I should take Ballroom Dancing, because the girls outnumbered the boys in that class by something like 2:1. As it turned out, I was already dating by then, so I didn't need that encouragement.

***Again, another acquaintance told me that girls really really loved listening to Air Supply as 'make-out' music, which... let's just say I was really skeptical of that one. But yes, he did have a cassette of Air Supply's hits, and yes there were times when I heard it coming from the door to his dorm room.

****Yes, you'd think that me being a shy introvert would mean that I couldn't do a DJ shift, but I found that being merely a voice behind a microphone made it much easier to deal with. I also got to hone my Kermit the Frog impression, although it does make my throat hurt when I do it for more than a few minutes.

*****The lucky bastard got to play whatever he wanted; I'm jealous. Here's a link to the station. Yes, you can listen live during the school year.

#Blaugust2025