Chris Delille
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A Brief History of WXCI Written by Christopher J. Delille Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for a Degree in Writing Journalism and Freelance December 2008 WRT 465/Thesis Advisor: Prof. John Briggs 1 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Chapter 1: WSCT 4 Chapter 2: WXCI converts to FM 12 Chapter 3: The Telegram Arrives 18 Chapter 4: The 1980’s 26 Chapter 5: Washington’s Birthday 31 Chapter 6: Hard Attack on WXCI 38 Dedication 42 Conclusion 43 Notes 44 Works Cited 46 2 Abstract WXCI, WestConn’s student run radio station has influenced the greater Danbury area with its music for more than 35 years. It’s the only radio station in the area that promotes the underground music scene by playing local, regional, and national acts of all kinds. Up to this point the only accessible historical documentation of 91.7 has been through the WXCI memories website. This paper will attempt to document many of the historical events that contributed in making WXCI a success. Most of the research for this project was done through interviews with past members of WXCI with the intent of giving the reader an insider’s perspective. Most of the events documented in this paper are told through the perspectives of those who worked at the radio station with an emphasis on presenting their experiences in a story like fashion. 3 A Brief History of WXCI Chapter 1: WSCT On Wednesday, February 28th, 1973, WXCI made its very first official broadcast at 12:30 p.m., EST, when Rob Abbett “Rabbett” quoted from the WXCI memories 25th reunion podcast said, “Good afternoon, this is FM radio station WXCI in Danbury beginning its first broadcast day” For four years prior to Rabbett’s first announcement WXCI’s DJ’s were being transmitted out of a broom closet public access system that could only be heard through speakers in the cafeteria, the Student Center (originally named Memorial Hall), and three of the seven dorms via AM carrier current transmitters that included Litchfield Hall, Fairfield Hall, and Newberry Hall. In-fact, during the years prior to WXCI’s first official FM transmission, while the P.A. system was in use, WXCI was actually called WSCT, which stood for Western Connecticut. WSCT transmitted during the week from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. during the lunch and dinner hours because WSCT’s biggest audience was in the school cafeteria. WSCT originally began in 1968 when Bob Wilson, a WestConn student and part- time DJ at local radio station WLAD, came up with the idea of forming a radio club. 4 Once Bob was able to gain the support of several students he approached Dr. Harvey Henderson to be the faculty advisor and the school approved the group. They became known as the Campus Broadcast Association (CBA). The CBA approached the Student Government Association (SGA) to fund their on-campus organization and the SGA granted the club $150 to begin the construction of a radio station. Brian Burgess is a life member of WXCI and a former Music Director and Training Director. He was one of the first students at WestConn to DJ on WSCT. Burgess said he saw a flyer for the radio club the first few days of class during his freshman orientation and decided to go check it out. He was the second student to ever go on the air on WSCT behind Bob Wilson. Burgess reports: A hundred fifty bucks even back then wasn’t much to start with. Bob began a tradition that would serve the station well over the next few years; he would scrounge what he could wherever he could. The A/V Department took the brunt of his foraging, securing us a 4-channel Bogen PA amplifier, a microphone, and a Wollensak 7” reel-to-reel tape deck. At least one of the turntables (both of them Garrard T-50 semiautomatic models) came from a box in a friend’s basement. The monitor speaker was the same 6” intercom speaker found in every school classroom this side of the Berlin Wall. This was not pro audio equipment. The turntables had to be retrofitted with matchbook covers to keep them from automatically rejecting themselves from an album if the “start” switch was pushed just a hair too far. (Burgess 2) 5 According to Burgess, Wilson had a three-phase plan for the radio club that would eventually turn the CBA into an official FM radio station. The first part of Wilson’s plan was to get WSCT operational by hooking the broom closet’s P.A. system into the Student Center so that students in the Cafeteria could hear WSCT’s daily broadcasts. Next, Wilson planned on installing AM carrier current systems for the dormitories so that WSCT could be heard simply by tuning a radio dial to the appropriate frequency. Wilson’s final step was to convert WSCT into an official FM station by purchasing all the appropriate equipment and applying to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a license. Today WXCI is the second largest College radio station in Connecticut but roughly forty years ago WSCT wasn’t even an official station and its DJ’s had to work to gain the respect of the students and the faculty. According to Burgess the, 7’x15’ broom closet room that students originally broadcasted from was located on the second floor of the student union building and had been a dish washing room directly adjacent to the faculty reception lounge. Burgess reports: One day a bunch of us showed up at the station to find the hallway door open and a reception going on in the faculty lounge next door. Our sink was piled with dirty dishes and the turntables were being used as lazy susans for leftover dip. This indignity led to on-air culinary reviews of the 6 food service’s menus, which generated the inevitable response from the food service people. It appeared that a major confrontation was imminent, but Bob, ever the diplomat, got the critiques stopped after the food service people agreed to stop using our studios as a pantry. (3) This was just one of several incidents where members of the radio club haven’t seen eye to eye the WestConn administration or the student body. Although WSCT had come a long way in a relatively short period of time with little to no assistance from the school, it hadn’t established itself enough at this point to be taken seriously. Burgess reports: One day a student complained to Bob about a record that had been played during a lunch show. The record was Eric Burden’s Sky Pilot, an anti-war song that featured a middle break consisting of bagpipes and the sounds of carnage. The student said the food in the cafeteria was hard enough to stomach without having to hear this song. Bob politely asked us to refrain from playing the record. Demonstrating our maturity and discretion, most of us played it as a “special request” every chance we got, at least until Bob put the record in his briefcase and took it home. (3) WSCT’s primary audience before it became an official station was the cafeteria. Unfortunately this meant that the students in the cafeteria became the guinea pigs. The DJ’s of the time knew not to play anything too radical but a conflict of wills was inevitable. This was just one of many obstacles the radio station had to overcome before it was assigned its official FM call letters. 7 Another inconvenience WSCT had to face was the fact that its entire P.A. system was hooked into a center console that was located on the first floor of the student union building, which meant that anyone could just walk by and turn off the radio station if they didn’t like what was being broadcast. This eventually led to Wilson’s relocating of the station to a storage room that was on the first floor of the student union building directly next to the P.A.’s control system. This room was larger than the broom closet and gave the school’s radio DJ’s more influence over the situation. Although on the surface everything seemed to be going as planned for Captain Wilson and his fellow DJ’s as they settled into their newfound surroundings, a series of events were about to unfold that would forever change the radio station and force WSCT off the air indefinitely. Burgess reports: Winter Weekend was rapidly approaching. Freshman Alphonse Ranaudo, a gifted artist, musician, and WSCT DJ had designed a beautiful poster advertising the upcoming campus activities. The posters were disappearing off the walls almost as fast as they could be put up, showing up in dorm rooms and apartments all over town. The Winter Weekend committee was not pleased and neither was Alphonse. During the supper show on December 19, a DJ named “Icy” was on the air pleading vehemently to the student body to leave the posters up at least until the weekend was over. In the station with him were Alphonse and another member, Jim ‘Hatch’ Hathaway. As Icy’s rant drew to a close, the three 8 chose to punctuate it with a three-part harmonized ‘You Motherfuckers!’ I was in the cafeteria at the time and the place fell so quiet you could hear the gravy congeal. We hadn’t thought folks paid that much attention to our broadcasts, but it seemed like everyone heard that.