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 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 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. Within moments,

Student Union night manager Guido Tino raced downstairs and shut

WSCT off. And off we would stay. (4)

Up until this point WestConn’s fledgling radio station had made leaps and bounds considering that WSCT had received little to no outside funding from the SGA or elsewhere. The students of WestConn were basically responsible for building the entire station from the ground up and its fate over the next few years would rest solely on their abilities as a collective whole. WSCT was willed into existence through the sheer desire and determination of the students at WestConn and now everything they had worked so hard to achieve was about to be taken away from them.

Together, both Wilson and Dr. Henderson, who was the original faculty advisor for the CBA, began negotiations with the school’s officials to get WSCT back on campus airwaves. A compromise was not reached for well over a month, which meant that WSCT had to remain shut down until some kind of agreement was made.

One has to keep in mind that during the time prior to when WSCT lost its right to broadcast there were no real guidelines the DJ’s had to follow because WSCT wasn’t yet an official FM station.

WestConn was eventually allowed WSCT back on the air but there were several conditions the station would have to follow in exchange for this privilege. Unfortunately

9 Ranaudo, “Icy”, and Hathaway were all suspended indefinitely from the air and could no longer be heard on WSCT.

The remaining members of the club had to sign an agreement stating that if they were to ever repeat an incident similar to what happened they could be expelled from school. To make matters worse anyone who wanted to continue being a DJ at the station would have to apply for a third-class radiotelephone license from the FCC, which subjected the student to a fine upwards of $2,000 and a possible jail sentence of five years for rule violations.

An underlying incentive for students who became certified DJ’s was that WSCT’s headquarters were now relocated from the Student Center to Berkshire Hall.

The move wasn’t that bad at all after considering that the new facilities in

Berkshire consisted of two rooms, both a potential studio and an office.

For the 1969-1970 school year the CBA would receive $1,750.00 from the SGA and invest this money in new radio equipment. The CBA received $5,300.00 during

1970-1971, which was used to begin the construction of a new studio to be located back in Student Center building. Members of WSCT spent an entire summer during 1970 constructing their new studio.

Burgess reports, “By the end of the summer, the Campus Broadcast Association had an air studio, a news booth, a production room, and an office big enough for two desks. We also had enough money to get the carrier current equipment. With a little help from the engineers at both WLAD and WINE, the new system was up and running just in time for the fall term”(6).

10 Over the next two years WSCT would expand and become one of the largest clubs on campus. The station would manage to secure a variety of music from various record labels and now had a library of music large enough to cover a variety of genres.

More and more students began to take an interest in the radio station and instead of just being on the air for a couple of hours a day, WSCT would now broadcast throughout the entire school day.

The radio club began to expand itself towards other areas of interest and now included a News Department that would eventually secure itself an AP wire machine and the station offered local weather reports on a daily basis.

The only thing left on the CBA’s list of things to do was to finally convert its entire system over to FM, because even though all these great things were happening at

WSCT, the radio station remained relatively unknown outside of the WestConn campus.

Cindy Strum reported in a 1974 echo article that, “Many events contributed to transforming WSCT AM to WXCI FM. The most significant occurred in the spring of

1972 when Ralph Nader came to speak to a capacity crowd in Ives Auditorium. The sponsor of the event had to turn away hundreds of people, many of whom heard Nader on

WSCT's broadcast of the event (qtd. in http://wxcimemories.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html).

Later that spring WestConn students voted for a $3.00 increase in student funds in order to compensate the costs for upgrading WSCT to an FM station.

11 Chapter 2: WXCI converts to FM

Tom Zarecki took over as Chief Engineer for WSCT in 1970 and also served as

Program Director and General Manager. He was mostly responsible for filling out the application required for upgrading WSCT to WXCI.

Tom Zarecki

When were you active with WXCI?

I was the chief engineer from 1970-71, I was the program director from

1971-1972, and I was the general manager from 1973-1974.

So you worked your way up to general manager?

Yeah, and I have an engineering background and nobody at the station did when I got there. So they said guess what you’re the general manager. There wasn’t even an election. Every year at WXCI they have elections and vote in new officers. They’ve been doing that for 30 years, so we invented the elections back then.

Can you elaborate on what your responsibilities were at WXCI?

In any position in any company in any organization there are usually a dozen things that any one person with a title does. So if you’re the chief engineer you’re involved in all the engineering projects, whether they’re tiny little or great big ones.

If you’re the program director you’re in charge of programming and that includes selecting the DJ’s, coaching them on what they should be doing, talking to them about what music they are playing and sometimes helping them pick a format if they don’t have

12 one. If you’re the program director and you decide you’re going to have a jazz show every Saturday afternoon, you have to find a DJ who will be willing to do it.

So, which one of those three positions did you enjoy the most?

I just like doing radio so I liked all those things. While I was in those positions I was also working fulltime and WABC and WPLJ in New York.

So everyday I was at WestConn trying to take classes and doing stuff at WXCI and then

I’d drive to midtown Manhattan, I did that for three years.

It was crazy but I didn’t know it was crazy. If someone told me that I don’t think I would have done it.

What were your responsibilities at WABC and WPLJ?

I was a board operator in the engineering department and at the time WABC was the highest rated radio station on earth. It was number one in New York and it had higher ratings than any other radio station in the United States and thus around the world.

So it was top 40 music at the time and I ran the board for all the famous DJ’s.

They would check with the engineer who would run all the equipment. They played the signals, they played the songs, and they would turn the microphone on and off and make sure things were really tight and crisp.

When did you first get the 10-watt ?

When I got there was no transmitter at all until 1973. It was just a closed circuit

P.A. system in 1970-1973. It took us about two years to apply to the Federal

Communications Commission (FCC) before we got the license. So somewhere between

1971 and 1972 we filled out this application and the application was about 100 pages.

13 Who was responsible for filling that out?

I was the chief engineer so I filled it out. Some of the stuff I didn’t understand so I had to get some help from other people. There was a whole crew of us because we knew this was affecting the license.

It took about a year, not for us to fill it out; we filled it out and sent it in. It took a year for the FCC to get back to us and tell us yes or no.

What about the whole communications department at school? Was it just forming then?

There was no communications department. There were acting classes and that was part of the speech and theater department at WestConn.

What was the whole reason from changing from P.A. to FM?

Well because people could actually hear you, because if you’re a P.A. system you could only be heard in limited areas on campus. So we went and not only applied to the government and once the government approved us we actually had to purchase a transmitter and it was just a 10-watt transmitter. This thing was about six feet tall and we were given the frequency 91.7 FM.

We had to change the name from WSCT to WXCI because some real radio station actually had those call letters and we just made them up. When we filled out the application we had to submit our choices for call letters and our first choice was WSCT and it was denied because a station in South Carolina already had those call letters.

14 So they took our second choice, which was WXCI, now XCI is roman numerals for 91, a lot of people don’t even know that and that’s why we picked WXCI. So we had a whole meeting just where we talked about the call letters we wanted if we couldn’t get

WSCT.

How did the FCC rules change from the time you were working at WXCI, until now?

In the 1980’s when Ronald Reagan was president there was a wave in the FCC called deregulation. Reagan and then later President Bill Clinton deregulated a huge amount of broadcasting control from the FCC. One of the first things Reagan did was remove the fairness doctrine.

The fairness doctrine isn’t really an FCC rule but it’s a Government Law that up until the 1980’s required that any station that gave an opinion was required to have the exact amount of time spent giving the other opinion. If you came out and said you think people should vote for Joe Jones for the mayor or the president or anything else and here’s why for two minutes, then those other guys, the opponents, would come in and demand two minutes of their time. That sounds pretty wacky doesn’t it?

How long was the fairness doctrine in place and what happened once it was removed?

Since radio began from 1919 up until the 1980’s, the fairness doctrine was in place…and if you didn’t measure the time, the opponents would come in and demand that your license be taken away. So because that was so stringent almost no stations gave any opinions at all, so they would just play records and give the news and that’s not an opinion at all.

15 When the fairness doctrine was removed in the 1980’s it suddenly meant that a station could come on and give hours and hours of just one opinion without anyone ever representing the other side. You know what that lead to, .

He was very successful in Sacramento California. He did three hours a day of that was very conservative.

The stations that showed Limbaugh became very successful and he went from being on one station to five or six hundred stations in about four years. It lead to hundreds of radio talk show hosts that you hear today, but it all started with Limbaugh. AM radio was just about dead and when he came on and then those stations began to have tremendous ratings from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. when his show aired.

This is all documented fact of what happened. Rush Limbaugh personally revitalized AM radio and a lot of stations build their whole day around him and everyone had the same conservative opinion. This is why today almost 95 percent of talk programming is conservative opinions. It came out of the Limbaugh conservative movement; part of it is because the liberals can’t find a batch of decent talk radio hosts.

Are there any networks out there that are willing to support liberal talk shows?

Air America is a progressive liberal leading network filled up with talk show hosts like Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo and they are having a problem getting off the ground. They’ve been around for five years now but there are many people who are trying to create liberal talk radio. It’s still in its infancy.

16 What do you think is one of the main reasons for the lack of liberalism heard on radio airwaves other than the rise Rush Limbaugh?

In the 1990’s the FCC removed broadcast ownership caps. Up until the 1990’s even if you were a multi millionaire and you wanted to buy a radio station and money was no object you could still only buy two radio stations in every city. One had to be AM and one had to be FM and you could only have a total of eight radio stations within the

United States.

There were thousands of independent broadcasters all over the United States. It took the FCC about five years in the 1990’s to change the rules. Ultimately they eliminated all the broadcast ownership caps. This meant that if you were multinational giant company with lots of money you could buy any station. Groups like CBS and Clear

Channel did just that. Clear Channel got to its peak when it owned 1,100 radio stations in the top markets like Detroit, Chicago, and New York. Clear Channel also had four or five stations in very small places such as Fargo, North Dakota, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. It immediately changed the picture of what was going on out there.

17 Chapter 3: The Telegram Arrives

Meanwhile, in winter of 1973 WestConn students were eagerly awaiting approval from FCC. Students had already purchased a 6ft tall 10-watt transmitter and Bob

Mallory, along with Tom Zarecki installed it in Dr. Ruth Haas’ attic in Old Main.

The antenna for WXCI was then strapped onto the roof of Old Main on a chimney that was accessible through the attic.

Evans Travis and Bob Mallory were both responsible for setting up the tower and bolting it onto the roof.

According to Robert Abbett during the 25th reunion podcast, approximately 45 minutes before his initial broadcast on February 28, 1973, WXCI received a call from

Western Union saying there was a telegram for them from the Federal Communications

Commission.

Peter Faass and Evans Travice went to go pick up the telegram and brought it back to the station. Travice recalls “We had a station manager that was very strict about that kind of thing so we had to wait for the license. It’s actually true, people were pacing around and there were a lot of people gathering and we were just waiting for the license to come back so Peter and I brought it back.” (qtd. in http://wxcimemories.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=51622)

18 Rabbett was the first DJ to make the announcement because at that time he was doing an 11a.m. to 1p.m. show, every day over the school’s P.A.

According to Rabbett before he made his announcement he was at the radio station playing some of his favorite tunes, which included The Birds, Batdorf and

Rodney, and The Moody Blues.

Rabbett said, “I was in deep shock when the telegram arrived so I tried to take it in stride and I don’t think I screwed up the initial sign on too bad.” (qtd. in http://wxcimemories.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=51622)

After the initial announcement several students at the school began calling in to the station congratulating everyone because they could actually get a decent signal through their radios and didn’t have to depend on the P.A. system anymore.

Rabbit said, “My most personal excitement was actually afterwards when I went out in my car to see how far this thing went and I drove all the way to the top of the hill in Bridgewater where my folks were and I could get it there and we drove down to New

Milford and we could still get it there and I think we did a circle out to Brewster New

York on 84 and up into Newtown and we could still get it!”(qtd. in http://wxcimemories.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=51622

If someone wanted to do a show at WXCI back in the 1970’s the radio station used something called “horizontal scheduling,” which meant that if you wanted to have a specific block of time to be on the air, it had to be across the board for the entire week

Monday through Friday. Nowadays WCXI is broken up into different time blocks throughout the week, which began during the early 1980’s

19 During the 1970’s WXCI had its own news department and reporters covered local elections and were stationed in all of the party headquarters. They interviewed both the winners and the losers live and on the air and also taped their interviews for many of the local news networks for the following morning.

One of the major events during this time was a Newtown teachers’ strike and reporters from WestConn were over at the school covering the strike.

There were number of progressive rock shows at the station that were really ahead of their time. They played bands such Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Yes, The Nice, Frank

Zappa, and Pink Floyd before they were mainstream.

Gregory Wencek was the Program Director at WXCI in 1976 and also a DJ at

WXCI for a number of years. According to Wencek, while he was program director there were five main DJ’s including himself Mike Castelo, Porgie, Pam Brooks, and Tom

Zarecki who would do shows from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. during the weekdays.

Greg Wencek

You said you were the program director?

Yeah, it was somewhere between 1976 and 1977, somewhere along there.

Were you with the radio station anytime before that?

Sure, I was a member. I was a D.J., and then became program director and remained on staff for a couple of years.

So did you have your own show then?

Yes, it was a morning music show called Donuts and Coffee, and I did that show for a couple of semesters.

20 What kind of music did you play?

At that point the morning show was a pop music show.

What kind of bands?

Let’s see, Backdorf and Rodney, Hall and Oats, the Beatles, just the popular music of the mid and late 1970’s.

Did you do the show by yourself or with other people?

It was just me. I had a couple of people who did the news. I had a regular newscaster and some other fill in people. We would talk a little back and forth, but generally it was just me on the show.

Did you play music you enjoyed listening to?

Yeah, it was pretty much the stuff I wanted to listen to in the morning. In that sense it was pretty selfish. There were requests and some other stuff but it was mostly pop music and not top 40, so a lot of people liked it in that sense.

When you were program director you probably knew a lot about all the other shows on WXCI at that time, right?

Absolutely, most of the station was done with contemporary stuff. It was a lot of new artists, emerging artists, and a lot of new music and that was the predominant sound of the station during the course of the day.

Yeah, like how it is today but obviously the music scene has changed a lot since then.

Right. Back then Billy Joel was a brand new artist and now you would think that’s oldies kind of stuff. Hall and Oats, now it’s a pretty well established name, but they were newer back then.

21 What was the news like back then?

When the station came on the air at 7:00 a.m. we did a fifteen-minute newscast and then at the top of the hour, every hour, we did a five-minute newscast. At noon there was a thirty-minute broadcast and then at 6:00 p.m. there was a thirty-minute newscast.

Were all the newscasts different?

Absolutely. There was someone from the news department who would go to the associated press copy and they had reporters who would go out and get news from either around campus or around the greater Danbury area.

What about sports, did you guys cover all the games at WestConn?

I don’t know if we did all the football games, we certainly did all the basketball games. For some of the other sporting events the sports department often did remote broadcasts, so they would do either home games or away games.

What about sports talk shows?

There were a couple of guys who hosted a show in the evenings, at least one or two nights a week. The daytime slots were all the same… after the 6 o’clock news there was a different show every night.

Were there any shows from back then that stick out in your mind the most?

One of the most unusual shows that we did was a Broadway Show Tunes show for a couple of hours on Saturday. Dennis Martin ran it and he would talk about what was currently playing as well as older shows. He played the music and he’d fit in one or two

Broadway shows during the course of a Saturday.

22 We had two or three classical shows during the week. Jazz was big. We had an oldies show on Sunday morning which was very popular.

What were some of your primary responsibilities as program director?

My primary responsibility was to make sure that every hour of the day we were on from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and every hour had a slot that was offered out to students. I had to make sure that somebody was signed up and had taken that slot and that we would have coverage. I also had to ensure that once the student had defined what a show was going to be that they stayed within that format.

During the 1970’s you played a lot of classic rock but were you into progressive rock also?

Absolutely, and again it was the progressive rock with an eye toward newer artists. Even back in those days we were looking at who was new and exciting. The music director spent a lot of time just researching new music.

We were one of the few college stations back then that had agreements with the record labels. The music director was able to get albums from the labels and that’s why we were able to play cutting edge music.

Back in the earlier days college radios weren’t really given a chance to get music from the labels. We were just very fortunate to have some contacts in the early days at

WXCI to actually make that happen.

I think that just looking back on what it was, a lot of us had this great love for radio. I had been a DJ in high school. We had a closed carrier current station and again we played records basically in a closet to a loud speaker in the cafeteria.

23 I had always wanted to be on the radio and a large number of us who were at the radio station back then just really wanted to do it. It was one of those things where it was great because we got a chance to experiment with broadcasting.

What was the radio station like compared to now? The music was probably a lot different.

I’m not really big on the current music scene it has to be similar. It’s just that the music we played seems so familiar but back then it was newer. I worked at WLAD at the time and the stuff we were playing at WLAD was horribly mild when compared to the music we played at WXCI.

The guys at WLAD couldn’t believe anybody could have played the songs we were playing because they were so loud and the lyrics were so cutting.

It’s somewhat similar today, I go back and think of the Bill Joel stuff and that’s really mild compared with what they are playing on the air now. We tried pushing the envelope, WXCI has always been known doing that.

What was some of the music that regular stations were playing back then?

WLAD was doing some top 40 stuff. By then the Beatles had been around for a while and their music was pretty well established. It wouldn’t be songs from their White Album or

Yellow Submarine but it would be some of their earlier stuff. Barry Manilow was very big back then.

What about bands like The Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath?

They were newer. They weren’t as established and the mainstream media turned away from them. Being college kids we rebelled against the establishment and we had the kind of attitude that said, no, we’re going to play this stuff.

24 Pink Floyd’s stuff was new. The Wall hadn’t come out yet when I started college.

That’s now an icon of the music industry and it hadn’t even come out yet.

Backdorf and Rodney were big but they disappeared. Orleans was up and coming and they’re not around anymore.

Elton John was new. My show played a lot of Elton John and so did some of the other shows. He’s now doing Broadway and Opera. These guys are now considered the establishment but back then Elton John was a newer name. A lot of stations wouldn’t even play his music because it was considered too loud.

We had a professional attitude toward what we were doing. We knew what we were broadcasting. We knew that it was a real radio station that had a transmitter and a license from the FCC and we took that responsibility seriously and followed the rules.

We just bent them as far as we could possibly go.

25 Chapter 4: The 1980’s

In the1982 fall semester WXCI completely changed from being a classic rock/jazz orientated station to a new music format. The station went from playing stuff like Led Zeppelin and The Doors to Duran Duran and Making it Work.

This transition received backlash from some members of the community and in the local papers because people thought students at the station were just changing everything around and doing whatever they wanted. WXCI’s management was mainly responsible for the change.

During this time students were serious about radio and wanted to bring WXCI up to speed and so this required discipline and formatting and a definite change.

Darrel Ohrt

Darrel Ohrt was one of the main catalysts for this change because he did a show in 1981 on Sundays called adventure jukebox. This is when punk and alternative bands like U2 and Black Flag were still considered underground.

You were at WXCI from 1980-1981, right?

Yes, I was at the station up until1981.

You did a show called Adventure Jukebox?

Yes.

You played a lot of different music on there, alternative music?

What you would call alternative today, yeah, New Wave and Punk.

26 What were some of the bands you were into?

Everything from Duran Duran and Culture Club to Gang of Four, The Ramones,

Mission Inferma, Black Flag, and the Circle Jerks, literally everything from Punk to Early

Hardcore.

When you were at the radio station they changed the format from block scheduling?

It wasn’t block at the time it was a jazz / rock combination, it was called jazz up your rock. We would play music all day and then at the top of every hour we would play a jazz song and then we switched from that.

If you think about it a lot of listeners don’t know that for example that today at

4:00 p.m. there is going to be a Blue Grass show and that on Thursday at 9:00 p.m. there’s going to be something else. What we found was that a lot of college stations would schedule all of their specialty shows around a DJ’s schedule and not around their audience.

What you’re really doing is creating a program for an audience so it’s not about, well I’m free art 10 O’clock on Tuesday; it’s about what is appropriate for an audience.

WXCI put their entire block programming on Sundays and then everything else Monday through Saturday was new music and alternative.

Could you elaborate and talk about why the format changed?

What happened was when we started the Adventure Jukebox the show became so popular that we decided to change the format of the station from a jazz / rock combination to an entirely new music format.

There was a team of tree or four of us that were really instrumental in doing that.

Certainly the success of my show proved that there was a real audience for it. We would

27 go on the air and all the phones would be constantly jammed for four hours straight, so we needed someone at the station fulltime just answering the phones.

We were looking to prove that there was a real audience out there. After lots of discussion and debate we convinced the board to do a format change. After we changed everything there was a lot of controversy over it because a lot of people took it personally.

I heard there was even something in the paper about it?

Well the first thing that happened was that there was a huge wall at the record library of thousands of records. We went through and pulled what fitted to the new music format, which was maybe 150 records.

We consolidated an entire wall of records in the library from floor to ceiling. We took it down to around 200 records that you could choose from. It was really scary for some of the older guys that had been at the station.

There were people from the school who were protesting it saying you don’t have a right to do this.

So who specifically was protesting it?

The people in the school paper, but then what happened on my show was that the phones started ringing and we heard from fans for the first time in 20 years.

We were actually playing really great bands and people would keep calling saying, oh my god this is great. Everybody saw really quickly that we were building a real audience. When you’re getting a hundred calls every hour you know you are doing something right.

28 Well I know that during the early 1980’s punk music and metal were starting to get more popular.

Yeah, we were right on the edge on that and getting into mainstream. And then after a few years into it, U2 cracked and Culture Club was a big hit.

I heard that you started playing U2 before anyone really heard about them.

Yes. That’s when people still considered U2 as being a punk rock band. Around here, anything that wasn’t Lenard Skinnard and Led Zeppelin, and anybody who didn’t have their hair parted in the middle and have vinyl shirts were definitely considered a punk rocker.

Most of what you hear on I95 today is what XCI was playing. They were playing the same 30 songs for 20 years, that’s all the DJ’s would do.

It’s weird because bands like U2 were completely unknown and could only be heard on college radio stations, same thing with REM. Many of the bands that are now considered historic rock bands were relatively unknown at the time and still considered to be new wave bands. By that time U2 and REM were making second and third albums that were still hits, which was proof that we were on to something.

Were there any other shows that were popular during your time at XCI?

Actually Bill Baker’s show was called Morning Sickness and was an extremely successful morning show. I would probably guess it was one of the only personality morning shows in all of WXCI’s history. At one point XCI got some details on arbitron radio ratings and found that we beat out I-95, which was one of the only radio stations geared towards youth. We beat them in their teen audience category, which was really

29 cool because it proved that the things we were doing at WXCI were working and we were creating a new audience.

I was listening to the pod casts on the WXCI Memories page and I heard you use to have a mo-hawk and that you were one of the first skater kids before there were skate kids.

Yeah, and actually there’s a good story behind that too. There were only two or three of use who were skaters and we met this guy who came in for a couple of semesters from California called Per Welinder. At the time he was the worlds freestyle champ for skateboarding. We became great friends and he did a show on XCI and he went on to help form Birdhouse Skateboards along with Tony Hawk.

Did you guys ever have any promotions?

The administration at WXCI was pressed to create a real idea station with promotions. We were really active with stuff like that; we filled a huge pool with spaghetti and had people jump in it. Yeah spaghetti and oil, I forget what it was called, spaghetti jump or something like that.

Another time we had Voodoo on the roof. This fellow Voodoo broadcasted from the roof of the building protesting the weather. He basically lived on the roof for a week and wouldn’t come down until the weather got better.

College kids never have money, so we were always jealous of the radio stations that had a van. One day we got somebody to cover their entire car with bumper stickers and we called it the WXCI mobile. We went around town giving away stuff and broadcasting it over the air.

30 Chapter 5: Washington’s Birthday

Rich Frolick worked at WXCI from the mid 1980’s to early 1990’s. He was a DJ, he helped produce a number of shows, and he even had his own comedy special on

WXCI. Frolick currently resides in Texas where he is involved in doing sound design projects for theaters in the Dallas area. He is also the founder of the Texas Radio Theatre

Company and is responsible for creating the WXCI Memories website at http://wxcimemories.blogspot.com/

Rich Frohlick

So I saw your website online…

Which one because I’ve got three as far as WXCI, actually two are WXCI. One is called WXCI memories and then there’s another one that’s very deep in the Internet about 1980’s WXCI.

I didn’t know if you ran the memories website or not.

That’s more of like a blog and I do that. The 1980’s memories website is an old geocities page that still might be active. It’s probably 10 years old and hasn’t really been updated but there are a lot of pictures on there.

Anyhow I came onto WXCI in the mid 1980’s and a lot of the folks that I feel really had a passion about the radio station were right in the class before me. They really set a foundation for a really strong station, a really great environment towards radio.

31 I’ve talk to people up to the late 1970’s and after that the music format changed from block formatting.

Each DJ before Darrel Ohrt came on board would have their own show structured around on the music they liked. Lets say one guy was a real freak about the Allman

Brothers; he would play the Allman Brothers and 1980’s people who influenced them.

Lets say another guy liked Pink Floyd; he played all of Pink Floyd and then maybe some influences. Maybe some guy liked 50’s music; he would bring in golden oldies and stuff like that. Each DJ would do their own show with what they thought fit.

I think WXCI is kind of conned into seeing that now. Right now they probably have their modern music format and then they have some blocked programs sprinkled in here and there.

Back in he 1970’s each DJ was in charge of his own library of music and he decided what was played on his show. When Darrel Ohrt came on board he really modeled it after a commercial radio station. The DJ’s pretty much played what they were supposed to play but they had a certain amount of freedom to do whatever jolted depending upon their taste.

I think it was actually a better model for going out into the real world and in that sense I totally support what he did. That’s what college is all about, it’s learning experience.

Back in the 1970’s people loved radio so much that they got it all started. They were doing their own thing, each one was a part of his own domain and it was pulled together only because they were all into radio.

32 Was Darrel Ohrt mainly responsible for the change then or was there someone else?

It was between him and the general manager at the time. Obviously WXCI is completely student run and that’s another cool thing about the station. Everything that happens on the air and everything that goes into the programming to making it happen is done by the students.

When did you work at WXCI?

1987-1991. I was involved in WXCI from 1985.

How many watts was the radio station when you were there?

760 watts. 1000 watts went up 10 years ago. Back when I was on they didn’t have the automation. In the morning when you’d get there you would actually have to turn the transmitter back on.

You’d have to sign on and say good morning this is WXCI beginning its broadcast day and then say the wattage. You would have to write down blogs and transmitter readings and all that other jazz. At the end of the day usually around 2 o’clock is when we signed off and say, WXCI concludes its broadcast day and is operated by the campus broadcast association.

On your 1980’s website it said that WXCI was banished to White Hall, what was that all about?

Back in 1992 or 1993 Memorial Hall had some renovations that needed to be done and WXCI was removed from their studios. About 11 or 12 years ago they were put back into Warner Hall. From about 1995-98 they were cooked up in the basement of the

White Hall.

33 When you were at WXCI their studios were located in the student union building right?

Correct. It first started in a little closet in the student union back in 1973 and then it expanded and was basically in that room until about 1994 or so. Mid 1990’s it was in the student union. After the renovations in around 1997 or 1998 the station finally moved out of the basement back to where it is now, it’s been there for at least 10 years.

Did you know about a show on WXCI called Hard attack?

Hard Attack started when I was there. It started in 1989 or 1990. I wasn’t involved in it but I believe one of the guys was Chuck Burgen. I knew Chuck.

Those guys were more into the alternative music scene right?

Yeah absolutely, there were different degrees of it but for the most part it was . That’s what we played most of the time and we had a couple specialty shows. I did a comedy show, I did a Sunday morning show, and I also did a college talk show.

Would you ever find yourself doing more than one show during the semester?

There was totally a time where I would do more than one show. I would have my normal time slot and one or more specialty shows that I worked on.

I did the comedy show pretty much the whole time I was there. I was always working on that and then I introduced a college talk show. I wasn’t actually the interviewer but I engineered it and was pretty much the talk screener.

34 In your eyes, who was the most influential person while you were worked at WXCI?

Greg Higgins was pretty influential as far as being music director and program director. Randy Waters was influential to me mainly because I liked doing production.

Same thing with Greg Higgins, he was into production too.

That’s kind of where my life has gone. I’ve done sound production for theater, radio theater, and I do a lot of audio engineering and audio production. I kind of latched onto or watched a lot of the people who liked to do audio production and had good audio techniques. Those were the people I tried to emulate. There were a lot of great DJ’s there that knew a lot about alternative music.

What kind of bands were you guys into back then?

I was into The Cure and The Smiths. We actually got a gold record from Midnight

Oil. The record company could tell that because we were the only ones in the area playing Midnight Oil that all the sales that happened in the Danbury area and Connecticut were attributed mainly to us exposing the band. We got a gold record from the record company hung on our wall, which was pretty cool.

What is the kind of work do you do now? Are you still affiliated with any radio stations?

I do sound design for theaters in the Dallas area. That’s what I do that relates directly to WXCI and I also do Texas Radio Theater. I’m using my production techniques there. For my day job, I help produce vocational instructional videos. That’s where I make money, all that other stuff is just fun.

35 Do you produce the audio for the videos?

I do the whole thing. I use to edit it but now I’m into production. I’m more of a director for producing the vocational videos. I’ll call the shots and tell the editor what to do.

Anything crazy ever happen while you were working at WXCI?

I heard of a lot of crazy things while I was there. Sometimes when we were on late at around 2 a.m. we would grab the Associated Press wire and started reading the news. We would make comments and play sound effects CD’s with it and basically go on until we were tired. Sometimes it would be a whole hour, other times it would be just a couple minutes.

We also celebrated George Washington’s birthday around February and we didn’t know back then that it was actually the anniversary of WXCI. We would stay up all night and play music and we didn’t care about the format we just played whatever the hell we wanted.

Why did you guys celebrate Washington’s Birthday?

Well because, there was no reason for it. We just did it. It was an excuse to stay up all night. All the cool holidays were taken, someone was always doing Christmas and somebody else was always doing Valentines Day. So Rudy Howser, Mike Wright, and I said fine, give up Washington’s Birthday and we’ll stay up all night. We actually had to get it approved.

We had to fill out a form and say, we want to stay up all night and play dance music, is that okay? The person who approved us would ask, why you want to do that, so we looked at the calendar and said because it’s Washington’s Birthday.

36 Did WXCI have overnight recording?

That overnight recording is probably only about seven years old. Before that when WXCI was off the air and no DJ’s were there it was dead air.

Did anything of historical significance happen while you were at WXCI?

There was a fistfight once. It was between a girl and a guy and he called the police on her. I had to run the girl over to one of the deans and keep her safe for a while so we could straighten things out before she got hauled off to Danbury jail.

37 Chapter 6: Hard Attack on WXCI

On Sunday, Oct. 21, I decided to go down to the Hard Attack show at WXCI, which airs every Sunday from 9 to 12 pm and hang out with DJ’s Dan Sterling, Paul

Lukomski, and Travis.

Hard Attack is the only show on WXCI that airs a consistent rotation of heavy metal music. They are truly at the forefront of the metal scene and the DJ’s on Hard

Attack are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to every facet of the metal genre and many of its many sub genres.

Dan Sterling has been a part of Hard Attack for seven years now and has a sound knowledge of how the show originally started and where it’s headed today.

According to Sterling, Chuck Rosenburg began Hard Attack as an outlet for the alternative grunge music that was beginning in Seattle back in 1988. Sterling said, “He started the show basically because he liked hard rock. It wasn’t even a metal show; it was pretty much the beginning of grunge. He was playing Nirvana and Soundgarden, the heavier side of what was normally on the radio.

Rosenburg relinquished the show after only about a year or two and then DJ’s

John Rich and Bob Huchings took over. Sterling said, “They did the show for over ten years together and they kept the whole thing alive during the 1990’s.”

Rich and Huchings were more into metal than Robenburg and they got in touch with a lot of the labels and began to push Hard Attack more in the direction to where it is today. Sterling said, “They knew the potential of the show when they took it over and they knew they couldn’t just keep playing their own personal record collection every week. They would pick a CD and see what label it is and them gave them and an email or

38 a phone call and gained contacts. Over the years they were in touch with over a dozen record labels and a couple different promo companies.”

Jeff Hill is a metal enthusiast who would call in to Hard Attack every Sunday and request music on a consistent basis. Hill would call into the station so much that John and

Rich ended up telling the guy, look, why don’t you just come down here and be a DJ.

And that’s exactly what Hill ended up doing.

Hill took the bare minimum amount of classes in order to get onto the radio and he ended up taking over the show after John and Bob left. Hill was responsible for increasing the listening audience of Hard Attack and creating this audience through his sheer determination and hard work.

Sterling said, “He would go to concerts in Poughkeepsie with flyers from our show and he would watch the whole concert, duck out ten minutes early, and stand outside of the door handing out flyers for Hard Attack. His philosophy with the flyers was don’t hang up flyers, put them right in they’re hands. Even if they landed on the floor you know they at least looked at them before they threw it away.”

Hill took over the show and ran it by himself for a number of years until

Sterling’s interest in the show peaked and the two got together during the spring semester of 1999.

At this time Hill had already been running the show for six years. Sterling said, “I started when Jeff was here and I guess you could say I was his understudy. I thought I was bringing something new to the table when I came in because I went to a Fear Factory show. At the door they were giving out demo tapes of Slipknot’s first album which came out month and months before the CD drives. So I was like, have you guys ever heard of

39 Slipknot? I’m not even kidding when Jeff just turned up the monitor and goes, yeah I’ve heard of them, and he was playing them.”

Hard Attack plays a variety of metal bands that are on constant rotation and they also have a top 10 which they update on a consistent basis. Listeners can hear the top 10 countdowns every Sunday beginning at about an hour into the show.

Hard Attack maintains a steady relationship with promo companies such as Heavy

Hitter, The Syndicate, and Skateboard Marketing. The promo companies work with the record labels to distribute the most recent CD’s to radio stations across the country. Hard

Attack also has a variety of contacts with all the major labels such as Century Media, and

Roadrunner Records to name a few. If the promo companies forget to send them a package the DJ’s will call the label and remind them about it.

Sterling said, ”We use to keep in contact with at least 75 labels. The list has dropped a little bit because a lot of those companies went under or their departments were downsized.”

Hard Attack not only keeps in close contact with record labels but they also give away tickets and promo CD’s. “Record labels want people to know their bands. So unless it’s a big band like System of a Down or Slayer, they will send us CD’s,” says Sterling.

Tickets, CD’s, prize packs, posters, and stickers are usually given away within the top 10.

One of the more outlandish giveaways that still resonates in the minds of the DJ’s working at Hard Attack was when one listener actually went out of their way to come to the station to chug a cup of curdled milk in order to get free tickets to a show.

40 Sterling said, “We gave away tickets to a concert I don’t remember what, it might have been Opeth, but there was a gallon of milk that was here that was out for at least a week. It was three different colors; it was chunky, curdled, warm disgusting milk. So we got on the air and said the first person to answer these five questions about the band gets a pair of tickets or if someone comes in here and chugs a cup full of this curdled milk, it will trump. We had two or three pairs of tickets and I’m not even kidding you when I say that no one called up for them until after someone came in and chugged some milk. We heard a knock on the door and someone said, I heard we have to drink some nasty shit to get some Opeth tickets. It was the most horrendous thing, it smelled so bad we poured the milk and it just clumped out into the cup.”

Hard Attack has done a variety of interviews with a number of bands such as

Darkest Hour, Dead The Fall, and Opeth to name a few. One of Hard Attack’s most memorable interviews was with Robby Roadsteamer who is a metalhead/comedian from

Mass who put together a joke band called The Sweat Pant Boners. The band included

Adam D. from Killswitch Engage and several members from Unearth back when both of these bands were still local and relatively unknown.

Sterling said, “When you get a comedian on the phone line, over the air, they’re usually pretty good. They can hold a conversation and say witty things. This guy was in character the whole time while on the phone and he was saying things like, it’s impossible getting laid when you’re on stage wearing sweatpants and a fanny pack. It was funny as hell!”

41 Not only is Hard Attack interesting to listen to, but there is also a chemistry shared amongst its DJ’s creating a great atmosphere that can be felt by anyone who is listening during one of their airings.

Most of the DJ’s who are on Hard Attack are WCSU alums with the exception of

Travis. Sterling and Lukomski basically continued doing the show after they left school because they enjoy doing it so much. All the DJ’s on the show are close friends and they all spend time with each other outside of the station going to concerts. Sterling says,

“We’re always looking for new people to come down and give their opinions and I hope people start listening and keep supporting local, live music, metal or not.

Dedication

In conclusion I would like to pay homage to all of the students, teachers, radio enthusiasts, and listeners who have contributed to WXCI over the years. Without your efforts the radio station would not be where it is today. It is also important that we honor and remember the one man responsible for WXCI’s conception, Bob Wilson. Wilson inspired many with his dream of creating a college radio station at WestConn. WXCI started out as Wilson’s brainchild and he wasn’t afraid to fully embrace his vision and in doing so his fantasy became a reality.

42 Conclusion

Although there were many stumbling blocks students had to overcome in order for WXCI to get to where it is today, every generation of students at WestConn has left its mark on the radio station. Upon entering Memorial Hall one can’t help but reminisce about the stations humble beginnings.

WXCI now broadcasts at 3,000 watts from a stereo transmitter on WCSU’s

Westside Campus, while its headquarters is located on the top floor of the Student Union building directly above the cafeteria. WXCI remains the second largest college radio station in Connecticut. The station boasts their wide variety of music ranging from metal and punk to jazz and bluegrass and everything in-between. They even have talk shows.

On weekends WXCI broadcasts all of the local WCSU sporting events. The station has its own DJ-ing computer that can play tracks unattended.

43 Notes on the general positions at WXCI

General manager is the chairman of the executive board and operations board, makes sure everything runs smoothly. He is responsible for everyone’s actions at the radio station and works with operations manager, business manager, chief engineer, faculty advisor, and the administration in Old Main. Keeps informed of FCC rules and regulations, and acts as a liaison between students and faculty advisors

Operations manager is the disciplinarian and he makes sure nothing goes out of hand. They as a liaison between operations board and the executive board and supervise the daily broadcasts. They make sure the students must maintain specific grade average to work at the station.

Executive board deals with major policy decisions by all the clubs and organizations

Operations board is composed of the news director, sports director, music director, program directory, personnel director, and training director.

Program Director is in charge of everything that is aired on the station.

They set up a format for what’s on the radio and deals directly with who is on the air and who isn’t and what they do.

News Director makes sure everyone who is on the air is trained properly in editing and news to do a 5 min news cast every hour…15 min twice a day, and one 30 min cast a day. They have an associated press machine that receives wires from Hartford.

Covers local news.

Sports Director is in charge of all the sports shows on the radio station.

New people at the station usually start in the sports dep. because it’s the easiest to learn.

44 Training Director has to work with everyone who wants to be on the air.

They make sure everyone is trained with how to use microphones, tape recorders, turntables, and all the controls.

Music Director makes sure everyone has a variety of recordings to play and that everything is up to date. Keeps in contact with the record companies who send in music.

Then there is the General Staff, which everyone working at the radio station is a part of.

WXCI is non-commercial and instead of adds they use public service announcements, which are 30- 60 seconds, the station is licensed by the FCC to serve the public and so public service announcements benefit the listeners by evoking them to be involved in their community.

45 Works Cited

Frohlich, Richard. WXCI Memories. 2005. Sep 14. 2007 http://wxcimemories.blogspot.com.

Frohlich, Richard. The 80’s Alumni Page. 1998. Sep 14. 2007 http://www.geocities.com/xci_realitybreak/wxci/wxci80.html.

Husvar, Brandon. WXCI 91.7. 2008. Sep 14. 2007 http://clubs.wcsu.edu/wxci.

Zarecki, Tom. WXCI interview. Via telephone. Nov 14. 2007

Burgess, Brian. WXCI interview. Via telephone. Nov 17. 2007

Wencek, Greg. WXCI interview. Via telephone. Dec 7. 2007

Ohrt, Darrel. WXCI interview. Via telephone. Dec 9. 2007

Sterling, Dan. Hard Attack interview. At WXCI. Oct 21. 2007

Burgess, Brian. WXCI-FM: A History of Sorts. 2005.

Goldstein, Bruce. WXCI interview. Via telephone. Nov 7. 2007

WXCI Memories #08 (1998) Tom Zarecki and guests podcast. Retrieved October 7, 2007 from http://wxcimemories.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=51622

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