The History of College Radio

Almost as soon as there were radio stations, there were college radio stations. In 1948, to popularize FM radio, the FCC introduced class D non commercial education licenses for low-watt college radio stations. By 1967, 326 FM radio signals in the United States operated as “educational radio,” 220 of which were owned and operated by colleges and universities. The type of programming that these stations offered varied widely, from lectures and sporting events, to various kinds of musical shows, but toward the late 1970s, a new genre of college rock appeared on the scene. Record labels took note as college DJs discovered up-and-coming new artists, although they sometimes stopped playing those artists once they made it big. Joining this week’s episode is historian Dr. Katherine Rye Jewell , a Professor at Fitchburg State University and author of Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio . Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag , composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “ College Days by Charles Hart, et al., 1919, in the public domain and retrieved from the Library of Congress. The episode image is “ Don Ja…