Katie Cameron
A&E Editor
“You’re listening to 90.9 FM, WCWS Wooster Woo 91, a public service station of The College of Wooster.” It’s FCC regulation for that announcement to be made every hour from The College of Wooster’s radio station, Woo 91. Previously, this station identification was an automated recording, but as of today, Nov. 4, this recording and many other aspects of Woo 91’s sound have changed to better reflect Wooster’s wide variety of musical taste.
When students are not hosting radio shows, music must still be played. Woo 91 currently uses a software that the radio station has had for over a decade; the website has not been updated since 2001 and still dubs the software as a “DJ-in-a-box.”
With the old software, the students at Woo 91 were not in charge of the music played by the automation system during unprogrammed hours. This year, they decided that it was time for an upgrade.
Woo 91’s music director Harry Todd ’18 discussed the changes in store for the radio station. “We’ve been, for the past few years, choosing what music we want for the automation system based off of what CDs we have and what music we get from labels and record companies. We’ve essentially built a new automation system with new playlists and music that we want as a college radio station,” said Todd. “We’re making a shift from something that sounds like a standard radio station to something that sounds more college-y, which is very exciting.”
So far, Woo 91 already has about 30,000 songs loaded onto the system, with 20,000 more in the process of being “lyric-checked” (the radio station is subject to FCC fines if songs played on the air use, as Todd dubs them, “any of the seven deadly words”). As a public, non-commercial, educational radio station, Woo 91 can play any music that it owns. Last year, Todd uploaded many CDs to the new automation system. Part of the beauty of Woo 91’s renovation is the tangible basis of its new musical library; the songs are from physical CDs and record companies looking to promote artists, not just files ripped from the Internet.
Inside the radio booth, Todd showed off the immense new library of music at Woo 91’s disposal. With artists ranging from the Beatles to Yo La Tengo, Woo 91 now has the flexibility to play music from a wider variety of genres and artists, some traditional, some more experimental. Playlists can be selected for different times — think acid house noise from midnight to 3 a.m. on a Saturday night and more ambient music for Sunday mornings.
College is the perfect time for students to expand their musical tastes and interests outside the confines of Top 40 radio. Whether you’re digging into your parents’ vinyl or looking for the next up-and-comers in the indie world, Woo 91 is looking to aid that development, because the radio station is evolving, too. “Hopefully, this is just a base of music on which we’ll continue to expand,” said Todd.