WKCR -- Left of the Dial and Above Your Tax Bracket

We like us some college radio. In fact, we are like that bland SuperTrain guy from Singles who reminisces about the glory days as we flip through our record collection(s). Two things that were as integral to our college radio experience as accidentally dropping the F-bomb before 10PM were:

1. Fundraising
2. Bureaucracy

Now these weren't the fun, glamorous parts of college radio, like accidentally dropping the F-bomb before 10PM. That was as much fun as we'd had since we were children, when we used to seal lit firecrackers in glass jars and fling dogshit at moving cars from behind a fence. Simultaneously. We had a lot of awesome e-coli infections back then, too.

Fundraising and Bureaucracy were the unfun parts of college radio that involved browbeating by our elders and learning something about something as it relates to life, and our world. Like most college radio stations, we didn't set our sights for the stars and envision a future without those things. For instance, we didn't gather up all of our Low-Ivy entitlement and expect an endowment, whose interest would completely fund our activities. This however, is the plan of the 'college' radio station WKCR, which is loosely associated with Columbia University.

Neither a student enterprise nor a club, the radio station exists outside the umbrella of University governing boards, and thus is not in line to receive money from student life funds. Before a plague of monetary problems struck the station, this existence apart from other student groups suited them. But a spate of financial issues, starting in 2001, has decimated the station’s bank account. The station embarked on an initiative to raise a $4 to $6 million endowment, using the interest to pay for operating costs.

Most stations use student programming funding. Of course, that entails dealing with bureaucracy and actually having to accommodate actual students. (the Horror)

“Is conforming to ABC [Activities Board at Columbia] guidelines worth the $30,000?” she said. “The answer is probably no.”

It's certainly true that student programming funding won't cover everything -- so most stations also set aside a couple of weeks every year to roll up their sleeves and do fundraising.

Ben Siegelman, CC ’07 and the 2006 station manager who helped formulate the endowment plan, said he wanted to “come up with some sort of financial plan in which the radio station did not have to rely on on-air fundraising. I was sick of fundraising.”

Well OK, nix that. The article then notes that their antenna was on the WTC and the replacement one only reaches 10% of the former audience. Of course, something like that only is relevant to two things: fundraising (already out of the question), and advertising. So how about throwing a few spots out there?

“We could have commercials, but then we’d have commercials,” Whitcomb said flatly, “and that’s not art.”

Apparently, if you have a trust fund, you expect the non-profit you work at to have one too. And with a $270K annual operating budget, you need a really big trust fund. Some of this $270K goes to actually paying one guy to do a show and live in New York. Seriously, if you are that hard up to fill airtime, just steal somebody's iPod from a Vampire Weekend show and take a nap. That's basically what most college radio amounts to these days anyway. Of course, not being officially tied to Columbia University means that they actually have to pay rent for station space. We're guessing this is probably the most abnormal part of their budget. Additionally*, their pristine, state-of-the-art equipment looks nicer than the 30 year old mixing boards and duct-taped CD players sported by most other college stations. If only they had the kind of bourgeois networking that WKCR thinks** they have, they too might be able to sneer at such non-profit drudgery as fundraising, bureaucracy, and selling out to the man.

*We apologize for whining! And we are referring to the linked article's picture -- not the one we swiped from the Onion!
**We are uh, skeptical of this plan. But we guess if raising 270K a year is hard, pulling in a $6 million endowment should be a piece of cake.