Wcbn: Freeform Radio Threatened
WCBN: FREEFORM RADIO THREATENED
by Pat Staiger
The Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar lick eased into the reggae beat of Special AKA to start Brad Heavner's Monday freeform show. The chorus sang "If you have a racist friend, now is the time for that friendship to end."
On Saturdays, Kate Gordon and David Zinn include a "noise of the day" in their "Rug Rat Review" children's radio show. Last week was "garbage truck." Listeners were encouraged to make the sounds at home.
Freeform radio defies definition. WCBN-FM (88.3 on your radio dial), is one of the few stations in the U.S. with this creative format. WCBN broadcasts blues, jazz, rock, punk, Scottish bagpipes, crickets, and Tibetan monk chants, often side by side. It airs shows on gay and lesbian, disabled student, and women's issues, like: Closets are for Clothes, ACCESS, and Classical Women.
"It's a complete reversal from commercial radio's approach which says 'do not challenge the community,' 'do not make the community uncomfortable,'" said Joe Tiboni, who has been with the station on and off since 1975. Unlike commercial radio, WCBN is without advertisements and therefore the station's programming is not controlled by "what sells," Tiboni explained.
The student-run radio station, more commonly known as 'CBN, has been around since 1947. But University officials are threatening WCBN's existence. Things heated up last year after DJ Chris Daley aired a song in December with the controversial title "Run, Nigger, Run." Daley failed to explain the song's historical context. (The song was sung by slaves in the 1800's and is about escaping from slaveowners.) The song offended a listener, and Daley was forced to leave the air. University officials related it to an incident a year earlier when offensive racist jokes were told on the other campus station, WJJX-AM.
Daley was not a student, and an old conflict between the station and the administration was reopened. University administrators have said non-students, which represent up to one-third of the station's staff, interfere with students learning and doing shows, cording to students, losing the non-students would cripple the network. The long-standing DJ's, and the students taking time off from school to play a bigger role at the station, provide a continuity to the station and training to the student DJ's. "They're essential," said one student staff member. "Without them, it would be pretty ridiculous around here." Although student staffers argued against removal of what they called 'volunteer professors,' the administration removed the rest of the non-students in January. The student controlled WCBN board voted in their January meeting to have these staffers return.
The University Regents hold the station's license, due to an FCC rule which says it must be held by an incorporated body. The University also provides $13,000 a year and pays building and broadcasting costs, to which the station adds an additional $15,000 through fundraising.
In April, the student board of the station voted to reinstate Daley, but he resigned a month later because of administration pressure and threats to remove funding. The administration also suggested that a professional general manager be hired who would be more responsive to University administrators. "It is the greatest source of irony that the University of Michigan wishes to disembowel this radio station on the basis of our insensitivity to diversity," said WCBN news staffer Des Preston. Relating how the University responded to Dean Peter Steiner, who made racist remarks last year about not wanting a school where minorities flock to in great numbers, like Wayne State University in Detroit, Preston said, "They do nothing to Steiner, but they want to do something to WCBN." Preston added, "Cracking down on WCBN will be a public relations fraud to attempt to demonstrate to the state of Michigan and the minority student community that it cares about racism."
Getting rid of non-students at WCBN is sure to be on the agenda this fall. You can't expel them, and you can't ruin their academic careers.
The reality is that WCBN is being punished by administrators for what it does best, providing diverse radio to the community. Diversity doesn't fit into the agenda at the University. "It's not about pumping money into engineering, into producing weapons that are going to kill people, but to be able to say 'yes, ' we want to produce quality students who know about the world, about where the world is, where people are and what they think," said Nigerian-born Gabriel Ubwu, who graduated in 1982 with an engineering degree and now does the African Rythyms show on WCBN. "We have been diversified for at least 15 years when the word diversity wasn't even in the dictionary of the University."
"We are providing an alternative listening experience to Ann Arbor. We're one of the last mainstays of creativity in this town," said long-standing DJ Arwulf Arwulf. "The University has 'redirected' itself. They were using that word a lot in the early 80's. If you redirect the University, you redirect Ann Arbor, and everybody knows that. They 're a lot more concerned about business eds, and pre-meds, and corporate lawyers. That's their gig now, and the arts can take a flying fuck."