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WFMU

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WFMU
Broadcast areaNew York City
Hudson Valley, NY
Lower Catskills, NY
Western New Jersey
Eastern Pennsylvania
Frequency91.1 MHz
Programming
FormatFreeform
Ownership
OwnerAuricle Communications
History
First air date
1958
Technical information
ClassA
ERP1,250 watts
HAAT151 m
Links
WebcastListen Live
Websitewfmu.org

WFMU is a listener supported, noncommercial radio station in Jersey City, New Jersey, broadcasting at 91.1 MHz FM using a freeform radio format. It is currently the longest running freeform radio station in the United States. [1]

History

WFMU first went on the air in April, 1958, and was formerly affiliated with Upsala College, in East Orange, New Jersey. Shortly before the closing of Upsala College on May 31, 1995, WFMU purchased its license from Upsala, and is now fully independent. It relocated in August, 1998 to Jersey City, NJ, into a building which the station purchased with donations from listeners. WFMU's license is now owned by Auricle Communications, a nonprofit group made up of current and former WFMU staff members and listeners. WFMU has a relay station, WXHD, in Mount Hope, New York, broadcasting at 90.1 MHz FM in the Hudson Valley, NY, the Lower Catskills, NY, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.

Philosophy

WFMU has a stated commitment to "hype free", non-commercial freeform broadcasting. All programming is controlled by the individual DJ, and is not beholden to any type of station-wide playlist or rotation schedule.

Experimentation, spontaneity and humor are among the station's most frequently noted distinguishing traits.

Funding and Operations

WFMU refuses all corporate sponsorship and government funding ("on general principle"[2]), as well as any type of underwriting from private foundations and other educational or public institutions. The station's annual operating budget is approximately USD $1,000,000, and is fully funded by its listeners through an annual 14-day on-air fundraising marathon (WFMU is unusual in its philosophy that on-air fundraising drives only take place once a year, unlike most other public and listener supported stations which have multiple pledge drives throughout the year), as well as a Fall record fair and other events. All DJs are unpaid volunteers (except for the Monday-Friday morning DJ, Nachum Segal), a few of which have been with the station since the 70s and 80s.

Programming

WFMU's programming ranges from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to rock and roll, lots of "alternative" (although no DJ on the station would ever call it that), psychedelia, experimental, obscure 50s-60s blues, unpopular jazz, R&B, soul, reggae, hot-rod music, 78's, 8-tracks, twee, indie pop, schlock-a-billy, hip-hop, electronica, hand-cranked wax cylinders, punk rock, exotica, downtown art music, radio improvisation, cooking instructions, Old Noise, classic radio airchecks, found sound, comedy, call-in shows, anti-fascist lectures, off-kilter kids' music, interviews with obscure radio personalities, interviews with notable science-world luminaries, spoken word mish-mashes, Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtracks in languages other than English, Gospel and Country and western music. The station also hosts a "Listener Hour" every Saturday morning, where any WFMU listener can try their hand at DJ'ing live on the air. WFMU's Music and Program Director is Brian Turner.

Recognition and Cultural Influence

WFMU was named "Best Radio Station in the Country" by Rolling Stone magazine for four consecutive years (1991-1994), and has also been dubbed the best radio station in either NYC or the US by The Village Voice, New York Press, and CMJ, among others. The station also won three awards ("Best Specialty Programming", "Most Eclectic Programming", and "Music Director Most Likely To Never Sell Out") at the 2006 CMJ College Radio Awards.

A New York Times Magazine feature article called WFMU "a station whose name has become like a secret handshake among a certain tastemaking cognoscenti", and cites Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and playwright Eric Bogosian as avowed fans of the station.

Other notable fans and supporters of WFMU include Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum, screenwriter/director Ethan Coen, MAKE magazine editor-in-chief and Boing Boing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder, Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant, musician Suzanne Vega, artist Cindy Sherman, indie rock superstar Ted Leo, Sonic Youth guitarists Lee Ranaldo[3] and Thurston Moore, comic book artist and writer Evan Dorkin, The Cars vocalist/record producer Ric Ocasek and television talk-show host Conan O'Brien.

WFMU is credited for playing a large part in the early-90s resurgence of the Exotica and Lounge music phenomenon, via WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid and his role in the re-issue of the music of Esquivel. Chusid also popularized the acceptance of "outsider music" as a genuine musical genre, through his weekly (and now defunct) Incorrect Music show on WFMU. The discovery and popularization of "outsider" artists such as Jandek and The Langley Schools Music Project can be directly attributed to Chusid and his programming on WFMU.

The name of the indie-rock sub-genre now known as "Lo-Fi" music originated at WFMU in the 1980s, with DJ William Berger's weekly program, "Lo-Fi."

The Air America Radio show The Majority Report had its origins on WFMU in 2003, when Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder appeared as guests on The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling, and as a result of the appearance, were later approached by Air America Radio to host their own show on the fledgling "liberal" radio network.

Although WFMU has traditionally eschewed news-oriented programming, the station volunteered its airwaves in September, 2001 to become the temporary home in the New York area for Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! program (which was renamed Democracy Now! In Exile), after it was "banished" from WBAI and the Pacifica Radio Network during a highly controversial "coup" of WBAI's station management by Pacifica's national Board of Directors.

In a similar example of its support of community broadcasting, WFMU began voluntarily hosting the webcast of legendary New Orleans Jazz station, WWOZ, when its studio and transmitter were destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. WFMU also took online donations on behalf of WWOZ, raising over $70,000 towards the rebuilding of the station.

WFMU also received worldwide attention in May of 2001, when national and international media outlets covered DJ Glen Jones's successful attempt to break the Guinness World Record for longest consecutive radio broadcast, staying on the air a full 100 hours, 41 seconds.

Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was shown reading WFMU's (now defunct) Catalog of Curiosities, on the set during taping breaks of their famous 1993 appearance on MTV Unplugged[4].

An infamous 1990 telephone performance on WFMU by Daniel Johnston was the primary inspiration for filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig to create the documentary film, The Devil and Daniel Johnston. The film won the award for Best Documentary Director at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

The late Jeff Buckley made his radio debut on WFMU in late 1991 and returned numerous times before signing with Columbia Records and achieving international stardom.

In 2006, WFMU was awarded of a grant from the New York State Music Fund, a program created by the Office of the New York State Attorney General to make contemporary music of all genres more available and accessible to diverse audiences and within New York State. WFMU's grant included funds to create a podsafe online music library, to be called The Free Music Archive, which will be launched in late 2008. The Fund grew out of settlements with major recording companies investigated for violating state and federal laws prohibiting "pay for play" (payola). Grant winners were chosen on criteria that included, among other things, their record of broadening awareness of artists, genres or styles with limited access to commercial broadcast or other mass distribution vehicles.[5]

Notable WFMU DJs

The station's past and present on-air DJ lineup includes many notable people from the world of art, music and television, including:

It should be noted that while the station does air a DJ with the name "Mike Lupica", this is not the sportswriter of the same name.

One other WFMU DJ of particular note was Danny Fields, who hosted a nightly show on the station in 1968 and 1969. Fields was an A&R man and fixture in the New York rock and roll scene, managing and signing acts such as the MC5, The Stooges and The Ramones. During that period, WFMU was the first station to play the music of The Velvet Underground, The MC5 and The Stooges in the New York area.

Online Broadcasting and Blogging

Along with its traditional radio broadcast, WFMU is also broadcast live over the internet in a wide variety of streaming formats (including Ogg), and all programming is archived on the WFMU website in 128k MP3 format for two weeks, then permanently thereafter in RealAudio format.

In 2005, WFMU expanded its online broadcasting efforts by offering 15 hours a week of Internet-only live programming ("free of the FCC's incomprehensible language restrictions", explains WFMU Station Manager Ken Freedman), as well as an independent 24 hour-a-day webcast of Nachum Segal's Jewish Moments In The Morning program.

In January 2006, WFMU announced that it is making the station's live stream and archives available to cellular phones and other Mobile devices running the PocketPC or Palm operating system.

Podcasts of 23 WFMU shows (some exclusive to the podcast itself) are also available.

The official WFMU blog, WFMU's Beware of the Blog, was launched in 2004, and has become very popular even among non-WFMU listeners. Original content from the WFMU blog is regularly featured on the front pages of high-traffic pop-culture blogs such as Boing Boing and MetaFilter.

Trivia

  • WFMU was featured in a 2003 Macworld magazine article, describing the station's innovative use of a remote controlled iPod as a backup music source at one of its transmitter sites.[6]
  • References to WFMU frequently appear in the television series, Monk. The names of WFMU DJs Ken Freedman, Terre T and The Stork have been used for characters in several episodes of the show.[7]
See also: Media of New York City

References

  1. ^ "A Brief History of Freeform Radio", Lowest Common Denominator, Issue #21 (c. 1998)
  2. ^ Interview with WFMU Station Manager Ken Freedman, The Fifth Corner, WBAI 99.5 FM, NYC 3/15/90 (link to mp3 archive)
  3. ^ Lee Ranaldo on listening to WFMU, Feb 2000, Official website of Sonic Youth
  4. ^ YouTube clip of Nirvana Unplugged outtakes, around the 4:15 mark
  5. ^ Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. "$19 Million in Music Grants Awarded by Fund Created by 'Payola' Settlement."[1]
  6. ^ "iPod used as backup for FM radio station", Macworld magazine, May 7, 2003
  7. ^ Trivia for "Monk", IMDb
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