FOley room day 2 WOBC ORAL HISTORY

on the day that America fell to its knees after strutting around for a century without saying thank you or please and the shock was subsonic and the smoke was deafening between the setup and the punchline cause we were all on time for work that day we all boarded that plane for to fly and while the fires were raging we all climbed up on the railing then we all held hands and jumped into the sky and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast and every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed and the exodus of town by foot so heavy alright are we good? well um yeah so many things okay where is the notes of notes notes why does that sound like hold on can you hold for a bit here and you're in the right key for what so funny it's a random song right now i don't know if it doesn't matter but i couldn't not acknowledge that i'm sorry so funny um that's like my favorite game to play what's our song um all right do you want to just like get into it and just see what happens yeah let's do it if i speak from here what is the barely showing up barely showing up oh yeah it's not great at all we have to be way closer um i can just go turn me oh i still have to be where i'm supposed to be it's worth doing i think hold on stop you're good um um movement of your people oh yeah okay yeah we just have to speak very loudly okay and enunciate clearly you can do that oh yeah okay oh yeah this is a lot i think this is like about the level that it was yesterday yeah we can also normalize it yeah that's fine we can normalize the audio crazy yeah it'll be okay um um it'll all be like the same volume yeah the hard is just annoying and then it takes forever okay for the last 40 years you can hear this man's voice throughout northeast ohio i don't get it i don't know sing a song there have a cigar from abby road to oh hold on i'm playing the wrong audio 10 a.m to noon this man's voice right wait can we try it again what if we just had a radio show i don't know you can hear this guy's radio show yeah okay for the last 40 years you can hear this guy's radio show throughout northeast ohio welcome back to another episode of radio that listens welcome back to another episode of radio that listens where we use radio as an opportunity to present oh that's not what that word is i'm sorry okay welcome back to another episode of radio that listens where we use radio as an opportunity to be present and break free of curatorial sound you the listener are encouraged to listen to this program aloud and take it in with the world around you as always i'm ilan cajano and i'm zoe brush and this is radio that listens this episode focuses on wabc fm 91.5 overland college and community radio we get a little from the campus of overland college and overland ohio this is w o b c we're really excited to explore the complex history of overland college and community radio spanning 75 years yeah crazy the radio station uh has served the overland college and community oh hold on it's very clear i'm reading it when i speak like that yeah crazy the overland college and community has been served since 1950 uh both am and fm it doesn't make sense to say like that i'm sorry you can be served by it's not uh uh not a restaurant the radio station has served the overland college and community since 1950 moving from am to fm continuing expanding ever since a small inception in a dorm uh it's moved like five times there are a handful of station managers throughout the year yeah one of the historical figures of this radio tom thomas um who was class of 1969 put it well in his autobiographical personal blog website in a world where college students are locked in their dorms every night to protect their innocence in a world where in a world where college students are locked in their dorms every night to protect their innocence in a world where coeds are allowed visitors of the opposite sex for only two hours a week and then only if the door remains ajar three feet remain on the floor in a world without computers and without cell phones where music lovers resort to morse code to flash their requests a group of young scientists with names like edison and take over an abandoned garage behind an old gabled house there they conduct experiments that will change the world experiments that will help bring men and women together these experiments are called radio tom thomas was obviously super passionate about radio about wobc this is a bit of an dramatization we we think you know i don't think wobc solved sexism on this campus or anything of that nature but obviously it was pretty important so we want to talk more about that yeah he was so like strangely aroused by radio um but we should probably make wbc so special let's get back to this man from earlier uh our visit to the station one saturday afternoon we walked with this man whose dj name is uh charlie as in cosmic charlie to his apartment south of campus where's that sub from 88 88 we asked cosmic what kept him at the station for 40 years i don't know i just like radio is the coolest thing ever and i just wanted to do it i'll never be able to completely put my finger on the pulse of it but it's just i think it's an artistic community and it's a community where there are so many different like variations of interest that you can have in the one big subject of music that it allows for so many people that have these needs that was a clip from our interview with ish huel a former station manager my first year in oakland kind of explains why tom thomas is so i will say funky and into radio like any other artist yeah but also shows radio is very easy to build this this intimate relationship with and get sucked into which explains why it remains inconsistent throughout time yeah so we've been looking at the original wobc oral history ourselves that ish mentioned um which is a booklet by ted jest who is class of 69 and it transcribes a station reunion with 14 of the 41 station managers that wobc has had thus far and it's a great record of what happened yeah not to forget a good example of why people have stuck with it and why the station has meant so much throughout the years yeah let's talk about those early days let's do that in 1949 roger w brock roger w brocker wrote a proposal to the college for a new station founding kocn which was a jerry-rigged network telewire with mini transmitters let's have let's have a lot explain that uh yeah basically they they just took a bunch of telephone wire they had around and these mini transmitter boxes that they basically built and attached to one by one dorms can only broadcast about 100 feet but the first one they put up was in the overland inn what is now the overland inn bob chamberlain roger's roommate freshman year recalled all the the time they put in freshman year how much it meant to them he said i don't think any of us flunked out but we came awfully close i remember after about six months i wrote my parents and said dear mom and dad i know that you had high ambitions for my academic standing at overland but i found this wonderful extracurricular activity and i would like to devote my time to it would you be satisfied with something like a c-ish average and then he said many of us were spending 80 to 100 hours a week in those early days which is wild that is a wild time commitment yeah more than a full-time job you're not getting paid and you're a student yeah it's hard yeah they originally set up to broadcast using those janky boxes connected with telephone wire as this proof of concept for a more legitimate station so they could only be heard within the overland men's building calling it wlnb and of course all their programming was inside the womb yeah the station gained a lot of traction this time um and with help from administration they set up kocn 590 am in 1950 at 32 east college street which is where the overland hotel is now if you're familiar with the town of overland yeah then uh came 52 or 53 and the station changed his name to wobc to remain compliant with the new uh station call laws only but they're only broadcasting about 12 15 hours uh of programming each week when they moved to the gray cables garage which is now where mud library is yeah and this is when students started to get really involved this was a very fast growing extracurricular activity and don burr the station manager from 1954 to 55 discussed the move to the gray gables garage in the oral history saying probably our greatest challenge came when they decided to tear down our facilities that a new overland inn could be constructed there was a serious question whether the radio station could even continue in its existence i remember going to the assistant to the president i believe her name was louise wood and pleading the case for money so that we could eventually move to the garage behind the gray gables dormitory it was a tremendous challenge for us just to be able to stay alive and continue broadcasting this comment really rings true or has a particular residence right now as wobc is yet again in the midst of a uncertain time with a new move with a new renovation of wilder and we're currently in a temporary space in our station but we'll talk about that a little bit more later on yeah i'm just like they have or we have struggles now they were having a lot of struggles getting the am broadcasting to work consistently because they got their start yeah bob chamberlain said in the oral history quote we were very chagrined one night about 12 30 when we received a call from kentucky saying we're hearing you loud and clear i believe that we also received a call from puerto rico now you can't possibly imagine the panic that we experienced shut everything down quick we're being heard in puerto rico everybody scurried around scared to death that the red lights were going to begin to flash and people were going to come after us so for those who are familiar the fcc only allows the station to broadcast in a given range and you have to apply for that range yeah so this is very against the rules very far out of range oh yeah yeah but nonetheless the station kept growing and they applied to the fcc to add an fm broadcast in 1961 the station manager at the time stan robinson remembered in the oral history shopping for a new transmitter the fun the arduous task of putting it up but then the reality that it was eaten alive by uh the sulfur dioxide coming off the heating plant it was placed right next to it whoops yeah um but they survived they moved forward um they successfully got a am and fm simulcast running in the gray gables garage uh and fred mootner remembered in the oral history fred mootner recalls with the fun of renting out fm radios to other students to expand the listener base yeah fred mootner recalls the fun of renting out fm radios to get more students involved and expand their listener base we should do that now right yeah um but nonetheless so next move incoming do you want to tell us about that uh station is currently in wilder hall in the middle of campus on overland college and the move was to be made in 1963 but much like a similar situation today models of construction was being held up so it took until the winter term at the start of 1964 and all the students involved who were here over the the month of january went put all their time in the station to get it up and running they did all the wiring on the third floor of wilder hall and the station went on to flourish there in wilder they were running 24 7 broadcasting they were doing basically as much as they could um making leaflets to promote shows um using uh can you say this part i don't know what this is where are we sorry the morays um yeah it's like two we've got a reservation sorry chill on me bro whoops sorry it's the it's the more i felt in the station i just like i don't know for some reason i can't do this part i don't know you're good also like that's not our fault no that's not my problem um okay oh we know maybe i can say this i just had an idea what like gray cable listen to it wait which gray cable uh unplugged behind the speaker please and thank you okay low-key we're killing it this time i feel like it's going so much already got a hang of things for sure that's good we sound more natural wow is it working just that it lit up and that looks sick yeah yeah we can hear ourselves that's exciting kind of there's some crazy gain on the microphone oh you can record with this that's what i found so weird oh you can record with this that's what i found so weird we should have like a little blooper moment at the end where we just have like wow this is fancy do you want to hear yourself kind of i do oh my god okay oh whoa that's really static damn well this is making me think that we should totally check this audio from yeah i hope it doesn't sound like this okay the historical figures of this radio station you singing yeah what is going on hey what are you trying to do find your voice oh in the window oh yeah um which is a booklet you sound good it's okay no clearly it works okay we are saying it was static i got you i got you the station i can hear the static okay never mind i'm gonna try to say this part so that you can say the next part okay okay the station flourished in wilder hall they were running 24 7 broadcasting and they were doing pretty much as much as they could they were making leaflets to promote shows doing news broadcasting and some of you might be familiar with the overland digest which is currently a daily campus news email but this started originally as a nightly news broadcast on wbc in 1963 yeah they used to use this uh upi teletype system that actually strangely came to them through this brand deal with coca-cola and the shell gasoline company whoa um wait what's upi i don't know i have no idea what you guys are oh i'm sorry i was trying to do like a cool explaining segue it's basically just this whatever we'll cut up it's basically this it's basically a printer system that they got news information on that they could then broadcast oh neat um yeah sometimes it was clean and organized there's a lot of memory in the oral history about coming out all garbled and maybe not even real it's clearly a skill to being able to read the teletype and broadcast news especially at this time gotcha uh but fast forwarding to the fast forwarding to the 70s uh they were really getting into it john heckin lively well i had to say that john heckin lively uh such a good last name it's a great last name uh recall how serious they were all taking it uh sorry that's very clear i'm picking up reading you're good you know what i mean whatever ridiculous name yeah nonetheless he took it real serious uh they're all uh remembering in this point in oral history um how important it was to them to uphold radio professionalism um makes you think back to chamberlain and the time commitment that they made wabc for themselves uh people were really getting involved they were putting out these fully produced and written radio dramas uh with their own overland radio workshop uh they even had live foley wow um yeah they're making the sound in studio to sort of enhance the the show experience that must have been fun yeah uh barbara ward grub remembers the the challenges of getting the payphone sounds and putting in the quarters but only needing the sound with the quarters going in so they're begging the operator to give them all their money back but of course they're not getting their money back yeah uh they also uh uh did crazier things larry kutner talks about uh making an embalming machine the sounds of an embalming machine he said we wound up using a lined up electric razor inside a metal trash can putting it back and forth in front of the microphone and to my mind that's what an must sound like wow yeah uh the station was really booming um the structure of it grew they had these things called work groups uh which are still a part of the station today um although much smaller there were like 40 50 people went to a work group uh and they met every week and they poured all this time into producing at least one radio show every week in whatever given genre or news or whatever topic they had been uh signing themselves on for um yeah it became this really unique and free-form place and colloquially in an effort to keep it so uh unique and free-form some students tried to remove the pop department and next that 40 50 people uh but a lot of staying and wac programming has been no less diverse um you know they expanded their their types of broadcasting they started using this this system called marty uh to get more campus involvement and doing remote in the field broadcasts with all this involvement came some shenanigans as well ish uh yeah remember the time they used morse code to request songs yeah so bill wait recall you're good bill wait recalled in the oral history that there was a problem in the women's dorm which is where or currently dascom you're good you're good bill wait recalled that the women living in dascom had a really strict house mom and they all wanted to use the telephone to call into the radio station to make requests but they weren't they weren't allowed to so they started a morse code light system between wilder and and dascom to make requests and then sort of unrelated but also just kind of a crazy story my bad no you're good sort of unrelated but also a crazy story yeah in uh 1957 frank perath uh was approached by the news director mike codell uh that they had some incredible news which was of course they had made contact with the russian satellite sputnik uh they're using a shortwave sputnik uh they're using a shortwave receiver uh sat in the dorm and every 90 minutes they'd get it speaking um naturally they would they took all their information on time and location and he wrote a letter to moscow uh after transit time maybe about a year later too received it wait that's not how you should say that maybe about a year later he received a letter back with cyrillic letters and russian stamps uh inside there's his duplicate from the russian academy of space science thanking him for his contribution to glorious soviet soviet space technology it took a year of course because the fbi had intercepted it information coming out of this liberal arts college in the midwest heading over to russia wow yeah that's wild got the oh yeah that was john pace who is another figure that's been with the station for over 40 years now and he helped us fill in a lot of the gaps between when the oral history took place um and the present let's talk about hard down the planet for sure we oh we should look to the fourth of july real quick yeah it's a good clip oh too far when does that ever happen i need to go far enough two i love that it's a good word like he's talking about anyways um back in the summer of 1988 my good buddy john katko who's an overland graduate we're the same age um um we were approached by a mutual friend who said hey i uh applied for a show um yeah it's always fun to hear about it's always fun to hear about people who got into radio and how they got into radio especially when it happened well before i was alive uh he also has this really beautiful story about him and his dad and his relationship to radio if i can business you are the business pulling up at night and sleeping in the bed listening to the radio it's absolutely lovely as the station approaches its 75th anniversary the future is uncertain um as we mentioned before we're currently in a temporary space and we do have 24 7 broadcasting again but we didn't for a while because of covid um we're sort of lacking in facilities at the moment and we don't have a lot of institutional memory since the student board turns over so frequently but the importance of wobc to the college and the community and its impact is still really clear yeah uh maybe we just go right from there into the ish club yeah that was good yeah um this is always the hard part um because i i feel like we should add more points to this before i would try this one again um well wc doesn't really do that much else black party okay as members of wbc ourselves we've seen firsthand and experienced this importance an amazing rewarding connection between the students of the college the people of the community all brought together by this thing called radio uh the station does lovely events like the cover band showcase uh that really brings students together to see some of their friends play music but by people they things like cover band showcase uh which does a lot to bring students together to hear their friends play music by the people that they love uh this year is also the return of the wbc block party which for the first time in a long time really saw the community come out and interact with the college in a way that it hasn't been um and it's really important for both the health of the station and the health of overland the town and the college uh that this community connection is strong and that we're really using wbc for all it's worth i should put in a clip of cosmic talking about the block party right now because he was so excited yeah you can yeah i'm gonna make a note yeah i can go back and listen for that that's a good point okay sweet that's kind of fun yeah works out there i like that um don pays 53 hold on it's so long dude oh my god also i just i can't believe we interviewed him for like a full hour i know the community members by and large do it because they love it you know it it we should insert the clip of ish saying like people yeah only involved because you know what i mean there's a good time to like have like a mash-up and have like everyone say something yeah yeah because ish has something good about the community members loving it i feel like it's like low-key verbatim looks like they only do it because they enjoy it yeah um um so so so i can't find this okay the ish clip yeah should we just move forward yeah i can just do it later sorry i get distracted okay oh pi suggestions yeah 46 40 so good things i i also think that the college has not not valued the asset that wobc can be wbc you heard scott medwood talk although the ohio accent is so weird um it's funny how i noticed that i think there's some merit to what he's saying here uh there was a wbc sticker campaign about how wbc is your oyster the radio is your oyster uh i think it's true uh we see a decline of fm radio in modern times obc wbc is one of the last college radios to not just do an online stream and actually have a radio tower uh i think that's something that is so important for the appeal of the station and it's just another opportunity that we can't let go by the wayside yeah we have something here that's really special to a lot of people and it has been for a long time and i think we need to keep that going and we're really excited about the future and how we can continue to rethink radio and and figure out how it can continue to be relevant in the 21st century and beyond and we hope that wbc will still be going in another 75 years and even longer than that so it's one yeah it's about an hour it's about 40 minutes cut three minutes out that's not bad well cut way more than three minutes out because we had so many times that we were right okay cut like 10 minutes out cut like 10 minutes out and then put like 10 minutes in yeah exactly i think maybe even more than 10 minutes give or take yeah i think so too which i think is perfect yeah exactly like okay maybe it's gonna be 34 minutes you know who's knocking on that i feel like 35 and under is like gorgeous short and sweet i feel like between 25 and 35 we're killing it yeah i would take a water break and then do the whole thing again really i mean if you don't want it we don't have to we can do it we can do something tomorrow lucy if we don't do that it's okay i would just go edit this and i'm not upset about starting that up to you do you want to do it again not really like yeah yeah i mean i don't want to do it again but i think if we if we think that we should like we can do it again i don't know as part of it it should be told like well he i feel like that was a really good take i don't think we fucking killed it i think that we still should do it tomorrow oh for sure it's gonna get better like this is what finn was saying yeah we're seeing that right now yeah but my only thing is like i don't know i think what makes sense in terms of editing it is going through and finding all of the like the good clips the good clips and just or at least like all the takes of each thing and then we're deciding what's the good clips within that um but i just like don't know how many good clips you need you know what i mean right so i think this isn't actually probably enough we'll go find that lady tell her to knock herself out in here are you sure sorry i didn't mean to be like i don't really want to be there so i i'm just like unsure yeah would it be a good use of our time maybe to listen to it together yeah we could or not like we don't have to i think we can it's just like or i can just listen to it separately and send you the time stamps for everything that i think is good right and also when i was my my if i go do this right now i can put them all together so that you have less to listen to so then i can get what i'm saying is if i give you all the takes and i'll just pull the like two minutes of talking in between then you think you're good you know what i mean you trim down yeah i think it'll be easier way happier of an experience than listening through right except i will say there were some parts where we weren't like thinking we were recording but we actually said some good stuff right those i think are are things we gotta keep in there yeah i'm happy because i want i like want that i'm pretty natural like way better than when we're reading yeah and it's also kind of funny i feel like there's some stuff that we can use where it's clear that we're like oh shit we just fucked up but it's still like good yeah and it like makes it more oh my god i think lucky we should just go with this okay get this stuff off the computer okay yeah you