So, you’re gonna be listening next to “Tryna Change It” by Wilmo. But before we play Wilmo, a little brief announcement. Our annual fundraiser, Phoneathon, is happening right now. This is the only time in the year that we ask our listeners for support to keep our station on air and commercial-free. Please make a contribution now by going to wnur.org and clicking donate. All contributions make a difference. Stay tuned, and please, again, head to wnur.org to keep us on the air.
That was Jon Myers, one of the General Managers at the independent, commercial-free, and Northwestern student-run radio station WNUR, on air at the start of a weeknight show. Known as DJ Physh, he and fellow General Manager Madeleine Coyle, known as DJ Dr. Boss, were playing a mostly indie rock set to raise money for Phoneathon, the station’s annual fundraiser.
“We’re the only club on campus that’s not funded by Student Government,” said Myers. “All of our funding comes from 11 days of trying to get people to give us money for the year. So it’s a high octane 11 days.”
Myers and Coyle will continue laboring for the rest of the year. Shortly after Phoneathon concludes, WNUR will transition to celebrate its 75th anniversary on FM radio. The station began with a 100-watt transmitter in the spring of 1950, producing a signal that barely covered all of Evanston and transformed to eventually create programming that nearly 3 million people in the Chicagoland area can now tune in to.
“They’re not all listening to it, obviously,” joked Myers. “But if some small fraction is sitting out here, and I get to send them music, and someone hears that, that’s really cool. I like that. Someone you might never speak to or never see is listening to their car radio and is hearing St. Paul and The Broken Bones and thinking these guys rock and then listening to them, and then that artist is gonna turn around and get one more listener.”
Coyle concurred. The two have been working together since their sophomore years when they needed to pair up to co-host a show, and their reasons for staying on the station are mostly similar.
“Music is such a powerful tool to connect with people. And I think that’s a really fun way to give back, especially while I’m on the Northwestern campus and able to engage in that way, especially when you get people listening — knowing that me sitting in here for two and a half hours, people actually listened, other than my parents.”
WNUR has evolved with musical trends since its inception, developing from a more traditional program that tried to emulate commercial radio to “Chicago’s Sound Experiment,” a moniker similar to more prototypical college radio stations. WNUR, however, is not ordinary. It is nationally award-winning, and its vast alumni base is a testament to its longevity and success. The station has been, to use words often attributed to musicians rather than radio stations, phenomenally prolific.
“I think part of it is still having turntables,” said Coyle. “That’s one small thing where a lot of community DJs still use them. And some of the college radios in the area don’t have that. There’s one CD player. You don’t have any turntables anymore. Overall, college radio is evolving, just using Spotify to play things. And we have tens of thousands of different records – even from the beginning.”
WNUR is neither stuck in the past nor too immersed in the future to forget its rich history. 75 years of music history reside in WNUR’s Louis Hall studios. Coyle and Myers are part of 75 more.
You are listening to WNUR 89.3 FM and HD1, Evanston, Chicago. A lovely reminder, our annual fundraiser, Phoneathon, is happening right now. This is the only time in the year that we ask our listeners to support to keep our station on air and commercial-free. Please make a contribution now by going to wnur.org and clicking donate. All contributions make a difference. Thank you so much, and stay tuned.
“And we’re back.”
Coyle finished the read and returned to discussing her and Myers’ WNUR journeys.
“We were co-DJs on accident. And now, here we are, still on. They just matched us together. It was a forced proximity situation. Still doing it now as General Managers.”
“It was a little bit awkward at first,” said Myers, “and then we talked about baseball.”
“It was the first one,” added Coyle, “because then you asked me to go to White Sox-Philly.”
“We end up going to that. [The White Sox] were terrible. They were still bad.”
“And then we went to another game the next day, eight hours later, exactly.”
“That was the bonding thing. It was baseball during the breaks between music, yapping about the Cubs and the Phillies. We [the Phillies] went to the National League Championship Series that year. I flew to Arizona for that,” said Myers.
“I remember you texting me, asking me to be a Medill representative. You called me.”
“I was trying to figure out if I could scale my way into getting into the dugout and interviewing them if I was a Medill student. It did not work, but I did end up right behind the dugout. So that was kind of cool.
“Total tangent here, nothing to do with radio.”
Just like the coconut that had been resting unnoticed on top of some technical equipment for four years.
You are listening to WNUR 89.3 FM and HD1, and it’s in Chicago. I’m DJ Dr. Boss, and I am here joined by the wonderful, the magnificent…
You only did two. Usually, it’s three.
Oh, I’m sorry.
It’s DJ Physh, P H Y S H, we actually, did I tell you about how we christened somebody with a new DJ name yesterday?
No, what is it?
So we had one of the jazz DJs doing an impromptu set with me, and he usually just goes by his first name when he’s doing jazz, but he has decided, I guess going with the fish theme with mine, that he is now Mr. Lobster Man From Mars. So that’s his DJ name. But anyway, we haven’t been on together in two weeks! So, how have your last two weeks been? Anything exciting to report?
Umm, not really. My life is actually quite boring at the moment, unfortunately. But I guess here’s something. I’m embarking on a European adventure in two weeks. I guess that’s exciting.
EuroTrip or Chevy Chase [National Lampoon’s] European Vacation?
You know, Hungary, Denmark, England. All the spots.
You’re gonna go find new bands and come back and play them on the radio.
I mean, when I was abroad, I found an Australian guy, but I learned about him in Berlin, and he was playing with a German guy.
I have yet to find any new music traveling. I’m not going anywhere particularly exciting for spring break but to the old people land of Florida, so maybe I’ll find the next Jimmy Buffet. Who knows?
You never know.
Anyway, next is Get the Word Down by Phil Cook & the Fall Dogs. But first, Maddie, would you like to tell all the listeners out there what is happening right now?
Yes, if you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it 1,000 times. Our annual fundraiser, Phoneathon, is happening right now. This is the only time in the year that we ask our listeners for support to keep our station on air and commercial-free. Please make a contribution by going to wnur.org and clicking donate. Contributions do actually make a difference, no matter how big or how small. Thank you so much, and stay tuned.
“We have a very random process,” said Coyle about their setlists. “One show’s theme was every single baseball team that was in the [National League Division Series]. It was all songs that had the words Atlanta, Philadelphia, Arizona, or [Los Angeles]. So those were our ultra-specific baseball-specific songs.”
Earlier in the week, Myers played a two-hour set only using songs that had the word radio. He intended it to be like subconscious conditioning for Phoneathon.
“I let them figure it out. At the end, I said, ‘These were all songs with the word radio in them. Hope you enjoyed. There’s a lot of radio, but, hey, support the radio.’ Something like that. There was some dumb segue into it.”
The General Managers have the luxury to sporadically joke around when broadcasting a show due to their experience, but there are often obstacles. Coyle could rattle off a list rapid-fire.
“We have a very large set of DJs, which always brings its own interesting challenges,” she said. “You get a combined combination of students and older members of the community who have been around the station for a lot longer and have very specific ideas of what they think the station should be. Then, also, you obviously have various levels of equipment that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. [There are] The Stacks – hundreds, if not probably thousands, tens of thousands, of CDs. We try our best to make sure they get played. Some do, some don’t. It’s kind of the combination of everything you have going on.”
Coyle and Myers handle these challenges. The DJs played songs for someone going through a rough time on Valentine’s Day whose friend had called in a request, and they let a WNUR DJ from years ago currently working full-time in Hawaii into the studio to reminisce. (He had sent over the coconut.)
“He was walking through the stacks,” explained Myers, “and he was like, ‘God, this hasn’t changed. I remember this so much when I was, like, 20, and this is so cool.’ We’ve got a ton of alums going back to 1950 who would come back and say, ‘Oh, this is still here.’”
Among other stories of its abundant history, the station covered and communicated with colleges protesting across the country in 1970 after the National Guard killed four Kent State University students protesting the invasion of Cambodia in the Vietnam War. There are audiotapes available of important WNUR broadcasts filled with information as deep as The Stacks.
“[We’re] continuing to diversify what we’re putting on the air, within music and [other] stuff as well,” said Coyle. “We make sure that we’re constantly innovating and constantly trying to push the bounds of what college radio is supposed to be, constantly trying out new things, constantly innovating.”
They have planned a 1930s-style radio drama, coincidentally set at a college radio station. Coyle spoke of more new shows; Myers talked about bringing in bands for interviews. The station is, indeed, still here.
You are listening to WNUR 89.3 FM and HD1, Evanston, Chicago. The current time is almost seven o’clock. We’re three minutes short right now, but we wanted to break into our music to remind you that Phoneathon, our annual fundraiser, is happening right now. This is the only time in the year that we ask our listeners for support to keep our station on air and commercial-free. Every contribution makes a difference. It doesn’t matter to us if it’s five cents, five dollars, or, heck, even five thousand dollars. But anyway, it means a whole heck of a lot to us. So, in the meantime, stay tuned, and again, head to wnur.org to keep us on the air. That last song you heard was Alexa! by The Cool Greenhouse, and this next song is called Call Me, and it is by St. Paul and The Broken Bones.
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