(This 1996 article in Stomp and Stammer is now saved for posterity.)

"We want the airwaves, baby, if rock is gonna stay alive..."
- Joey Ramone

Quality radio has always been in short supply, as any trip up and down the dial will tell you.

Still, there's usually at least a little something out there for everyone, but maybe not for long. Recent developments have placed two cutting-edge stations in jeopardy, and if it can happen to them, it can happen anywhere. It may be time to put adventurous programming on the endangered species list altogether.

Columbia, South Carolina, a city deep in the heart of the Bible Belt, has never had a huge music scene, but with the recent Hootie phenomenon and promising up-and-comers like Danielle Howle and the New Jack Rubies, things were finally looking up. What Columbia has had for years, though, is one of the most progressive and highly respected radio stations in the country, WUSC.

Run by the students of The University of South Carolina, WUSC has, until recently, had a long tradition of wide-open programming which pushed all sorts of boundaries and exposed listeners to an enormous amount of music that would otherwise never see the light of day in a place like Columbia. But ultimately, this is still a part of the country that gets bitterly divided over issues like whether or not to keep flying the Confederate flag, and most of what went on at WUSC usually fell on the deaf ears of a student populace more interested in rifle racks than rock-n-roll. That is, until recently, when the station began broadcasting music by homo-core outfits such as Pansy Division, among other potentially inflammatory fare, and university administrators reportedly got fearful of potentially offending USC benefactors during a fundraising drive.

The trouble started when USC's director of student media, an administrator by the name of Chris Carroll, had been surreptitiously monitoring the station and recording examples of what he deemed unacceptable music. Another of his hand-picked targets was a controversial Friday afternoon talk show, "Trauma Talk," on which host Ken Traum would discuss any and all things sexual, at times even persuading his female guests to fake orgasms.

As an adviser, it would seem that Carroll's first move would have been to bring the alleged "problems" to the staff's attention so that they might be "corrected." But Carroll had a grander scheme in mind, and besides, this was his second-go-round in the game of Shutting Down College Radio. (Acting in a strikingly similar fashion at Tulane University in 1991, he succeeded in pulling the plug on the Crescent City's WTUL, whose rabble-rousing DJs reportedly made WUSC's look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.)

But Carroll wanted to force his agenda, envisioning a station "less caustic" and "more palatable" to the "average listener" (read, those who own a copy of Cracked Rear View.) As far back as December 1994 - a full year before the recent coup d'etat -  Carroll was fishing for puppet candidates who would run for station manager and put his agenda in place. At a student media social he remarked to a graduate student staffer, who had come to the party directly from his day job dressed in coat and tie, "You don't look like one of those freaks. You enjoy that music they play up there?"

By April 1995, Carroll had found his candidate for station manager, assembled a detailed campaign to overhaul WUSC's format and, for the first time in years, placed the issue of what college radio should sound like on the campus agenda. WUSC's staff was stirred into action by Carroll's machinations, and they launched an equally adept effort to re-elect station manager Trey Lofton to a second term. Truth, diversity and adventurousness - WUSC's hallmarks for more than two decades - had prevailed. Or so it seemed.

His coup attempt failed, Carroll began plotting to take down the station's regime via other tactics. By December 1995, he had dug up enough unfounded dirt from a couple of disgruntled DJs (who had been dismissed by the WUSC executive board for repeatedly playing Garth Brooks after several warnings) and concocted a dire-straits scenario that had the FCC "flagging" WUSC's license for possible revocation (staffers later learned the station was never in any danger with the FCC). An exam-week-weary Lofton opted not to fight on Carroll's level. After being called into Carroll's office and summarily threatened with a packet of "allegations," Lofton resigned under duress on Dec. 13.

With most of the WUSC staff heading home for the holidays, Carroll shut down the transmitter and changed the locks on the station doors. WUSC went silent for 45 days. When classes resumed in January, there was no WUSC. At the Board of Student Media's regular meeting, Carroll managed to sell his hatched-up tale of FCC violations to the panel's students and faculty. The board moved to hand executive control of the station over to Carroll, who immediately appointed a print media graduate student with zero radio experience as the new WUSC station manager. At a called meeting two days later, Carroll informed several members of the station's elected executive board they were no longer associated with WUSC; the others, he fired in absentia.

Enter the new, kinder, gentler WUSC staffers - motivated only by the desire to hear their own voices on the radio, and content to play the same Top 40 pop and country schmaltz that the commercial stations in Columbia air. After falling silent for 45 days, WUSC made its debut with a new staff that was, with few exceptions, as knowledgeable about today's music scene as your grandparents. Music that veered from the mainstream was sandwiched between refrains of "Free Bird" and other hits. The impressive collection of station IDs, with everyone from Evel Kneivel to William S. Burroughs to President Clinton, was scrapped in favor of a slick FM voice intoning, "You're listening to WUSC-FM, Columbia," with cheesy space sounds swooshing in the background.

The result? WUSC has been dropped as a reporter from every industry trade magazine, lost service from scores of record companies, and instances of dead air on the station have reportedly increased tenfold. More importantly, a promising music scene has been dealt a potentially fatal blow. And you thought college football was ugly!

Click for more information on the ongoing struggle to return control of WUSC to the proper hands.

Meanwhile, up in East Orange, NJ, the nation's oldest free form radio station, WFMU, is struggling with a less sinister but no less threatening set of circumstances.

WFMU has been housed for decades on the campus of the 103 year old Upsala College. A year ago the college was entering bankruptcy proceedings, so the enterprising staff of the radio station held fund-raiser after fund-raiser and eventually came up with the cash to buy the FCC licence from the college. The effort was successful, but now, as the bankruptcy proceedings continue, WFMU finds itself living in a building that is up for auction, along with the rest of the Upsala campus, which currently stands vacant.

The options to choose from are eviction, or purchasing a building in what is quickly becoming a no-man's-land. WFMU would prefer to relocate closer to the core of their listenership, namely to Jersey City or Hoboken.

Time to rev up that fund-raising machine! Whether you live within the broadcast area of WFMU or not, you can help. And you should - because the future of rock, more than you know, rests in the hands of stations like this one. Make a cash donation, or better yet, shop from the ultra cool WFMU Catalog of Curiosities, thankfully available on-line at www.wfmu.org.