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Feb. 27th, 2014 08:32 amI wanted to mention the WFMU is having its pledge drive marathon this week. Not because I'm suggesting that any of you should pledge. I'm mentioning it because it seems as good a time as any to point out that WFMU exists and is totally amazing.
WFMU was once the college radio station of the now-defunct Uppsala College in North Jersey. When the school went defunct, WFMU's management rallied its listeners to get enough money to buy the broadcast license and transmitter and go independent. Since then, it's been a remarkably freeform independent radio station, a place for truly unique voices, musical and otherwise, to get heard.
Its weekday morning show is JM in the AM, 6AM to 9AM with three hours of Orthodox Jewish music, divrei Torah, community news, political conversation, and other amusements. Then the station transitions to its other core audience with an astonishingly eclectic range of DJs spinning rock, folk, punk, metal, jazz, electronica, reggae, hip hop, and many more. There's a weekly program of 1910s wax records. The founder of UbuWeb has a program where he plays unclassifiable sound-poems. On Wednesdays they have my favorite talk show of any flavor, Seven Second Delay, which is an amazingly daring deconstruction of a shock jock stunt radio show.
And it doesn't matter if you don't live in New Jersey, it's all up streaming 24/7 at http://www.wfmu.org . Or if you miss a show that you want, they have digital archives spanning more than a decade, because they were among the pioneers of this whole internet radio shebang.
There are many exceptional things about WFMU that I could highlight, but the one I want to mention this week is that they manage to show up NPR and PBS every year this time of year by having a pledge drive that is actually entertaining. WFMU's pledge drive does not attempt to shame me, it does not attempt to lecture me about morality, and it does not demand that I accept less entertaining radio for two weeks as the price of running the station. As a result, I pledge to WFMU, and I don't pledge to NPR or PBS.
As I said, my intent is not to convince you to pledge. My intent is that you check out the station this year, so that maybe next year when pledge drive rolls around you'll understand why I pledge.
WFMU was once the college radio station of the now-defunct Uppsala College in North Jersey. When the school went defunct, WFMU's management rallied its listeners to get enough money to buy the broadcast license and transmitter and go independent. Since then, it's been a remarkably freeform independent radio station, a place for truly unique voices, musical and otherwise, to get heard.
Its weekday morning show is JM in the AM, 6AM to 9AM with three hours of Orthodox Jewish music, divrei Torah, community news, political conversation, and other amusements. Then the station transitions to its other core audience with an astonishingly eclectic range of DJs spinning rock, folk, punk, metal, jazz, electronica, reggae, hip hop, and many more. There's a weekly program of 1910s wax records. The founder of UbuWeb has a program where he plays unclassifiable sound-poems. On Wednesdays they have my favorite talk show of any flavor, Seven Second Delay, which is an amazingly daring deconstruction of a shock jock stunt radio show.
And it doesn't matter if you don't live in New Jersey, it's all up streaming 24/7 at http://www.wfmu.org . Or if you miss a show that you want, they have digital archives spanning more than a decade, because they were among the pioneers of this whole internet radio shebang.
There are many exceptional things about WFMU that I could highlight, but the one I want to mention this week is that they manage to show up NPR and PBS every year this time of year by having a pledge drive that is actually entertaining. WFMU's pledge drive does not attempt to shame me, it does not attempt to lecture me about morality, and it does not demand that I accept less entertaining radio for two weeks as the price of running the station. As a result, I pledge to WFMU, and I don't pledge to NPR or PBS.
As I said, my intent is not to convince you to pledge. My intent is that you check out the station this year, so that maybe next year when pledge drive rolls around you'll understand why I pledge.
