WFAL has been trying to gain more interest ever since it started out in a University residence hall room.
“There seems to be a lack of interest in anything on campus,” said Kelli Bowditch, a disc jockey and operations manager at WFAL.
WFAL is a student-run radio station working to better educate the campus about its organization after a downturn in the amount of student involvement.
Charles Hoy, the advisor for WFAL, hopes that the amount of student involvement will increase next year.
“It is just a matter of how the staff is prepared next year,” he said.
Many of the executive staff members will be graduating this year. The new staff members are going to step up and take over the open positions.
WFAL is mainly a modern rock station with a few specialty shows. Every evening, techno, punk and metal shows are featured on the station.
The station also sponsors concerts, runs promotional events and DJs parties. Unlike most stations, WFAL plays a lot of new music that normally does not receive any time on other stations.
“Our purpose is to give the audience something they can’t get anywhere else,”said Keith Butler, a disc jockey for the station.
All of the disc jockeys are encouraged to attend meetings to review all of the new music that is sent to the station by record companies. At the meetings, they choose which songs they want to add to the rotation at WFAL.
WFAL started in the early 1970s as a pirate radio station out of a University student’s dorm room. With the support of the University, it eventually moved to South Hall.
WFAL is currently located on the first floor in West Hall because South Hall became too outdated for the station. The station is on Channel 15 on and off campus and on the WFAL website at wfal.org.
Bowditch couldn’t stop herself from laughing when she talked about some of the station’s promotional ideas throughout the past years.
“We passed out Coke cans on campus to promote the station when the campus switched to Pepsi,” Bowditch said.
The cans were given by accident to officials on campus that didn’t find the idea very funny. Last year during Halloween, the station had students guess the amount of candy corn in a jar that was also filled with KY jelly and condoms.
With a little hard work and more promotions for the station next year, the WFAL staff is hoping to attract more students to get involved at the station.
