Collegiate Times

Walk past the red couch, through the poster-filled lobby walls, and into a hallway of CDs. Gracing one shelf devoted to the genre Americana are four CDs of Nanci Griffith and seven of David Grisman. One hundred and fourteen more CDs pack this shelf and 36 more shelves of CDs pack the hallway.

Somewhere in the Squires-based radio station lie the thousands of CDs and records that WUVT has accumulated because of 58 years worth of donations. If students aren?t too familiar with WUVTs? artists, that?s what the station?s here for.

?Our mission is to provide a variety of music that you can?t get anywhere else,? said Michelle Billman, business manager. ?We?re educational, we?re non-profit, we?re independent, student run, we?re here to help the community and help our students,? she said.

Now they need the community and students to help them. Radiothon, the station?s bi-annual fundraiser, is where they obtain most of their operating funding. The fundraiser, held every semester, is a weeklong series of themed shows on the 24-hour station. The goal this semester is to raise $9,070.

Funds for WUVT will go to several station needs, including licensing fees, music for their web stream and equipment maintenance. McKillican said the station hopes to purchase an HD transmitter in about three to five years to replace their current 22-year-old transmitter. With studio changes, the entire project would cost over $100,000, McKillican said. Billman said the station could also pursue less expensive options, including an analogue transmitter. WUVT hopes Radiothon gets its fill of donations. They raised over $8,000 last semester, and Billman said all contributions help.

?Even if we don?t reach that goal, we?re still getting a lot done,? Billman said. ?Anything is more than we have.? Shows on the station normally explore different music genres, such as Americana or jazz. For Radiothon, however, each segment will focus on a specific sub-genre.

DJ Jason McKillican, information systems director and assistant engineer, chose depression era jazz as the theme for his show called ?From the Black to the Red.? McKillican, a junior computer and electrical engineering major, does a jazz show every Friday from 5-7 p.m.

?I really like the jazz of the ?20s and ?30s, and so I figured to learn more about it, while also highlighting it because you don?t really hear much of it anymore, (I?d) do that for my Radiothon theme,? McKillican said. DJ Danny Fasold, music director and senior communication major, normally performs on Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in a segment called ?Day Art.? Fasold chose psychedelic music as his Radiothon theme. The show, called ?Radio as Seen through the Kaleidoscope,? features artists such as Ennio Morricone, a prolific film composer of hundreds of films, and Acid Mothers Temple, an active psychedelic band.

?I play some psychedelic stuff, sometimes throw an instrumental album on, close with new music stuff,? Fasold said. The station has other sources of funding, including the university and EMCVT (the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, the parent company of WUVT and the Collegiate Times). They also sell underwriting, where a company sponsors an hour of programming in exchange for their name being read off at the top or bottom of the hour.

However, McKillican estimated that Radiothon accounts for about 70 percent of their funding. Billman said the percentage varies each semester, but reiterated that the majority of funding comes from Radiothon. Radiothon tipped off at midnight on Monday and will last one week. Donations can be made by calling the studio at 540-231-9888 or by visiting the donation link at their website, www.wuvt.vt.edu.

WUVT broadcasts to Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech campus, Montgomery County, Christiansburg, Radford, Floyd, Giles, Salem, Pulaski and Wytheville. Billman stressed the importance of community members, in addition to students, taking part in donations.

?A lot of it comes from students, but a great deal of it comes from community members,? Billman said. Each day of the Radiothon, WUVT will host a live broadcast, or remote, from a campus or downtown location. Today they broadcast from the Drillfield, Thursday it will be at Dietrick, Friday at Crossroads and Saturday at Gillies on College Avenue. People who donate at these sites can spin a prize wheel and win various prizes, including t-shirts, bags and bumper stickers.