Funk Babblings

Background: Sometime in the murky mists of time (the 70s and 80s), Ohio State University had a student-run radio station, WOSR. I don't know why it died, but when I got to OSU in the early 90s the only radio there was the staff-run classical/NPR station. At one point I was on the far periphery of a movement to get student-run and community-oriented radio back to OSU, but the best they managed was some internships at WCBE, the other (more community-oriented and musical, but also NPR-ish) public radio station in town. FCC rules and the crowded central Ohio radio spectrum prevented them from achieving their goals. Eventually a different group managed to get student-run "radio" on the campus cable system and then streaming Internet radio; after being called Underground.fm and KBUX, apparently it's now known as Ohio.fm.

Anyway, since I last paid much attention, broadcast radio have become somewhat less important as Internet radio and podcasts have become possible. But the FCC also finally changed their rules to allow low-power FM stations; this was a major goal of the early 90s group.

So today I learned about WCRS, a low-power community-oriented station being started by Simply Living, which is a local sustainability-oriented community group. Among other programming, WCRS will broadcast a local music podcast, which is how I found out about the station.

So if you're in Columbus, see if you can pick up WCRS on 102.1 or 98.3 FM. It looks like they're still in the early stages of building a schedule, so I don't know how interesting it'll be to listen to (or how far the signal goes), but it's worth keeping an eye on. It looks like they started small, with 11am-1pm Mon-Fri broadcasts, but the podcast is on at 6pm Wednesdays.