Baldwin Wallace’s own radio station WBWC-88.3, The STING, received national recognition at the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) Awards of Excellence in Radio/TV/Webcasting, where five students were chosen as finalists.
WBWC first signed on in 1958 as the first totally student run radio station in the United States. Fifty-seven years later, members of the current radio station staff got to represent BW and attend the 75th Annual International IBS College Radio/TV/Webcast Conference held March 6–8 in New York City.
The conference hosted over 150 speakers, panels, and over 1,000 attendees. BW hosted a panel about stunt progrmming which included Professor Todd Richards as a speaker. Stunt programming the act of performing little stunts to get new listeners and keep new listeners interested. The panels consisted of a variety of topics.
“The conference had different panels on news, keeping staff interested, innovative programming, and many more. These (panels) were hosted by broadcasting professionals,” WBWC General Manager, Liz Miller said.
The conference ended with an award ceremony which honors the top students. This was the first year WBWC entered the awards, and attended the conference. With over 4,000 submissions from 73 of the members of IBS the top 7-10% of the nominees were considered finalists; both finalists and winners got trophies.
One of the categories for which WBWC was a finalist was “Best Promo Series,” which garnered nominations for General Manager, Liz Miller; Program Director, Bruce Stacey; Music Director, Michael Widman; and WBWC Director of Broadcasting Joe Tarantowski (on the faculty at BW).
Other categories of nomination included “Best Liner” for Program Director Bruce Stacey and Sting deejay, Alex Nixon, and “Best Underwriting Campaign” for former Marketing and Promotions board member, Sam Trapp, recognizing his Cedar Point Halloweekends campaign.
“Being there for the first time gave WBWC an opportunity to see how they stack up against several other college radio stations, and how they can continue to excel to win those trophies next year,” Miller said.
People who attended the conference found it to be helpful in terms of learning new skills to apply to the station along with sparking new interest among the campus and the surrounding areas to which the station broadcasts including Cuyahoga and Lorain counties.
“Being around all those schools and seeing what they do compared with what we do was really helpful,” Miller explained.
The station participants hope that going to IBS will provide an opportunity for students— broadcasting majors and non-majors alike—to get involved in with WBWC. In recent years, the station has seen a decrease in interest on the student involvement end.
“It is really cool to go to a job interview and say you had this opportunity and experience. We are completely student run, and we have had this great legacy for 50 years. We want to continue that on,” Miller said.
To get involved with the radio station, Miller suggests attending the station’s weekly meetings in the Quarry Room of the Union where a student can see which department of the radio station they may be interested in. In addition, the radio production course required to become an on-air deejay is offered to both majors and non-majors every semester.
“The skills you learn at WBWC can impact you in whatever field you choose to go into,” Miller said.