ETSU’s own on-campus radio station celebrated World College Radio Day on Oct. 4 and featured marathon radio content and local musicians.
College Radio Day was founded as an event and organization in 2010 by Rob Quicke. According to the College Radio website, College Radio Day was created to get college radio stations into the public eye and ears. While the founding non-profit provides graphics and sounds for college stations that want to use it, the programming and events are up to each participating station. Radio Alternative The Edge 89.5 HD4, ETSU’s on-campus substation of WETS, has celebrated College Radio Day for multiple years.
“World College Radio Day is a day where college radio stations around the world gather to celebrate the unique opportunities we have for independence and education in radio, and how we’ve always been on the cutting edge of music,” Station Manager Gregory Searles said.
Each year, The Edge celebrates this occasion with 24 hours of constant DJs and promotion all across campus. This year, however, the community was more involved than ever.
“This year we’re celebrating World College [Radio] Day by really involving the local and regional music acts,” Searles said. “Earlier this week we brought in three regional acts to perform live acoustic and electric sets in our studio to air throughout the day, and we did a special at 8 p.m. that night, where we aired almost the entire concerts from all three.”
The concerts were recorded entirely within Warf-Pickel Hall’s audio studio space directly next to the DJ booth and video of the event is planned to be released soon. Searles went on to outline his plan for the future of The Edge and College Radio Day.
“We are going to be pushing ourselves to involve ourselves more with the community in terms of music, so if you’re in a local band or a local artist and would want your stuff featured on The Edge, either as a special or possibly throughout our regular day, shoot us a message through Facebook.”
