You Hear it Here First
When you tune your radio to 88.9 FM, you might hear hip-hop, or reggae, or folk, or show tunes, maybe even some Raffi. WERS is not a typical college radio station. Live, in-station performances, professional-quality breaks and a far-reaching signal make Emerson College radio stand out among college stations around the country and even among commercial stations in Boston. Student-run but professionally managed, WERS is known by listeners in Boston as the place to hear new sounds and music that won’t be played anywhere else.
The station has been on air since 1949 and has gone through a number of formats, including an all-classical format. Today, WERS’ varied programming reaches a full 25 miles out into New England, hitting five states. With a 4,000 watt signal and a transmitter on top of One Financial Center, WERS has power in the Boston market that is not the norm for college radio. “You’ll never find, in a market as large as Boston, another station with a signal as big as ours being run by undergrads,” comments Dave Murphy, WERS General Manager. “Granted, there are the WBURs [Boston University] of the world that are NPR affiliates and have huge signals, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an undergrad working there.”
The undergrads at Emerson get to work in professional-level surroundings, though. The station itself is located in the basement of 180 Tremont St., where WERS’ offices and production rooms take up two floors. The reception area, with its polka-dot carpet and mod design, feels like a design or architectural firm. It is obvious that much time and money were spent making the place look as slick as the station sounds. But the postal service bins of records and CDs let you know that this is a place of music. Downstairs are multiple student offices and the WERS newsroom. Upstairs is where the action happens. There are numerous rooms of mixing and recording equipment in addition to the booth itself. One room is used solely for the in-station live performances that are a regular feature of WERS programming, an average of 11 times a week.
Students who work at WERS gain practical knowledge that can supplement their coursework. Older staff members teach new ones the ropes; there is no formal instruction. Emerson is a school for the arts and communication that includes broadcast media. Many but not all of the WERS student staff are Audio/Radio majors and plan on going into radio as a career. “I’ve learned a lot more about radio by doing stuff around the station than from class work,” says Matt O’Dette, a senior and Program Director of WERS.
The station has four full-time professional employees, the General Manager (GM), Assistant to the GM and two engineers. “We oversee the operation of the station in terms of bills and paperwork. But the actual day-to-day operation of the station is by students,” says Murphy. This work also includes keeping track of WERS membership because, as a non-commercial station, WERS gets its funding from member donations in addition to the college.
The staff also brings its experience to help better programming at WERS. “While I’m sitting at my desk doing paperwork, I listen to the station. When DJs come down after a show, they’ll stop in to talk to me. My main job is to support the students and guide them through the process of doing a great show,” says Rolando Carrera, Asst. to the GM. Murphy and Carerra meet twice weekly with student managers of WERS to discuss the station’s operation. “When issues come up, I act as a sounding board. I’ll question the students, asking, ‘How would this be handled at a commercial station?’,” says Murphy.
There are nearly 90 students involved in the operation of WERS. O’Dette’s counterpart, the Music Director, is senior Beth Baudoiun. Aside from their management positions, there are student DJs, producers, live mixers and music directors and coordinators for each show. DJs pick the playlist for their shows. Producers make sure they run smoothly. Live mixers control the sound for in-studio performances. And each show’s music director picks the library of music for his show.
It’s a big operation, especially with 17 shows that each have their own personality. Weekdays, the schedule remains the same but switches DJs every day. Early mornings are home to the Coffeehouse, a haven for acoustic folk and rock. The rest of each weekday features world music, jazz, reggae, rock and hip-hop. Weekends are home to even more varied programming, ranging from kids’ music on “The Playground” to metal and hardcore on “Nasty Habits.”
To say that students spend a lot of time at the station would be an understatement. O’Dette and Baudouin spend upwards of 30 hours a week at WERS; both of them got their positions in large part through just spending time at the station and learning as much as they could. Students come in to work the reception desk, check out new CDs that have come in for their program and just to hang out.
O’Dette began his climb up the WERS hierarchy his freshman year. “First semester, I worked at the reception desk and hung around the station a lot,” he says. But O’Dette was lucky. The show that he had listened to from home, “Nasty Habits,” was actually off the air that semester because the students who had started it graduated. “I was in the right place at the right time. They asked me if I wanted to DJ, so I was,” he says. O’Dette loves the experience of getting to meet artists that he has listened to when they come to the station for live performances. “It’s great. The next time they come around, they’ll remember us if we go to a concert,” he adds.
It’s that love of music and radio that brings students to WERS. “We’re here because we want to contribute something to the station,” says Karen Ruiz, a junior who is the music director for “Gyroscope,” WERS’ world music program. “Being from a different culture [Mexico], I thought that I could add to the music collection, or bring in music to play by people I’ve met at home,” she says. Some students like O’Dette and Matt Morrell, coordinator for “Jazz Oasis,” even came to Emerson College because of the quality of WERS programs he listened to from home in Randolph, Mass. “I listened to the station in high school, and I knew that radio is what I want to do for a living. If I could get paid to listen to great music, what could be better?” asks Morrell.
Students love WERS in particular because its non-commercial status allows them to play nearly anything they want. Large commercial stations have rigid, market-determined playlists. Since WERS is member and college-supported, they have no such obligations. Often, a student will hear a new CD or a new artist in concert and bring their name to Baudouin as someone they would like to play. “We trust each other’s tastes and opinions. I defer to the music directors of specific shows because they know their music better than I do. I can appreciate what is quality, but I can’t dissect it like they can,” Baudouin says.
Baudouin got an early start in the music business. At about age 15 she started helping local bands that she loved. “I promoted musicians I met that became my friends. Well, they had to become my friends because I saw them so much,” she says. Unlike O’Dette, Baudoiun did not go to Emerson with the intention of working at WERS, but an existing love of music brought her to the station. “A friend of mine was music director, and he offered me a show [to DJ]. I thought, ‘Great! I can bring in those CDs that I’ve been already trying to get out there.’” She was a DJ for “The Coffeehouse,” then its music director and now runs every show as the station’s music director. “I entered into it with the best intentions of promoting artists I love, and it’s gotten me to this great place,” she says.
Baudouin has what is debatably the coolest job at WERS. As music director she is in charge of everything that gets played on the air. She receives about 200 CDs every week from labels as big as Atlantic and Virgin and as small as the local Big Wheel imprint. It’s her job to decide what gets passed on and what doesn’t. But the more important part of Baudouin’s job is to make sure that the WERS name is well-known in the music business. “I make a trip down to New York twice a month to keep up WERS’ reputation as a big-name station in the Boston market,” she explains. “I meet executives from record companies, and I’m learning how to communicate within the music industry. There’s a certain kind of talk.” All the sweet-talking and flesh-pressing is the experience Baudouin needs for her intended job of working in the marketing department of a major or indie label. “I’ll be someone at a major label who’s not jaded,” she says.
It’s these connections that the music director forges that allow WERS to be at the head of getting new music on the air waves. “We receive new music before anyone else, even before commercial stations, because the industry realizes that we’re a major player in the Boston market,” Baudouin explains. WERS sticks by the artists it plays and has a list of musicians they call “WERS Alumni” who were played there before any other station thought to pick them up. The list includes such big names as Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler and Vertical Horizon. They started small, but WERS played them. And still today, turn on WERS nearly any time during the day, and you will hear the words “local music.” The station is devoted to playing and promoting local musicians who their student workers find and love. “It’s great to be here when the entire station gets excited about an album and everyone is buzzing,” gushes Baudouin.