I was recently tipped off to the fact that WESU had finalized their new schedule and begun webcasting by a fellow alum and former DJ. Having followed the station’s saga intermittently since I graduated 5 years ago (but more closely in the last few months as the NPR controversy came to a head), I was interested to hear what it now sounded like, especially since the webcast is the long-awaited realization of half-baked plans we had in the late ’90s.
So I tuned in one afternoon.
A talk show host was bloviating away on what I immediately assumed was an NPR show. But I was wrong. After a minute or so I realized the host was actually some homegrown pseudo-pundit with visions of being the next Jeff Gannon (complete with pseudonym), shouting over a caller while spewing predictable AM hate radio talking points. Apparently this WESU-produced program is on the air every weekday, in addition to the nine new daily hours of NPR programming.
I had expected WESU to sound like NPR, which would have been dispiriting enough. But when did it start sounding like Fox News, promoting the “fair-and-balanced” masquerade that now shamefully substitutes for any real search for truth in journalism across the broadcast and print media? If the host is a student, what does such programming say about the state of critical thinking at the University? More importantly, when did WESU stop playing music during daylight hours?
Is “more talk, less rock!” really the kids’ credo these days?
This former oasis of independence and free-form musical oddness, the likes of which are dwindling furiously across the nation, a station that by any logical explanation shouldn’t even exist in today’s media landscape… has ceased to exist. Whether this point was reached recently with the hostile takeover of programming or years ago when the station was untimely ripped from the basement of Clark Hall (to Administration promises of an idyllic home in a new campus center), I don’t know enough to say. At this point, does it matter?
So, to President Bennet and the current leadership of the station, one request:
If Hunter S. Thompson can blow his head off at age 67, WESU should be allowed to do so at age 66.
Please, hire a lawyer and change the call letters.
Cremate the old station’s remains and shoot its ashes out of the Douglas Cannon.
Because whatever you’re broadcasting on 88.1 FM these days, it’s not WESU.
Charles Monaco
ex-WESU Music Director
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