With bittersweet emotions, after 12 years of DJing/programming, I recently left Brown Student and Community Radio, aka BSR Live.
The BSR that I joined in 2010 was a freeform radio force to be reckoned with. We had a full 7-day schedule with a truly diverse collection of shows: K-pop, film music, experimental, an Atheism show, psychedelic folk, new classical, live electronic mix shows, a show about local Providence music, punk..the list goes on.
While the diversity of programming was top notch, what really made those first several years of my BSR experience so amazing was a true community vibe: the ability of the students to work alongside their community member peers to accomplish real, significant change in the station.
Unfortunately, as the years passed by, this synergy slowly eroded away with the hand of a few consecutive student leadership teams, to the point where there are now just a small handful of students responsible for every aspect of the station.
This is unhealthy for the radio station on multiple levels.
Community members often bring years of radio experience, as well as professional experience such as web development, project management, and so on. They also carry a large amount of institutional knowledge and help continue to pass that down through the generations of 4 year students who pass by.
I valued the collaborative nature of my earlier years at BSR, and seeing how successful the model was, I couldn’t help but become frustrated when the more recent student leadership teams decided to silo all of work to themselves. Which, due to the lack of knowledge and experience of the students, lead to a shit product that I didn’t care to have my name associated with anymore.
On top of that, there’s been a trend towards more popular music in the programming and livestream, which we used to avoid in the spirit of producing shows that with ‘music for the curious listener’.
There were numerous other reasons why it was clear my time at BSR was over, but the reduction in student/community collaboration and the trend towards popular music were definitely high on the list.