Live from the underground A history of college radio

Jewell (Dollars for Dixie), an associate professor of history at Fitchburg State University, chronicles the rise, fall, and legacy of college radio in this sprawling and richly detailed account. Describing how college radio stations navigated America's changing cultural landscape in the second half of the 20th century, Jewell explains that while college radio's noncommercial status "offered useful cover for DJs seeking the weird, the unheard, or underappreciated," other proponents of the format, including some station managers, "wanted to cultivate a professional sound that emulated commercial rock radio, except with a few new cuts thrown in for the youngsters." These contrasting views shaped a patchwork network of stations that engaged with such issues as feminism, antinuclear politics, and civil rights, often in left-leaning ways (for example, broadcasting public service announcements for abortion clinics or playing "anti-Reagan hardcore punk" music). While financial pressures and the internet hastened college radio's decline in the new millennium, Jewell attributes "the real fracture" to a culture of higher education that promoted less artistic exploration, and a shift toward mainstream radio trends. Jewell offers both an animated homage to college radio as a microcosm of American culture and reassurance for readers that the medium isn't dead. It's a fascinating deep dive. (Dec.)

A history of America's left-of-the-dial college radio stations. If you know the Replacements' paean, you'll know that college radio gave many alternative acts their start. History professor Jewell, a veteran DJ with a penchant for the "indie-rock scene" of her college years, notes that by the 1980s, the network of college-affiliated, mostly student-run radio stations numbered about 1,200. Soon after, as an entity, it "had earned a national identity that evoked generational dissatisfaction with pop culture even as it remained deeply conversant with it." Some college administrators didn't quite know what to do with the broadcasters and their "none of the hits, all the time" ethos, while others smelled money in the much-coveted FM bands that the stations controlled. (So it is, Jewell observes, that most college stations now stream over the internet, their FM airwaves having been sold off long ago.) The author, who considers 1978 to be the ground-zero year when "college radio" emerged as a genre, tells some wonderfully obscure tales--such as UCLA's attempt to buy then-faltering KROQ, which turned around and presented playlists that were heavily influenced by what was happening on college radio, thus becoming a station without pedigree until emerging as "a launchpad to commercial success for underground artists in the 1980s." Another anecdote from Jewell's deeply researched files concerns Sean Hannity, who was noxious even back when he was a student DJ on UC Santa Barbara's station--and who, fired for his calumnies, recruited the ACLU to defend him, an affiliation he probably wouldn't want to admit today. College radio continues to be "a site of struggle over the sound of America," Jewell writes, even if it may be a shadow of its golden-age self. A pleasure for fans of alt-rock and its dissemination in the face of corporate and academic resistance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.