Interview with a SUNY Geneseo Radio Host
Photo Courtesy of Nora Sugrue
89.3 WGSU is SUNY Geneseo’s radio station. Many students come together to manage the station, whether through running a radio show, handling production, participating in music selection, or reporting on sports or local news. The Geneseo website describes the station as, “the Greater Rochester region’s first FCC-authorized college radio station – WGSU serves the Genesee Valley, including the SUNY Geneseo campus and surrounding Livingston County communities, as a noncommercial educational station. WGSU broadcasts and streams, 24/7, a commercial-free, current-based alt-pop format.”
At the radio station, I host a show with Nora Sugrue.. We work together to run the radio show, “The Letter Lounge.” Each week, we pick a different letter of the alphabet, choose songs of a similar genre, and start with that letter to play on the show.
Because the station is authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), there are certain rules we must follow on the station. I asked Nora what rules members of the station must follow when running a radio show. She said, “You have to play songs that have been purchased and you have downloaded access to. You can’t play the same artist more than a certain amount of times, and you can’t play the same artist back to back. You can’t have songs with swears, and if there is any cursing you have to take it out before it goes on air. So you can either bleep it in editing or just turn down the volume when the swear happens.”
Nora makes a script every week listing the songs we are playing and the order we are playing them in. She also figures out how long the intro and outro of each song is so there are seamless transitions between the songs. When I asked her about the process of picking songs to play, she responded, “All the songs have to be purchased in order for us to play them, so we can only use the Apple music account my dad has and the music he’s been collecting over the years for all of our songs. Usually we’ll just have an idea of a song or two to start out with and then we’ll go through and sort the music alphabetically, and then we’ll go through every song in that letter, put it in a playlist, and then edit it down.” The process of picking out music usually takes us anywhere from half an hour to an hour.
We both add music that we like and, in that way, discover new music. Our music tastes are very different, with our show’s usually being a mix of Nora’s mellow folk music, and my grunge, alternative rock music. Nora reports this as being one of her favorite parts of working on the show. She explained, “I like to listen to music and I get to hear new songs from Alexis. And it’s just cool. It’s cool to have a show and get to share the songs I love and get to talk about it.”
Nora took on the responsibility of making the scripts for the show every week. While they are extremely helpful in keeping us organized during the show, she reports that the process of making the scripts is very time consuming. When asked what the hardest part about working on the show is, she says, “It takes a lot of time in my week to figure out the intros and outros of the songs, finalize the script templates and writing in all of the things to make sure the scripts are formatted in a good way, and to find a time to print the scripts out. You also have to do the weekly promotions on Instagram. Plus, I like to add a little extra stuff to the promotional posts if there’s ever an extra thing we’re doing that week. So, it’s just a decent time commitment. Some weeks, I have the time and I get to enjoy it, and some weeks it feels like a task. But it really just depends.” An example of an “extra” thing that we have done on our show is only playing love songs that start with “L” the week of Valentine’s day, and only playing Christmas songs that start with “C” the week before winter break. Nora designed different promotional posters for those weeks.
Nora also makes promotional posters and runs “the.letter.lounge” Instagram account. I asked her how long it normally takes her to make the promotional material for the show. She said, “I go through Pinterest usually for inspiration. One poster usually takes me one to two hours. The weekly posters usually take me 90 minutes each.”
Nora encourages people to join the WGSU team and start their own shows. When asked what she would say to people who may want to join the station, she responded, “You should, it’s fun! I love it. I don’t think a lot of people know about it unfortunately. I think they should definitely play it in the dining halls, and I think it’s kind of stinky that they don’t. But I think it can help you get over a different kind of stage fright in a controlled environment. Talking to other people, getting comfortable in front of a microphone. Like if you get successful one day, you might have to do an interview, so might as well get some experience talking in front of a mic.”
If you want to support The Letter Lounge, tune into 89.3 on the radio every Friday from 7-8 p.m. and follow @the.letter.lounge on Instagram. Be sure to also follow @wgsu893 on Instagram to support other student run radio shows!