Campus radio pulls all nighter to celebrate 64th birthday

WDCE 90.1FM, the University of Richmond’s radio station, celebrated its 64th birthday with an all-night show over the weekend. 

On Saturday, Nov. 8, into Sunday, Nov. 9, DJs played sets for 12 hours —  9 p.m. to 9 a.m. The sounds of Alvin and the Chipmunks to Bob Marley to Mac DeMarco filled the airwaves, each segment and each DJ having their own style and sound.

The show was a celebration of the station’s accomplishments and changes since it began in 1960.

“We feel old for sure, and yet, not old enough,” junior and assistant music director Maddox Lowe said.

As a music director, Lowe helps with WDCE’s weekly recaps and reviews of new releases.

“Anywhere in this library, if you pull out any CD, it's gonna have a little blurb written by a music director probably 30-35 years ago, with their recommended tracks and maybe a little joke on there, and I think that’s the coolest thing about being in radio,” he said.

The WDCE’s community of DJs is one of the station’s strongest aspects.

Senior and general manager Avery Piantendosi said being involved in WDCE is the highlight of her college experience.

“I think this all-nighter show is such a good opportunity to showcase our camaraderie,” she said. “I’ve learned not only so much about music but about myself and being more comfortable and doing on-campus events that I would never go to before.” 

WDCE has branched out beyond its DJ shows. They now play music at on-campus events like the Panhellenic Lip Sync contest, the Secondhand Fashion Show and potentially, an A Capella Riff Off in the future, according to Piantendosi.

Apart from those events, WDCE is building a community among its DJs. This year, the station has over 90 of them. 

Senior and promotions director Sarah Wirth talked about DJs, both new and old, getting to socialize more through the big-little pairings at the station.

“We’re not trying to go for that frat sorority type vibe, but since we’ve grown so much, we were like, ‘We need to get people to get to know each other a little bit’ and like mingle and socialize,” she said.

Junior and program director Dakota Helgren spoke about the program’s evolution during her time as a DJ and in leadership and how whenever you listen to WDCE, there can be a different genre playing at any point because of the DJs’ music tastes. 

“My year, there weren’t many student DJs, ” she said. “But the past two years we’ve grown so much and now there’s like 95 student DJs, not including the ones that are abroad right now, and over 100 DJs total, so we’ve really, really grown over the past few years, which we’re very excited about.”

Wirth echoed Helgren’s sentiments and discussed the role community DJs play in WDCE. 

“We’re like kinda freaking out a little bit because our shows used to be like two hours long, and we had community members who had shows that were like four hours, and they’ve had it like that for decades,” Wirth said. “And now they’re so upset because we keep cutting their shows down…this is a student-run operation, so we have to have a bunch of our students.”

The all-nighter show was the manifestation of every DJ's dedication to WDCE.

Lowe’s all-nighter show segment was with his roommates, Helgren and Piantendosi, and they played mostly reggae music.

“My radio show name, 'Feeling Good,' I actually inherited from my dad,” Lowe said. “Probably 35 years ago, he had a show at a public community station called Feeling Good, and he would play jazz and reggae, so I try to incorporate that into mine.”

Throughout his all-nighter segment, Lowe and his co-hosts encouraged listeners to call in with song suggestions. 

“I think that radio, especially college radio in particular, is about community, and it's also just like not being a little bit afraid of being goofy or out there,” he said. 

Lowe spoke about the variety of shows on WDCE, which were represented by the songs on the air this weekend.

“I think that there’s this kind of idea that with college radio you need to have specific genres on specific days and I think that kinda goes against college radio, like it’s supposed to be a medley, it’s supposed to be chaotic, it's supposed to be a representation of who actually is on campus and that itself is a representation of everybody.”

Contact City and State editor Christina Taylor at christina.taylor@richmond.edu