Nick Spitzer: Putting Penn back into WXPN radio

As WXPN settles into luxurious new studios at the edge of campus and investors create a World Cafe club tie-in, there are two concerns about Penn's radio station that won't go away for many students, alumni and concerned administrators. First, there is the question of undergraduates regaining serious access to WXPN programming. Second is having a station whose programs better represent Penn's intellectual and cultural interests to the larger world. WXPN - acronym for "experimental Pennsylvania" - began as a student engineering project in the late 1940s. As the station grew, it became Penn's source of music, drama, news, community affairs and sports. WXPN long afforded students a chance to program a radio station reaching the Delaware Valley. At Penn, where the curriculum did not include journalism or broadcasting, WXPN, much like The Daily Pennsylvanian, provided invaluable hands-on experience. Among the station's many illustrious alumni: Broadway legend Hal Prince, award-winning correspondent Andrea Mitchell and jazz maven Michael Cuscuna (formerly Bonnie Raitt's producer and now head of influential Mosaic Records).

By 1971 -- after moving out of Houston Hall -- WXPN was outgrowing University academic-year funding, and the all-student staff first appealed successfully to a larger loyal regional audience for support. Cash in hand, WXPN became a full-time, year-round station revered for its heady, influential mix of classical, jazz, blues, folk, rock and programs featuring student and faculty specialties (baroque, bluegrass, Indian classical, Celtic), as well as local talk shows.

Sadly, due to sophomoric profanities on air later in the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission threatened to revoke the license. Thus began the turn-over to non-students. Today, student- and community-run stations that reach off campus are increasingly rare -- though Princeton, Columbia and Brown universities have well-regarded radio outlets. Best may be Fordham University's WFUV, which closely involves students in its diverse format and hires them later.

Today, WXPN retains a few venerable programs from earlier days -- the folksy Sleepy Hollow and The XPN Blues Show. It has continued Kids Corner, and produces World Cafe Live, a network show of singer-songwriters, as well as contemporary and classic pop musicians hosted estimably by my old WMMR colleague and friend David Dye. WXPN otherwise has adopted an "adult, album, alternative" format. While a few daily hours of World Cafe Live are great, the station as a whole is dominated by musical sameness. There is much more the station can do in terms of exposing wider audiences to history and cultures that shape American and world popular music. WXPN could also more faithfully reflect diverse cultural interests of the University community.

Few, if any, Penn grads are in the WXPN management or on air -- students play minor roles. No doubt the station has mass popularity in the region, and had much funding to develop its new space, but WXPN management is more interested in the music industry -- which also supports the station -- than the University community. Even if XPN programming is better than what is heard on fully commercial radio, that marketplace yardstick represents a low standard.

The bar should be higher for public radio at Penn, especially what with the Annenberg School (Annenberg does produce Justice Talking, a notable nationally heard public affairs program). For years, students have nursed along an ill-equipped, impoverished yet feisty on-campus AM station (formerly training ground for the FM station). Few students or faculty tune in to WXPN because there's little interest in wall-to-wall, 30- to 40-something singer-songwriter pop music.

Unlike WXPN, hired staff don't run the DP or play Penn sports. Many WXPN alumni muse that there will no longer be such alumni -- ironically, as station management seeks our money. University leaders should be asking if a station focusing on commercially correct artists is primarily how they want Penn represented on public airwaves.

One solution to these issues would return at least late-night programming to students. World Cafe Live could air once daily, and the remaining AAA format could be scaled back. Annenberg faculty, staff and students (majors in communications and public affairs) might produce audio documentaries from West Philly and beyond. University departments and museums could contribute arts and information content. The station could serve as platform for Penn's illustrious faculty, from Guthrie Ramsey to Michael Eric Dyson, to talk to Philadelphia and the wider world instead of always going elsewhere.

Or Penn could sell WXPN's license to its handlers who have been so proficient at ingratiating themselves to mass-audience, music industry and developer support. The World Cafe club and WXPN would still rent their prime Penn location -- like a Starbucks. But with several million dollars from the license sale, and a steady rental cash flow -- a new University station (WUPN?) could obtain its own license and create a new sound while retaining the few revered WXPN programs and Penn sports. It would restore the best voices of the University community to the airwaves. Fairness to students and value in broadening the reach of Penn's artistic and intellectual capital might just make it happen. Stay tuned.

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