Voices of Fairfield spoke out over the summer months in response to the University’s decision to allow WNPR, a radio station in Hartford, Conn., to air programs on WVOF, turning the station into a National Public Radio affiliate.
The merger which took effect on Aug. 1 has caused a frenzy among student radio enthusiasts and lovers of WVOF a.k.a. the ‘Voice of Fairfield’ because the decision has resulted in the dropping of student and community programming, which as seen as another blow to the ever-disappearing presence of college radio.
The fight only became aggravated when Mark Gadja, a former student radio host at WVOF, wrote a scorching letter of complaint to the Connecticut Post (June 24, 2008).
‘A partnership between the University and Connecticut Public Broadcasting has been forced upon WVOF 88.5 and the students involved with it,’ said Gajda.
Gajda continued his list of grievances with Fairfield’s decision by saying that ‘little care was given to the opinions of those who ran this supposedly student-run radio station,’ he said.
Station manager Dan Grazynski ’10 said most members of the WVOF student staff protested at first hearing the possibility of the partnership.
‘Even though we saw the benefits of the decision, the most important thing to us is airtime, which we would be losing a lot of with the decision,’ Grazynski said in a July 2008 interview
Other staffers have said the University is giving up a student learning experience in exchange for greater publicity with the off-campus community.
The announcement of the merger was made by Jerry Franklin, president and CEO of Connecticut Public Broadcasting, and University President Fr. Jeffrey von Arx on June 19th. Under the agreement, WVOF will broadcast the WNPR program schedule every weekday morning from 5 to 10 a.m. and every weekday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m., as well as weekend mornings from 5 a.m. to noon.
In recent years, WVOF has been trying to have a more prominent voice on campus and in the community with its FM station and live Web streams on its Web site, www.wvof.org. With this decision, the airing of NPR shows is said to increase the numbers of listeners to the station.
The workings of the decision began in April, when Rama Sudhakar, vice president of marketing and communication, held a meeting with students explaining the possible partnership, and how it may be a way to increase funds and listeners.
‘WNPR is a quality organization. Anytime someone like that approaches us with potential partnership, we take their ideas into great consideration,’ she said in a July 2008 interview.
Students, though, like Gajda have said they were angered that the merge of the stations was only made known to the students who worked for WVOF’s central staff last April, four months after Sudhakar and others at Fairfield University started conversations with Connecticut Public Broadcasting.
‘The fact that the University and Connecticut Public Broadcasting had been in talks for several months over this matter but only decided to inform the students a month beforethe semester ended reeked of suspicion,’ he said.
WVOF’s airtime is now split into thirds – one going to NPR, one for community members and one for students.
Dan’s brother Dave Grazynski, who graduated from Fairfield in 2004 and works as the WVOF advisor, explained that even though WVOF also had trouble finding enough students to serve as disc jockeys and relied on off-campus community members for some airtime shifts, he was still shocked to hear that when the station heard that WNPR would be taking their air-time.
‘Because WVOF is so important to everyone who works here, the decision was definitely a wake-up call,’ said Dave.
However, Dave is hoping to have a ‘fruitful relationship’ with NPR.
‘After a lot of hard work long nights and learning equipment that we had absolutely no experience with, the first WNPR broadcast went off without any major glitches.”
Dave wants the change to show to students that people are in fact listening to the station, which he feels WVOF students sometimes forget.
‘We’ve always been the club under the stairs in the BCC,’ he said. ‘Now that this deal has been made, students and other community members may say, ‘Hey. I wonder what they are doing over there.’ We’re hoping the decision may renew interest, that is.
He added, ‘We all have some big ideas for the year with both the student’s ideas and initiatives and some new ideas on ways to bridge the student experience at VOF and WNPR.’
Although he admits to being angered when he first heard about the school’s decision, Dan Grazynski is also willing to see both the benefits and losses of the decision.
‘We can be mad all we want, but we have to look forward and not behind.’
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