Staff Editorial: Student Radio Now!

For some time now there has been an organized effort to reestablish a student radio station on the UW campus. Students feel strongly about this -- in the recent ASUW elections, they overwhelmingly voted in support of adding a mandatory $3 fee that would fund such an endeavor onto the bottom line of our tuition statements. Almost every major university in the nation has student radio, and things just feel incomplete around here without one.

But, for all the efforts of spirited people like Alex Bolton, nothing has come into being. We are still living in a dark age of no student radio. The Radio Station Task Force has yet to receive funding from the ample Student Technology Fee (STF), and it has yet to receive space from the University to establish operations.

Individual members of the ASUW and Board of Directors will often tell you they support a radio station on campus, but collectively our student government has failed to take any action that would empower such an initiative with the momentum needed to succeed.

It has its reasons. The current proposal for an Internet-only radio station is economically viable, requiring only modest capital investment and sustained overhead. However, Internet radio has never been able to show its popularity, and such a station may end up constituting an unjustifiable drain on the STF -- who wants to pay for a radio station that people won't listen to, and how many of us listen to radio on the Internet?

A station with FM-broadcasting ability has a far greater potential to succeed, but would also require far more money to establish and maintain, money the STF just would not be willing to dole out.

The idea, therefore, has been to establish a radio station with Internet broadcastings only, and, if this proves successful, the station may one day look into an expansion onto the prestigious FM airwaves.

The Daily fully supports this. We support money from the STF going into such a promising student-run endeavor. If the best we can afford right now is an Internet-based station, then so be it. We can work hard to build the station into something that students utilize and enjoy.