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| WTUL Bounces Back WTUL 91.5 FM is a non-commercial radio station founded in 1959 at Tulane University, New Orleans. They are free-form, student-run, and feature a progressive style. Last fall WTUL signed off the airwaves due to Hurricane Katrina. General Manager Jeremy Kutner fills us in on how things are doing: Who operates the station? Jeremy: Students, alumni, faculty and administrators make up most of the station’s DJs and staff. There are a limited amount of non-affiliates as well. The only paid position is our professional engineer. What is your programming format? Free-form. We have mostly progressive show (i.e. stuff not played on commercial stations), and a handful of specialty shows, including Reggae, Hip Hop, Jazz, Classical, Blues, Children’s, Cheez (New Age), etc. Do you run and public affairs or news programming? We currently run a weekly local news segment in conjunction with Democracy Now! Is there ample community/campus support of thestation? There is strong community support and average campus support. How are you funded? Do you do on air fundraising or have on-air sponsors? We do both. And we get some money from Tulane. What happened leading up to the hurricane? We actually shut the station down before the hurricane hit. Since we are reliant on Tulane to stay open, as soon as Tulane shuts down, we must shut down. That means that even though there were DJs around in the aftermath, they were unable to move back into the station and resume broadcast, because Tulane was still closed. Eventually we moved the station to a different location temporarily, a local coffee shop, Rue de la Course. How much station or antenna damage was there? The only damage was to the building that we were housed in. We were on the second floor, which is very lucky because for many years we were in the University Center basement, which was devastated by the flood. This location was temporary until they renovated the UC. We plan to move back onto Tulane property, a satellite to campus called Tulane University Square (or Uptown Square). The antenna was not damaged. How long was WTUL off the air? WTUL was off air from August 27th until mid December. This was because we were unable to go back into the building where the studio is housed because of unknown structure stability and the fact that Tulane’s campus was closed. Eventually, Tulane’s administration helped us get back into the studio. We retrieved important equipment and relocated to the coffee shop. How did you manage the station remotely from Columbia University? I was in contact with DJs via email. This was particularly difficult because Tulane’s webmail had shut down and we didn’t have alternative email addresses for everyone. About a week before webmail came back up, we had organized a listserve with most of our staff’s emails. That was frustrating to say the least. I also had lots of help from a former General Manager and my media advisor. What is the Maxwell music library? How much damage did it sustain? Maxwell is Tulane’s music library. We have an informal relationship with the music library, not just because we are both musically oriented institutions, but because some of our current and former DJs work at the library. It was in the basement of Tulane’s regular library and was submerged in about 10ft of water, I believe. How did the webcasting through Stanford evolve? (Stanford offered webcasting while WTUL was down). Two DJs, a student and a faculty member, were in contact with the Electronic Music Department (CCRMA) at Stanford. The faculty member is a Stanford alum and was an electronic music professor here at Tulane, and the student is also in that department. Together they worked out the CCRMAcast, where DJs were able to upload prerecorded shows to the server. That is then both available online and streamed over the air when we must leave the coffee shop at night (usually we broadcast 24 hours, but since we are at a private establishment we are unable to do so). Are there enough DJ’s now to operate to full-schedule? There are plenty of DJs. Once we move to Uptown Square sometime in the next week or two, we will operate on a full 24-hour schedule and there will be plenty of DJs to take care of that. There were 70 requests so far to participate in our apprentice program for new DJs. Is there any foreseeable new location to relocate the station to on campus? Is the campus administration supportive in helping any way possible? The administration has been extremely supportive, except that they are extraordinarily busy doing all the other chores of restarting a college after one of the biggest natural disasters in American history. They had originally said we would move into the new facility in Uptown Square by January 1st. The current date is end of January. That is a negligible difference, considering the circumstances. The Rue has been generous enough to house us in the balcony of their shop until then. Are there any other student or community stations in New Orleans? How did they fare during the disaster? There are a few stations, included WWOZ and WWNO. LSU has a station, KLSU, but that isn’t audible in New Orleans. I’m not sure how they are doing, although our engineer works at both WTUL and WWNO. Check their websites. What is your broadcast coverage area? We broadcast at 15,000 watts. That includes almost all of New Orleans and reaches into much of the GNO area. I believe the furthest WTUL can be heard is in La Place. |
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