WSUM station manager ready to fill airtime

On a frigid morning in February, a twist of a dial, a flip of a switch and push of a few buttons will introduce a major new addition to the university community.

From a sleepy cornfield in Montrose, a 403-foot, 5,600-watt tower will begin beaming the clear signal of WSUM-FM 91.7, the university’s student radio station. The exact day and time haven’t been set, but the first program broadcast over the air will bring to an end nearly 50 years of spotty dorm-based reception, unlicensed low-power signals and, more recently, scarcely heard Internet broadcasts.

And Dave Black will breathe a tremendous sigh of relief. UW–Madison is one of the few Big Ten institutions still without a conventional station.

“Crazy,” is how Black describes the university’s long, tortured road toward broadcast radio — and his own eight-year run as general manager and prime mover behind the new signal. “But I always said, as long as the students were willing to stick to it and see it through, I would stay around to help make it happen,” he says.

Black praises UW–Madison administrators and long-graduated student staffers for making the planned launch possible. But those familiar with WSUM say the expertise and stability Black has brought to the station make him a key figure in its recent history. “Dave’s been doggedly focused on getting that tower built,” says LaMarr Billups, special assistant to the chancellor for community relations, who worked closely with Black on the tower issue. “Without his “stick-to-it-iveness,’ it may have dropped by the wayside. I know he spurred me on and helped me keep my eye on the ball.”

Student radio at UW–Madison was actually born generations ago in the 1950s, taking on a handful of identities over the years — WMHA, WLHA, WSRM, to name a few. WMHA (later known as WLHA) was broadcast through the electrical current running through the lakeshore dorms. WSRM broadcast through the current in Ogg and Sellery.

Students began to broadcast WLHA on a low-power FM transmitter in the early 1980s, but they did so without the knowledge of the Federal Communications Commission, which never granted the station a license. As a result, student radio suffered a near-fatal run-in with the regulatory body in 1993.

A native of Athens, Ohio, Black came to UW–Madison in 1991 to begin working on a doctoral thesis about the role of storytelling in music videos. Despite hearing loss suffered during a stint as a medic in an Army armored unit, Black comes from a background in commercial radio, working for stations in Portland, Ore., and San Francisco.

At UW–Madison, he worked as a teaching assistant and lecturer in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. But with the demise of WLHA, he was hired to begin the process of reviving the station. At the time, he was happy to take a “conscious detour” from his dissertation, which he still hopes to revive.

Black and student staffers began by acquiring the support of the student body and gradually moving up the chain to student government, UW–Madison officials, UW System and finally, the FCC. By 1996, all had signed off on a licensed station, to be known as WSUM, which generally stands for Wisconsin System University Madison.

Although WSUM received student support and an allocation of more than $500,000 for funding of its start-up process, the tower construction was blocked for a time by litigation from Montrose residents who feared it would damage property values. The two-steps forward, one-step back nature of WSUM became frustrating for many students, and Black says even he wondered if he was wasting years of his life on a project that might never come to fruition.

“We were constantly reinventing the wheel,” Black remembers. “Establishing a signal is a complicated process in this day and age.”

The station began “netcasting,” or broadcasting via the Internet in 1997 at http://wsum.wisc.edu/html.html. Now based in The Towers, 602 State St., the station has more than 50 staff and is training another 50 for the launch. After February, Black says he expects WSUM’s eclectic mix of underground, local and alternative music shows to basically remain intact.

“I do believe that the students know best,” Black says of programming. “They’re not just following the trends, they’re out there setting them. With their passion, they remind you how to bring the change you’d like to see in the world.”

Although Black’s musical tastes, including artists such as Howlin’ Wolf, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield and Muddy Waters, often runs counter to the no-wave, noise, free jazz experimental music forms favored by WSUM staffers, program director Jacob Heule says Black’s hard work has helped bridge the generation gap. “Without (Dave) providing the continuity, I don’t know where the station would be,” says Heule, a junior. “He played an important part in setting up the station’s structure, mission and method of operation, which are all philosophically pretty cool. He’s been doing all of the dirty work.”