At eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning, the corridors of the Student Center at Central Connecticut State University were quiet. Colorful flyers decorated the drab, beige walls, promoting various campus events. The lights inside the college bookstore were dim, darkening stacks of textbooks and blue sweatshirts. Beyond the bookstore and before Breakers Game Room, a wide window offered a view inside the campus radio’s studio room. The sound of Frank Sinatra’s crooning baritone poured out from speakers overhead.
Inside the studio, Professor Gilbert Gigliotti, a scholar of English and Latin, was dressed in his signature suit and bow tie. He slid down one of the rectangular knobs, lowering the volume, and greeted his audience through the microphone. His radio voice mirrored his everyday speaking voice—confident and clear—broadcasting a warm charm that’s easy on the ears. “All right, this is the 2023 Gil; you’re listening to a recorded program of Frank, Gil, and Friends from May 4th, 2004, on WFCS 107.7, New Britain Art for the Edge.”
Following a swift public service announcement, Professor Gigliotti glided the knob back up, and the sounds of swing music, including Sinatra’s rendition of “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’,” filled the dark hallways. Gigliotti’s radio show, Frank, Gil, and Friends, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on air at WFCS in 2023. He stood behind the soundboard. Behind him was a collection of radio equipment, storage cases brimming with used CDs, and a canopy of multicolored string lights suspended from the ceiling. The station was cozy, with a blue couch and green chairs that created a welcoming hangout for students to gather and unwind.
In 1993, one year after arriving at CCSU, Gigliotti decided to pitch his own show after attending a student’s. “Music is filled with pop references, and I was already interested in looking at the work of different artists and how they use Sinatra, and it became my purpose for having a show,” Gigliotti said.
CCSU raised its antenna in the late 1940s and has evolved into a twenty-four-hour radio station featuring an eclectic lineup, including a French pop and K-pop combo show called Whiplash, DJ Oni’s A Demon’s Haunting Hours, and a hip-hop program titled Thursday on a Hill. The station highlights student, faculty, and community DJ shows.
During a phone call, former student station manager Agatha Hueller said that WFCS is so popular that there are currently around eighty DJs involved. “Joining the station is a great way to meet friends,” Hueller said. “You meet people from outside your major and form a small community.” WFCS’s studio is always open and buzzing, with students coming in and out. By curating playlists filled with various genres and engaging listeners through public service announcements and other on-the-air discussions, college stations like WFCS have listeners beyond their campus. A few stations, like Fordham University’s WFUV, even have a national following.
College radio adapted well to the digital world. Education major Ava LeBlanc has her own show at WFCS. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and expressed that rather than posing a threat to college radio stations, digital streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music simplify the process for DJs to curate their playlists.
LeBlanc hopes to teach in New Britain after she graduates. She emphasized her love for the local community. “The community involvement aspect of the radio is crucial because DJs in the area add to the culture, and you can develop bonds with people, especially if they tune in to compliment the attention to detail and material shown. The neat thing is how you can call in live and interact instantly.” LeBlanc believed that with more advertising and community outreach, WFCS would grow in popularity with New Britain residents.
The path to recognition has been long for many college radio stations, requiring more than technological advances. The first commercial college station, established in 1920 at Union College in Schenectady, New York, was limited to thirty minutes of music from borrowed records. It paved the way for other radio stations, which typically combined music broadcast with daily news.
“The community involvement aspect of the radio is crucial because DJs in the area add to the culture”
In the early 1940s, the growing popularity of college radio marked the beginning of a trend that peaked during the sixties and seventies, when the nation faced a significant cultural shift. College campuses from Ann Arbor to UC Berkeley became hotbeds of debate and protests on civil rights, gender equality, and opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft. Campus radio stations expanded their audiences by broadcasting anthems related to social and political movements, inspiring students to participate in the protests.
In 1972, KZSU at Stanford University was credited for its public service covering the turbulent times. The station’s established network of remote broadcast lines and equipment, which was initially used for broadcasting speeches and sports events, was adaptable to crisis coverage and quickly delivered necessary news on the protests. In a divided nation, college radio connected students as they spoke truth to power.
By the 1980s, stations gave their students more freedom to play the music they liked, much of which was more “underground” than mainstream. Big-name bands like Nirvana and R.E.M. received their first airtime on college stations. Like many contemporary stations, WUOG at the University of Georgia, which first broadcasted R.E.M., is defined by their alternative ethos. It’s embedded in their mission: “The station’s music philosophy is designed to help new and independent artists gain exposure on campus, in Athens, and throughout the nation.”
During the nineties and early 2000s, student interest and involvement grew, and eventually, there were around six hundred operating college radio stations across the country. Then, the internet changed everything. Many stations are low-power FM stations with terrestrial signals ranging from ten to thirty miles. The evolution of the internet liberated stations from the limitations of frequency range. Digital streaming has expanded the reach of WFCS from New Britain to New Delhi.
Twelve colleges in Connecticut currently have radio stations. The Trinity College station was bustling on a Saturday afternoon in Hartford. Housed on the first floor of High Rise Hall, a residence hall and the tallest building on campus, the studio featured several production spaces. In the center of the studio, a couple of couches and a wall of vinyl records harken back to the days when people would gather and hang out while a show was in session.
WRTC debuted on February 26, 1947, establishing itself as one of the oldest stations in the Hartford area, including one of the region’s first rock formats. Today, its schedule carries Caribbean beats, a soul/funk/blues combination program, and groundbreaking Afrocentric and Latin sounds. WRTC has impacted the surrounding Hartford community beyond Trinity’s walls.
Chris Cowles, a former journalist and the station’s general manager, has been involved in radio for almost forty years. He was producing a three-hour show in one of the studios, wearing a red shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, and glasses. Sitting on a highchair, he focused on the computer monitor, which showed a schedule of all the music and mic break cues for the show. “I think once upon a time, radio was the internet,” Cowles said while leaning back on the highchair with his arms crossed. “People got their information from the radio nearly instantly, which has changed. But the advent of the web has given us a worldwide audience, which is the biggest change I’ve seen.”
WRTC’s student station manager, Emeline Avignon, sat on one of the couches facing the wall of vinyl records. Glittery makeup adorned her cheeks, and headphones dangled around her neck. She took a sip from her Yeti cup and thought about her journey with the station. Although she came to Trinity to study international studies, Avignon hoped to get involved in journalism and communications while sharing her love of music. When she started at the station during COVID, student involvement was on a decline, so her job became getting people to learn about the station.
“I’ve gone to coffee shops and given out QR codes to stream the radio [station],” Avignon said. The community presence outside campus is vital to her and Cowles, especially when working to make it recognizable to many listeners. “I knew I wanted to engage with both the students and the people living in this area of Hartford. It really has been less of a way to connect with other students and more [of a way] to know what is happening in Hartford now. You connect with all kinds of people from different backgrounds outside of campus.”
Back at CCSU, Professor Gigliotti unplugged his tablet from the soundboard once the final notes on his setlist faded away. During his three decades with the radio station, he has witnessed a technological shift and the changing landscape of audience preferences. “People have so many ways to listen, so I always tell the students who want to do shows: Why should anyone want to listen to you? What are you adding to the radio station, and how are you going to convince people your show is worth listening in to?” He considered student involvement in the station and stressed that a background in broadcast journalism wasn’t a prerequisite for hosting a show. “We want any student to be able to do this and to give them independence in what they share.” The number of choices allows students to share and connect with their peers and the broader community, making their mark on the airwaves across campus and beyond.
Cecelia Puckhaber is a staff writer for Blue Muse Magazine.
Header Photo: CCSU Students Gialena Cruz and Matthew Sliwka working in the WFCS Studio.
Header Photo Courtesy of Cecelia Puckhaber.
As you know, I always love the back history so thanks for providing so much of it in this packed feature story! I like how you framed the narrative with an opening on Gil and then a closer–it worked well like bookends. I had no idea so many students hosted on CCSU radio! I can’t believe you did this for Burrello AND all of the stories for CNF2 in just one term!