Len O'Kelly of the Multimedia Journalism program estimates that in his previous career in broadcasting he'd make 5,000 decisions during the course of a radio show.  A special kind of listening is involved, and he appreciates the effect this kind of hands-on experience has for his students.

That is not where the story begins though.  

Len had success in radio early and so delayed getting his bachelor’s degree until he was 35. In 2009, with a Bachelor of Elected Studies in hand and some work toward a master's degree, he was hired by Grand Valley to put oldies on the air for public radio station WGVU-AM. In 2010 he snagged the opportunity to work with the student radio station, WCKS, which was on the verge of shutting down after its advisor left.

"Radio was such a formative experience for me--I owed my career to it-- that I couldn't let that happen, so I introduced myself to Bob Stoll in Student Life," Len explains. "I can't let you turn the station off," Len told Bob.  Bob replied, "Sure, let's see your resume."

Len set up a meeting with then School of Communications chair Tony Thompson and Broadcasting program coordinator Keith Oppenheim who explained that the School hadn't been connected to the student radio station which was administered under Student Life. Len made the case for radio to be in the curriculum.  

2011 saw the launch of the Introduction to Radio course taught by newly minted Adjunct Professor Len O'Kelly. The students used WCKS as their lab, much of it in time outside of class. As a final project, Len had the students apply for a job. "The course ran that way for 10 years," Len notes.

Len recalls the initial concern that the course might not fill at its cap of 12, but it did. In fact, when the cap was raised, the course continued to fill as an elective offered once a year.  

WCKS continues to run as a student organization, and any GV student can participate.

"There is a lot of latitude for students on student-run stations.  Sometimes they lack structure in their talk show programming which is not what audiences want. Students often aspire to use the radio experience toward producing podcasts so I make sure they understand that 95% of the podcasting audience is listening to 5% of podcasts, making podcasting not a great career choice."

Len wanted the radio experience he gave students to be more real. At Grand Valley, student media advisors serve at the pleasure of the students, so he looked to another source for that realism.

"I needed to be the manager, so we launched our own station. No more sponging off of Student Life," Len smiles. "We needed our own that would be entirely free of the odd politics of the club model."

WLSX (the LS for Lake Superior Hall and the X because it was available and cool) launched at 900 on your listening dial (an inside joke for Len, who grew up listening to WLS in Chicago only 10 kilohertz away at 890).

"I grabbed the domain 6 months ahead of the 'on air' transmitter just to be sure," Len recalls. "We moved into an office upstairs in Lake Superior Hall and put a traffic information transmitter, like they have at the airport, up on the roof."  

The FCC allows colleges to run low-watt AM stations under modified regulations if they limit the broadcast to the boundaries of their campuses. In the case of WLSX, this means 8 watts.  Len has been known to drive around with a signal strength meter checking that they are in compliance.  

Sometimes people are surprised by the programming choice Len made, an 80s and 90s music format. Len says that the adage is that you figure out what your target audience listened to in high school and provide that. He wanted something that his students' parents wouldn't mind listening to. The parents can listen because, in addition to the campus broadcast, the station is also streaming at wlsxradio.com.

"I see it as equally unfair to the students in the class," Len notes of this music which predates all of the students. "I do have to provide a pronunciation guide for the band names. I heard an on air version of 'Duran Duran' and 'INXS' that told me they hadn't heard them pronounced before."

WLSX debuted during campus Move In in fall 2021.  "Public Safety's Chief DeHaan recorded a message for the parents during Move In, and then we shifted to music.  We also do some public service messages for home football games.  I produce some of those messages in my home studio, but am hoping to do that sort of production on campus with Advanced Radio students.  Eventually, we will see some ads--that puts us in a different and more expensive category of streaming--but we hope to defray the costs of equipment maintenance."

One of the benefits of the stream is the metrics it provides. Len and his students can see that 30 people are listening toward the end of the week, for instance, as well as the various countries that listeners hail from. In addition to spots in Palm Springs and Chicago, the stream is listened to in Argentina and Norway.  Len also appreciates that the streaming service allows them to have a crawler that links to Lanthorn RSS feed articles.

Recently, Len's paper on the history of student radio broadcasting at GVSU was accepted by the Radio Presentation Task Force^1[i].  Unlike the radio students of the 1960s who pushed the boundaries as a matter of course, Len finds that he has to encourage our students now to stretch. "They are a little risk averse and don't want to wreck the opportunity they have been given. That said, I do play them the George Carlin video about the words you can't say on TV and radio. They are used to the language they hear on podcasts, so we have to remind them about FCC rules."

Whether they go into the field and will really know how to do it, or simply become better consumers of radio, Len knows that they will understand the medium which is the most used medium in the United States. While listening was down during the pandemic when fewer people were commuting, it is seeing a resurgence and remains highly relevant.

The Introduction to Radio course, CMJ 265, allows Len to discuss topics such as regional accent assimilation for students who might find jobs in markets other than the one they grew up in. He can also talk about the reality of a new job. "I tell them that the first week you are going to be terrible. Don’t give up."

He saves for his last lecture some time-tested advice about interviewing, including what not to do at the lunch and how early to start watching the job ads so you can spot jobs with a questionable amount of employee churn.

On the final exam, he asks students to reflect on their radio journey.  The most frequent response talks about how they were initially afraid but now have confidence to get up and talk to anybody.  

Such confidence is a wonderful outcome for this "no-prereq" course.

It is perhaps a metaphor that the last installation expense incurred when the tower was secured to the roof was the grounding cable.  There is lightning potential, but it can be made safe.

In fall 2024, students can look forward to a new edition of THE radio textbook, The Radio Station, 10th ed., co-authored by Len and his Oxford-graduate colleague and College Radio Day founder Dr. Rob Quicke.

_______________

[i] The Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF), created early in 2014, grows out of the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan (December 2012, and seeks:

1. To support collaboration between faculty researchers and archivists toward the preservation of radio history
2. To develop an online inventory of extant American radio archival collections, focusing on recorded sound holdings, including research aids
3. To identify and save endangered collections
4. To develop pedagogical guides for utilizing radio and sound archives
5. To act as a clearing house to encourage and expand academic study on the cultural history of radio through the location of grants, the creation of research caucuses, and development of metadata on extant materials