College Students Need Radio Almost As Much As It Needs Us

It’s a Saturday morning and the Chicago streets are a little quieter than usual, settling in with the late-morning haze of the weekend. In some alleyways the muffled sounds of NPR’s Chicago-based news gameshow trickle from open windows. 

It’s not interesting really — until it is. “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” from NPR is fast-paced, engaging and shockingly relevant. Bill Kurtis and Peter Sagal trade quips like snot-faced kiddos with Pokémon Cards, and suddenly, listening to the news is fun. 

Now, listeners have access to whatever they want, whenever they want, but radio has become less popular among consumers. Spotify leaves no room for the anticipation of waiting for a favorite City Lights segment to play, or the joy of recognizing a song coming on. Before streaming, radio seemed magical with its reliability and creativity. 

Now, more than ever, college attendees should be listening to the radio. Stations like NPR and WBEZ Chicago can serve as valuable news sources for students. Talk shows provide entertainment social media can’t match. College students need radio, but do they realize the extent of which radio needs them?

Social media has dominated all aspects of disseminating information since it became popular. Nowadays, it’s facile to find biased, poorly written and unfounded news on social media platforms, which the majority of college students rely on for current events and information.

Many public broadcasting systems are free to listen to, and have provided well-researched, engaging news to the public for years. Shows like WWDTM and Ask Me Another from NPR share easily digestible information in hour-long weekly segments. 

In the age of Instagram and TikTok, reliable and engaging news sources are wholly important in getting valuable information to college students.

It’s not just news sources though — it’s a change in pace of entertainment. Programs like Brooke and Jeffery in the Morning are fast-paced, funny and better on the brain than mind-numbing YouTube. 

Whether it be a workout at Halas or a Sunday reset, listening to radio allows students to devote their attention to the task at hand while still immersing themselves in the art of entertainment.

Additionally, Loyola has its own radio station — WLUW 88.7 fm. With music hand-picked by students, for students, it provides the perfect way for Ramblers to interact with each other and bring back the joy of collective listening. 

It’s not just college kids who need radio — radio needs more listeners. When radio funding is cut, free accessible information and music in the United States is threatened. 

Today, the art of radio is dying. Crowd favorites like WNYC’s RadioLab are facing debilitating funding cuts, making it hard to continue the quality of work being put out on a weekly basis by radio stations across the country. It isn’t just WNYC taking the hit either, NPR — one of the nation’s largest nonprofit broadcasting networks — is being forced to cut nearly $5 million of their funding. 

Radio shows like RadioLab need this funding to continue producing high-quality work, and without public support of them and other stations in America, their plight remains unnoticed. In desperate attempts for funding, WNYC and NPR ask for a lot — money, used cars, but most importantly; a listening ear.

The guilt in not being able to donate to help radio stations can be a lot, but if more college students were willing to lend an ear and support their local stations, not only would the broadcasters benefit from their viewership, but the students themselves would discover the joys of listening to music and news on air.