Following this posting there will be a review of the new station
that went on the air on Monday, August 22, in place of the old WVXU.
But first, for readers of this newsgroup, here's a recap of my ear-
lier post (which appeared elsewhere on August 20th) reporting on
the death of broadcasting from the Xavier University campus. In ad-
dition, I've added more details and historical information on WVXU
to fill in the background to this story.

- - - - -

A reminder here for listeners around the states of Ohio, Michigan,
Indiana, and Kentucky who can tune in to any of the half-dozen sta-
tions in the X-Star network operated by WVXU-FM in Cincinnati.

Tomorrow, on Sunday, August 21, the station that's been at 91.7 on
the FM dial for the last 35 years in Cincinnati will turn into the
proverbial broadcasting pumpkin when new license owners take over at
midnite.

One of three NPR affiliates in the immediate Cincinnati area, WVXU
was recently sold off by Xavier University in order to raise money
for other campus projects. After having developed a wide variety of
programs over the years, WVXU became so successful that it sold for
the whopping sum of fifteen million dollars. Local newspapers said
that was the second-largest price ever paid in the U.S. for a non-
profit station.

No offense intended, but it should be remembered that all they do
here is beg for money. It's not as if they can sell advertising
time and air commercials all day long. Nevertheless, WVXU became
so big and so successful -- boasting that it had the most dynamic
program schedule in all of U.S. public radio -- that when the license
was put up for grabs, the "rival" classical music station quickly
gobbled it up.

Now for the important reminder: Before WVXU signs off there will
be a final two-hour live program on Sunday nite from 10 p.m. to mid-
nite. It promises to be a tear-soaked farewell show.

And in another bit of late-breaking news, it's been announced that
the new program schedule for the successor station has now been post-
ed on the website of WGUC-dot-org. Today's Cincinnati Post newspaper
reportedly has devoted two pages to the story, and more ink can be
expected from the Sunday paper.

- - - - -

*POSTSCRIPT:* It might be asked why the followers of this sta-
tion considered it so special. That's a fair question. Some pos-
sible answers: First, every station has its loyal listeners, of
course. When formats change, those loyal listeners go into mourn-
ing. Also, this station was associated with a university, which
not only meant that alumni identified with it but also allowed many
people to get their start in broadcasting while they were students
there.

In addition, the station felt that their format of so-called
"block programming" was special, perhaps unique among nonprofit NPR
affiliates. In plain language, that basically means 30-minute or
60-minute (or whatever) programs, just like what you'd expect on a
"real" radio or TV station, as opposed to merely listing a bunch of
names of disk jockeys who spin platters all day long. Maybe it
wasn't so unique, but it did allow many volunteers and "amateurs"
to go on the air and talk about specialized subjects. Some pro-
grams, like "Faith and Justice Forum" on Sunday evenings, were pre-
sided over by priests and nuns from the faculty of the school.
Other programs, like one on Friday afternoons featuring a couple of
computer and technology experts talking about the latest high-tech
products, ranged across a wide range of possible subjects for fill-
ing broadcast time.

There were enough connections with the university campus to make
sure listeners didn't forget whose station this was. But there were
also plenty of programs that had nothing to do with the school but
everything to do with developing a niche of loyal listeners. In par-
ticular, that meant many blocks of airtime for out-of-fashion for-
mats like old-time (meaning 1940s) radio shows, including the likes
of Jack Benny, The Great Gildersleeve, and other assorted cornball
shows and cultural antiques. As somebody noted during the final
two-hour broadcast, the "age of (old-time) radio" lasted longer on
WVXU-FM than it had in real life! A second major niche was "jazz"
music, which in this case meant mainly various kinds of "unpopular"
jazz, from blues to bop to big-band. "When Swing was King" was one
of the most popular programs, whose title pretty much sums up the
image the station spent many years cultivating.

The old WVXU was so successful at all of this that reportedly
other local, commercial stations complained to the FCC that they
were losing listeners! A certain station, mentioned on the final
two-hour broadcast but which I'll refrain from publicizing here
ribbit! -- but which from time to time has promoted a mythical
Tree Frog ale -- supposedly commissioned a survey to find out why
the kiddie audience plummeted at a certain time of the week. It
turned out that the likes of the Glenn Miller band (i.e., "swing"
from the 1940s) on WVXU were a better radio draw than the latest
inanities on the hip-hop scene.

Competitors also complained to the FCC about the extended "tes-
timonial"-type blurbs for the businesses that were underwriting
sponsors for programs. Sounding almost like commercials, this
format was practically invented by WVXU's aggressive station direc-
tor. When the FCC upheld the idea as acceptable, it was then copied
by NPR stations around the country. Another pioneering move was to
grab up half a dozen available noncommercial FM channels in small
towns around this region, some hundreds of miles away, and turn
them into a network.

The two longtime station executives who built WVXU into what it
was also engendered considerable loyalty among the staffers and the
listeners. Father Lawrence J. Flynn put WVXU on the air, and then
continued to serve the station until his death in 1990. (The final
broadcast emanated from the studio named in his honor.) And then
for almost thirty years, professor and Dr. Jim King literally built
the station up into a broadcasting legend and powerhouse. When a
local company donated a building near the Xavier University campus,
Dr. King led a squad of volunteers who refurbished and rewired the
building for broadcast use. That saved the station roughly half a
million dollars, and turned an otherwise impossible idea into radio
reality.

In sum, all of what's mentioned above produced leagues of loyal
listeners for this station. But that's history now. In the next
posting I'll have the early line on the new station that's now re-
placing this.
--
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david moeser -- erasmus39 on yahoo
Censornati, Ohio - USA
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* So many dynamos! *

(Headers munged to foil spammers; real info in taglines)