With a brand-new executive board consisting of mostly underclassmen, Elon University’s student-run radio station WSOE is fighting its way back into the spotlight.

More than 35 years ago, WSOE, which stands for the Wonderful Sounds of Elon, first obtained their charter from the Federal Communications Commission. Since its establishment, the station has employed student DJs who produce their own shows and curate music to provide Elon with a mix of all genres of music and talk shows every hour.

With the installation of its new cell tower — located near Danieley neighborhood — WSOE’s frequency can be heard in Elon, Burlington, Graham and parts
of Mebane.

Working with a new staff

Different from past years, WSOE appointed a completely new executive board this year.

General Manager and sophomore Matt Sears said the revamp was both exciting and scary.

“I have seven executive staff members under me,” Sears said. “They each have their own unique role. I think we have about 150 DJs. They have an hour to two hour slots a week. They pick what they play, what they do, what they talk about. We have a lot of variety.”

When there isn’t someone in the booth producing live content, sophomore Tom Coogan, the station’s music director, schedules music to be played.

“Tom is kind of our music taste for the station,” Sears said.

In addition to its radio frequency, 89.3 FM, listeners can also tune in online through the station’s website, which is currently being updated by social media director Brittany Barker. 

Sears said the staff is considering having the website professionally done to help keep it as current as its other social media platforms.

Despite having online access, there are no plans to completely switch over to streaming services, as many college radio stations across the country have been doing.

“We like that aspect, and hopefully we don’t have to sell [the frequency],” Sears said.

It becomes hard to compete with services like Spotify and Pandora that many college students use frequently, when most people don’t even have a radio unless it’s in their car.

Despite these challenges, WSOE is looking to establish a bigger presence on campus and expand campus outreach.

“We want to be seen as the music resource on campus,” Sears said. “That would be really cool. We’ve made training much easier, we’ve come out with a new handbook, just to make it so people can have whatever show they want to increase variety and interest.”

Creating a show

Freshman Annie Gordon knew she wanted to join WSOE even before coming to campus, and after arriving spring semester, she signed up at the Organization Fair. A few days after signing up, she received an email asking her to pick a time slot and was promptly signed up for a training session.

“It was pretty easy,” Gordon said.

Sophomores Zaria Zinn and Sydney Carus decided to start their own show after a single interest meeting when their friend, sophomore Katherine Wolter, the station’s promotional director, asked them to tag along.

“[Wolter] said she had an interest meeting,” Zinn said. “Sydney and I went to support her and get more information. By the end of the interest meeting we were like, ‘We have a show’ — we just thought of it during the span of the meeting.”

Their show, “Chatty Coffee,” airs Sundays at 10 a.m. and premiered earlier this month.

The show consists of interviews with members of the Elon community who are doing cool things and have interesting stories to tell.

“At first we thought it would be more gossip, but then we realized so many people at Elon do something, and so many people have a story,” Carus said. “It would be so much cooler on a Sunday morning to wake up and listen to all these cool things that people are doing.”

Because the show is still in the beginning stages, the duo is still figuring out its path. But Zinn said not only is it about hearing people’s stories, but its also about getting everyone inspired and ready for the day.

Though the show runs for an hour, there is a lot of preliminary work that goes into producing and running their radio show.

“We plan out the show ahead of time,” Zinn said. “We have bullet-pointed scripts. I think over time that might evolve into something lesser than that, but especially because we have a guest there with us, we feel like its important to have something prepared.” 

Even as a talk show, “Chatty Coffee” had to get training to play a few songs between transitions.

“We are not a music show, but we do have a few songs that we play, so we choose that ahead of time,” Zinn said. “We go in early and put music in the system, and then you go into the studio and set up.”

Maintaining an audience

During the show, only Zinn and Carus are in the booth, so they need to make sure everything runs smoothly without the help of the executive board.

“Something you don’t realize while you’re listening is that you have to control everything,” Carus said. “It’s just you in that control room so you have to learn how to use all the technology — how to pause everything and go to commercial, when to cue the microphones. You’re talking while your fingers are moving along everything.”

The pair has created their own Instagram account for their show to promote it themselves, which has helped get the word out. Moving forward, they hope to bring in interesting and compelling people and continue to produce engaging content.

“Each week we are going to try to build up, because I mean who’s dream isn’t [to interview] Leo Lambert,” Carus said. “I mean let’s be real, but you obviously can’t get him in now.”

In all of the interviews, their goal is to link it back to things everyone can relate to and be inspired by. 

Wolter has her own show on WSOE called “Vigorous Vibes,” where she aims to bring the best indie/alternative music to Elon students. The radio show airs from noon-1 p.m. Sundays Wolter plays music and provides commentary for her listeners. 

“I try to have a theme to my show each week so it’ll be a certain mood or decade, and around holidays I do something to go along with that,” Wolter said.

Wolter was inspired to join radio by her older brother, who is heavily involved in the radio station at his university.

“I always really loved music, and coming to college I was looking for a way to keep up that passion and keep looking for new music all the time,” Wolter said. “By having a radio show, every week I have to make a new playlist so it’s cool because it’s an excuse for me to always have to research Pitchfork and look at new music outlets.”

As a marketing major, Wolter was quick to apply for the newly available position of promotions director. Now, Wolter is in charge of all promotions for WSOE. She works with local venues as well as outlets like Live Nation to do ticket giveaways and also serves as a liaison between WSOE and other student organizations.

“Recently we’ve been doing stuff with SUB and we are trying to reach out to other organizations to DJ their events and kind of make the WSOE profile on campus better and more known,” Wolter said.

Since the start of her show, Wolter said it’s become a more fluid and complementary mix of songs, rather than just her top picks of the week.

Wolter’s friends and family listen in every week, and she was recently pleasantly surprised to find that even people she doesn’t know listen in Sunday mornings when she received numerous calls for a ticket giveaway.

Though it’s hard to keep a station relevant in a world where radio has become essentially obsolete, the team at WSOE is working hard to make their way back into the Elon spotlight.