KDIC tunes into Grinnell campus community
Scarlet & Black 2024-04-19
After over 3 years of radio silence, KDIC has returned with 30 new radio shows in the midst of the spring 2024 semester. Manager Georgia Carbone `24 and audio technician Jon Murphy `26 have been instrumental in bringing KDIC’s dead air back to life.
Technically, the radio station KDIC 88.5 is still dead air. In the summer of 2020, a powerful derecho knocked the radio transmitter down. This and the COVID pandemic halted KDIC operations. Carbone and Murphy said that the College has since been unable to permanently secure the station license. Instead, the pair brought KDIC back in an online streaming format.
123 unique listeners tuned into the station during its first four hours on air. Carbone and Murphy see KDIC as important for tuning into the campus community.
“It’s important to represent the things that students are interested in expressing,” Carbone said.
“It’s an avenue for students to express their ideas but also have other people hear them,” Murphy added.
It’s important to represent the things that students are interested in expressing.
— Georgia Carbone `24, KDIC manager
Sasha Grigorovich `20, exploratory advisor at the Center for Careers, Life and Services, managed KDIC in 2020. In an email to The S&B, he similarly described KDIC as a “cultural hub.”
He also wrote that he has been working with current KDIC staff and is “so impressed by their drive, imagination and dedication to a campus tradition that they haven’t experienced themselves.”
The hosts of the 30 radio shows are also dedicated to KDIC’s return. Some of them described their shows and vouched for the importance of college radio in emails to The S&B.
Jefferson Kolmer `24 hosts “What are Grinnellians Listening to?” He uses Yik Yak, an anonymous, location-based discussion app, to collect songs that students have been listening to lately. He is excited to “build a sense of community through student radio.” He also wrote that KDIC empowers the student body and is critical for a “thriving on-campus music scene.”
Molly Wilcoxson `26 hosts “Chef’s Choice.” Her show will play jazz, rap, classic and folk songs. She wrote that KDIC feels like an open space for students to share their passions. “I’m excited to share something I love with the people I love,” she wrote.
Lucia Finkelstein `24 hosts “Synchromy.” “I’m hoping that my show will be a nice distraction from work and make people feel like campus culture is coming back,” she wrote.
Peter Versh `25 hosts “East Coast, Plants, Chaos, Prank Call Hour with some Econ Advice too.” He wrote that he wants his show to have interesting guests, interesting music and evoke interesting thoughts from his listeners. He continued that KDIC is important because it provides audio entertainment that is “free, accessible and easy to enjoy.”
Evan Broaddus `26 hosts “Retro Hour.” He wrote that he would consider his show a “smashing success” if even one person hears a song from his show and gets it stuck in their head. He values KDIC because it can “reinforce and create new ways of knowing campus culture, while also showing that we are responsible for that culture,” he wrote.
Helenipa Stephens `27 hosts “Vamp.” They wrote that KDIC builds community and is a “fun way to bond, knowing everyone is listening to the same thing at the same time.”
Morgan Karow `26 hosts “Horse Friday” with Evelyn Wilber `26. “Evelyn and I wanted to host a KDIC show because we love music, love each other and love college radio,” Karow wrote. She views college radio as freeing and diverse. “All of the different shows on KDIC feel representative of a lot of different aspects of campus life,” she wrote.
Christian Stephens `24 hosts “Hideo Kojima’s Walkman.” He plays his favorite songs posted by video game designer Hideo Kojima. “I think having a strong radio presence is a great way to grow music culture here and expose people to diverse tastes and new musical ideas,” he wrote.
This semester, Carbone and Murphy hope to organize events for the KDIC hosts to get to know each other. They also want to get the recording studio, located in the Joe Rosenfield `25 Center, up and running again. Their overall goal is for the KDIC room to be an open place where students can hang out — just as it was when Grigorovich managed the station.
It’s an avenue for students to express their ideas but also have other people hear them.
— Jon Murphy `26, KDIC audio technician
“Seeing so many students come in and out and start to use this space as a community space has been really cool,” Murphy said.
Despite KDIC’s successful return this semester, Carbone and Murphy said they are unsure about what will happen to the station next year. This confusion, they explain, results from impending funding and budget cuts within the Grinnell College Student Publications and Radio Committee (SPARC). For now, listeners can tune into KDIC at http://kdic.mixlr.com/.
Krista Spies `24, arts editor, and Evelyn Wilber `26, staff writer, are both hosts on KDIC shows. They were not involved in the reporting or editing of this story.