A local university radio station celebrates 65 years on the air

NEW CONCORD, Ohio – A local university radio station is turning 65 years old on Wednesday and we’ve spoken with past and current station leadership to learn more.

At Muskingum University is the home of WMCO, an FM station that was started by a student, motivated by his experience at another familiar radio station in Muskingum County.

“I was working in the summer on weekends at WHIZ on the radio,” Hal Burlingame said. “That was a great aspiration of mine to try to get on the radio and I did weekend tours in the summer and then sometimes on Saturday during the school year.”

Burlingame was a junior on campus when he led a campaign of other students, professors, and campus leadership to create a radio station on campus. The university went ahead with creating the radio station, filing with the FCC and finding a transmitter to broadcast.

“And we did find that Kent State was going to conclude use of their 10-watt FM broadcasting station, and they gave us their transmitter for a small fee,” Burlingame said.

That transmitter was able to broadcast across the whole campus and to most of the village of New Concord. An initial hurdle for the fledgling radio station was that, at the time, FM was a relatively new frequency format and a lot of radios were only using AM frequencies.

“And so we had to, in the bookstore, go in and buy some very low-cost FM radios,” Burlingame said. “I think we sold them for $17.50 or something like that and people got them all over the dormitory and some folks in town probably picked them up.”

The next school year saw a major historical event that put New Concord on the map, with Muskingum alumni John Glenn becoming the first man to orbit the earth. This brought every major news station in the country to town to cover his home-town origins.

“Now, we had anchors from NBC, CBS, ABC, and everybody else on the campus,” Burlingame said. “…and they were sending back feeds for radio and television from WMCO. How about that?”

Fast-forward to today and the station has a 1,300-watt transmitter, can be streamed online around the world, and has given life lessons and memories to students for 65 years. Students like the current program director, Alyssa Derry.

“Being a part of WMCO has really shaped my career path,” Derry said. “Like, doing my own radio show and, like, falling in love with radio has been like a really important part of my college experience and has defined what I want the future to be.”

WMCO has introduced new music to listeners, broadcasted events like campus graduations and concerts, and brought news to the village of New Concord.

“The heart of what we do is public service, so we go to the village council meetings for New Concord and we play it live on the station,” said Derry.

Several people employed at WHIZ have a shared connection through their experience at WMCO. People like Desire’ Correa who’s voice can be heard on our radio stations, Cheyenne Hillard who is a production manager, videographer Aaron Eno and many more. Congratulations to WMCO for 65 years on the air, and here’s hoping for many more to come.