Radio Revival: The Return of ARC
For years at Arcadia, I’ve always heard talk of “ARC Radio,” a once operational radio station that was run by students. If you’ve ever passed the space between the Dining Hall and Dilworth, you can actually see the station! If you have a perceptive eye, you might have noticed an array of new stickers and posters covering the glass walls of the station booth. But what does that mean? For the past few months, students have been working tirelessly to revive the station, and… exciting news: ARC Radio is back on air!
This semester, the radio station is accepting student-hosted blocks. Arcadia students can play music, do interviews, host podcasts, or really anything that gets greenlit by the team. I was very excited to hear this news, and, as someone who loves talking about and listening to music (I even maintained a music review blog in a class of mine!), I signed up for an hour a week, where I get to play some of my favorite songs.
Here is my first playlist for ARC Radio! I’ve been having such a blast figuring out playlists for each week. Figuring out a vibe, songs that fit said vibes, and then getting the playlist to about an hour’s worth of music has been a great experience, not just in having fun curating music playlists, but in organizing and planning playlists.
Members of ARC Radio are given swipe access to the station booth, where they – with training – utilize a sound mixer and computer desktop to livestream music from this link, which you can also use to listen to our student-run blocks! One interesting aspect of this website is that it is not technically a radio station, per se. As a result, students are pretty free to play or talk about anything of their choosing. Interested students should fill out this form to submit a pitch.
When writing this blog, I reached out to Alejandro Lopez, Tech Director for ARC Radio and a Politics, Government, and Law major who completed his coursework in the fall, to obtain a view of what the station has to offer in a more technical sense. He had the following to say: “The radio station we walked into back then was abysmal – old food, ancient equipment in questionable condition, and no records of how things were run.” However, in a matter of several years, things were flipped around. “We were able to get state-of-the-art microphones, a sound board, professional grade headphones, and studio monitors. Additionally, we were able to begin transforming the back room into a “tiny desk concert” studio where we can host students and local musicians for acoustic sets. But, now it’s all done, and on air! I graduated in December, and hosted two training sessions [this winter].”
The amount of care and passion that went into creating a radio station for the students, by the students is clear. My hope is that students take advantage of this facility and showcase their interests to the larger student body.
