Johnson State’s community radio station is starting the semester out strong with a lot of new DJs and increasing coverage of campus and community events.

WJSC, restarted in 2012 after a year off air, now features about 30 DJs, most of whom are new. General station manager Amanda Bolduc is enthusiastically overwhelmed by the new interest—enthusiastic because of the increased interest, overwhelmed from the all the training she and senior DJ Jacob “Pugs” Crosslin are doing.

“We are coming and kicking butt, starting out strong,” she said. “Last semester, we had probably, like 12 [DJs]…Jacob and I have been doing a ton of training over the past four weeks, it’s insane…It’s insane, it’s crazy, [and] I’m so excited about it.”

Crosslin agreed: “It’s tough for me and Amanda because it’s a lot of time out [of] our schedule, but it is very rewarding at the same time because we get to see all these new DJs. They come in and they’re uncomfortable being on the air, they don’t know what they want to do…and we get to help them and see them grow—from these shy DJs… to DJs who multitask and talk and [who are] able to do a fully functional, wonderful show.”

Training the new DJs includes getting them familiar with the station as well as educating them on FCC (Federal Communications Commission) guidelines, which include safety harbor hours (when expletives can’t be said) and certain content that needs to be aired.

“We’re trying to make the station as official as possible,” said Bolduc. “We have to log PSAs all the time—PSAs are Public Service Announcements. Every DJ has to do two an hour…the Potty Press is my favorite thing to take PSAs off of because they’re short and concise.”

PSAs range from announcements of campus events such as Creative Audiences to club meetings, weather and notifications from external organizations. “Other things are anything we might read in Basement Medicine, anything that’s happening in the world—I was on during the election last year so I talked about the election all night,” she said.

Bolduc also keeps current the station’s public file, which is the record of who is doing each show and what content is being transmitted. “It’s really just to keep us legal. Every station has to have this,” she said. Compiling the public file is one of her ongoing goals for this semester.

WJSC is a freeform radio station, meaning the DJs can do whatever they want with their shows as long as it falls within FCC regulations. “If you want to play Grateful Dead for two hours, we can’t say no,” said Bolduc. “You can talk about whatever you want to talk about on your show, I used to talk about the dumb things I did during the week, like: ‘I fell down the stairs!”

Most of the DJs play music during their shows, but there are a few talk shows. “Lindsay [Hack] is currently doing advice topics, like how do you deal with a sloppy kisser, and how do you deal with a control freak,” said Bolduc. “She definitely has a good connection with listeners.”

Guest speakers are encouraged, especially if they are taking part in other college events. “It’s based on the DJ, whether they want to have somebody in the station,” said Crosslin. “Like when Jessica Care Moore came, the Spoken Word artist from Detroit, we put it out there that we were hoping maybe to get her on the air, give her an hour on air and let her talk about Detroit and do some of her poetry and maybe have a DJ interview her.”

WJSC has also been approached by the office of first year experience about interviewing the subjects of Creative Audience events, according to Bolduc. “When we had the Detroit Cobras, Jacob interviewed them for the radio station,” she said.

According to Crosslin, there is still a lot to be done. “We’re out of the gate and we’re running. We’re going pretty far,” he said. “We’re looking to get some advertisements on the air soon from places like the Wok N House, Wicked Wings, places like that. We’re looking to try and get other clubs involved in our station so that if they’re doing an event that requires a DJ that they come to us, ‘cause it will save clubs money, [and] it will save the school money. Then they don’t have to go out and buy DJ services from out of school.”

The station has had problems with the technology they are using. “There are times when we’ve been off air due to technical issues—our antennae sometimes go off,” said Crosslin. “We had a whole weekend where we weren’t streaming online. We didn’t know why, we couldn’t figure it out, but come Monday morning we were back on the air. It’s the little technical issues that we’re now trying to fix and trying to tweak. We are getting there, but we’re not there yet. I want to see the station become a college radio station that’s a station that the college can be proud of.”

Listeners can tune into the radio at 90.7 FM, as well as stream it online from links on the JSC website.