For the third year in a row, “College Radio Day” will take place on the first Tuesday of October, which falls this year on the first of the month. The event has by now grown to 650 participating stations in 40 countries, including Italy, Israel, New Zealand, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Colombia, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
How it works: There is a 40-hour relay, which involves stations “passing the mic” on to the next station, “circumnavigating the globe” over the airwaves.
According to a release, artists Wilco, Passenger, Charlie Peacock, The Front Bottoms, Jukebox The Ghost, The Soft Pack and others will donate unreleased tracks to “College Radio Day — The Album — Volume Two,” a fundraiser for college radio stations which will be released Nov. 12.
Lucius, Coldplay, Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy) and The Lumineers have added prerecorded audio messages and interviews to support the event.
Founder of CRD, Rob Quicke, is a communications professor at William Paterson University, in New Jersey, and oversees programming at WPSC(FM), which was named the “Best College Radio Station” in the U.S. by IBS in 2012 and 2013.
In a statement, Quicke added, “Some say, college radio is dying and I disagree. This event proves them wrong and you cannot deny the enthusiasm and creativity that students worldwide produce and present daily on their respective stations — big and small alike.”
