Hello everybody!
It’s an exciting time here at WVAU at American University – new faces on campus, wonderful new music coming to us and award season is just around the corner.
WVAU has been on the air since 1947 but this is the very first year (that we know of…77 years is a long time) we are going for CMJ nominations and we’re beyond excited. We created this video to help promote ourselves to the wider CMJ world, hoping to gain more nominations because we feel like it’s our time to get recognized by the national college radio community!
Filmed by: Noah Friedman
Edited by: Daniel Marshall & Leigh Hopkins
Music by: Boon
The nominations we are hoping to receive:
Best Student-Run, Internet-Only Station
Best Use Of Limited Resources
Biggest Improvement
Music Director Of The Year (Molly Pfeffer)
We’d also love to receive:
Station Of The Year
Rookie Of The Year (Barbara Martinez)
Accomplishments from 2014 and future goals:
Last semester we began a complete website redesign which is in the final stages of completion. We would include images of the old site but it’s so ugly, we’re doing you a favor by omitting it! During the semester we have over 10 staff writers producing content that is released daily. This ranges from reviews to feature articles a average 2-4 posts per day. This is incredible growth for our station considering that in the past we would have been lucky to have 2-4 posts per week! We’ve had over 105,000 page views within the last year! That’s nearly twice as many as the year before and our average pages per session more than doubled during the same period!
Music
Last semester we reviewed over 270 albums and this semester we are on track to review over 400! That’s more than a 30% increase in output! The internal library itself has grown to encompass an even wider range of sub genres specifically for those DJs who are partial toward ambient electronic and hip hop.
Programming
We are proud to have unique programming in our organization, and over the past year we have introduced programming arcs into our rotation of music. Arcs included lo-fi, garage rock to electronic, deep house, and eclectic EDM. While our DJs have always had specialty shows and genre specific shows, arcs provide listeners with large time blocks dedicated to a particular genre of music. This not only strengthens our listenership and refines our variety but has also served to greatly bolster our DJ community!
Events
We strive to put on events that are both unique and diverse for our DJs as well as the larger DMV metropolitan area. Acts that we have brought to DC in the past year includes Deerhunter, MAS YSA, and Mac Demarco. Deerhunter sold out 800 tickets in less than two weeks, and our Mac show had a line out the door an hour before it even opened.
From 2013 – 2014 we’ve also brought (for shows and/or in-studios):
Speedy Ortiz, Chance The Rapper, Born Ruffians, PAWS, Ava Luna, Dustin Wong, Krill, Pile, Cigarette, Pure X, Two Inch Astronaut, Jackson Scott, Fax Holiday, Caveman, Natural Child, Saintseneca, The So So Glos, Grass Is Green, Soundtrack To Sleep, All Dogs, LVL UP, Moon Hooch, Shark Week, The Raised By WolvesÛ_.and others. Check out content from many of these sessions on our website (links below)!
In the last two years we went from having no in-studios to having at least 2-3 per month. All of these sessions are recorded, mixed, and mastered by students in our studio despite our low budget, bare bones equipment, and small studio space. We created a compilation of these sessions at the end of last year titled “Live in The Hive” which you can check out on our Bandcamp.
Art
We’ve expanded our art department with the release of our first station publication titled The Stream. Featuring student content, music reviews, events and interviews, The Stream was a collaborative effort headed by Elijah Fosl, our Art Director, and a small staff comprised of DJs and friends. We’re really proud of this publication because it captures the tone and environment we have at WVAU, and it was produced and printed on a shoestring, too! This along with our “Live in The Hive” compilation made for two BRAND NEW physical publications that we had never previously released and getting both of these out in one semester was a direct result of the absolute dedication of our DJs to put out that best and the most content possible!
Being nominated for any CMJ awards would be an enormous honor for us. Our executive board and our DJs work tirelessly to make WVAU the best station it can be given our meager funding and tight physical space. We have raised the bar over the last year by pushing ourselves to produce more content, draw more listeners, make greater connections, and create a community that is a haven for music lovers and listeners alike. Nominate/Vote for WVAU!