October 23rd 1997
WDCV offers new variety of programs, opportunity for experience in radio

Lesley Barnett, music director at the station, believe WDCV “is raising student awareness to different varieties of music.”  Attesting to this, the station plays everything from heavy metal to gospel to jazz.  It also broadcasts football games live.  The Clarke Center airs lectures Friday nights.

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated!

October 22nd 1992
WDCV is back! Did it ever leave?

“So turn your radios in to FM 88.3 and give them a call at 1444 for a request.  They’ll play it; they play anything”

Note how the article calls the old station (where the devil den is now) an eyesore for potential students on tours.  We are happy that Dickinson has considered moving us back into the open if and when they actually renovate the HUB.  A station can dream, can’t it?

WDCV on the comeback trail
August 29th 1997

This quote still resonates today:

A good college is backed by great media.  It was frustrating to see that students here weren’t taking advantage of the great opportunity provided by the radio station

-Junior Tom Wallace

WDCV Station Manager 

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated!  

DJ Joe George Radio Show

Tracks
Ride-Vapor Trail
Kitchens of Distinction-Quick as Rainbows
Redd Kross-Bubblegum Factory
Jigsaw Scene-Jim is the Devil
B,B. & Bob-Clothes of the Dead
Frazier Chorus-Prefer You Dad
1/2 Japanese-One Million Kisses
The La’s-There She Goes
Xymox-Heartland
OMD-Neon Lights
Lead Into Gold-Faster Than Light
Meatbeat Manifesto-All the Things You Are 

If you have old WDCV radio shows, we would love to have a copy.  We can even digitize cassettes.  Contact us at wdcvalumni@gmail.com

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

Yesterday, we posted a 1986 letter from a local Carlisle resident who was not pleased when WDCV’s audio was bleeding through on a cable channel.  Our all knowledgable alum, Pete Bilderback, had written about a similar story for the alumni magazine a few years back.  We thought this story was too good to be forgotten.  Enjoy.

NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS
During the late ’80s and early ’90s I served as music director and station manager at WDCV. I enjoyed the radio station so much that I (perhaps foolishly) passed up the opportunity to study abroad during my junior year to continue running the station. Quite simply I was too in love with the mystery and romance of the medium, its simultaneously ephemeral and enduring nature, to tear myself away. Everything I broadcast was instantly lost in the ether, yet it might provide a memory that could last a listener’s lifetime. I loved knowing that I might brighten the evening of someone pulling the late-night shift at a gas station, connect with someone spending time in jail (I got a lot of collect calls from the prison) or provide the soundtrack to someone’s first adventures in the back seat of a car. Of course it was possible that no one at all was listening, but I took pleasure in imagining the possibilities.

During this time WDCV typically broadcast “alternative” rock on weekday mornings and evenings. If you tuned into 88.3 FM in Carlisle you might have heard the mopey splendor of The Smiths, the neurotic buzz of the Throwing Muses, the high-octane bubblegum punk of the Descendents or the soon-to-be-popular “grunge rock” of Nirvana. Afternoons were given over to the music of the ascendant hip-hop culture—the pioneering rap music of Public Enemy, Salt-n-Pepa, Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions and others. Weekends were reserved for the more eclectic jazz, blues, classical, Christian rock and gospel.

Early in the spring 1990 semester, a young woman (whose name I no longer recall) approached me about a Broadway show tunes program. I felt it would be a perfect match for our Sunday-evening programming and gave her a show immediately, bypassing the usual semesterlong apprenticeship. Though my own enthusiasm for show tunes would not blossom until later in life, I was very impressed by her large collection of original cast recordings, as well as her passion for the music. I didn’t know how someone in her late teens had acquired such an encyclopedic knowledge of show tunes, but I imagined that she came from an archetypical American family that retired to the parlor after dinner to sing show tunes around the family piano. I gave her a two-week crash course in radio programming, introduced her to the world of cueing and mixing and explained how to best project her voice over the air. She struck me as very shy and reserved, but by the end of the second week I felt she had gained enough confidence to handle the show on her own.

I checked in with her the fourth week of her program. She told me in a voice that betrayed her distress that things had not gone well. After she announced the station’s phone number for requests, she was instantly bombarded with hundreds of ranting, obscene phone calls demanding that she get off the air immediately. Apparently some wires had gotten crossed at the local cable TV company and, that particular Sunday, viewers who had tuned in to hear Pat Summerall and John Madden comment on Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers’ 55-10 dismantling of John Elway and the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV were instead treated to show tunes direct from the basement of the HUB.

This must have been a frightening experience for this young woman, but I must confess to a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that the most macho of all-American holidays had been disrupted by show tunes. Imagine the most extreme contrapuntal juxtapositions of sound and image, say Carol Lawrence singing “I Feel Pretty” as Elway gets sacked for the fifth time or Barbara Streisand offering the musical opinion that “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world” as Bobby Humphrey gets stuffed by Matt Millen for a three-yard loss.

Perhaps the incident was more prosaic than what I envisioned and viewers were treated to something more appropriate to the occasion such as the musical pugilism of Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton singing “Anything You Can Do.” No doubt the overwhelming majority of the audience would have preferred to hear from Summerall and Madden, and they weren’t shy about letting her know this. Despite the misery this young woman endured that day, I have to confess a small degree of jealousy, as she reached a larger audience that day than I ever did.
—Willis Peter Bilderback ’91

March 1991

DJ Pete Bilderback

“This is a fairly representative sample of the kind of radio program I was doing at the time. I kept the talk to a minimum and played a lot of music. The show would probably have been on a Tuesday night in the 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM timeslot. The show’s name was “The Tina Yothers Experience,” although I probably never said that on the air and only used the title in promotional posters.”

Here is the playlist:

0:00 PSA Followed by bitter DJ Rant
0:38 Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - “Green Peppers”
2:05 Tom Zè - “Mã”
5:49 Sly And The Family Stone - “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”
10:18 Daniel Owino Misiani - “Joshirati Misiani “
15:10 DJ Announcements
15:30 Fugazi - “Waiting Room” *listener request
18:20 Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band - “Ella Guru”
20:48 Robyn Hitchcock - “The Ghost In You” [Psychedelic Furs Cover] *listener request
23:59 Phil Ochs - “Tape From California”
30:38 DJ Announcements
31:25 Chris McGreggor And The Brotherhood Of Breath - “Country Cooking”
36:30 Bad Brains - “Day Tripper/She’s A Rainbow [Live]” [Beatles/Rolling Stones Cover]
41:00 Kip Kyler And His Flips - “Jungle Hop”
43:00 The Busters - “Bust Out”
45:30 Elvis Presley - “Patch It Up [Live]” *listener request
48:56 DJ Announcements
49:35 Rahsaan Roland Kirk - “Multihorn Variations”
54:26 Das Damen - “Sky Yen”
57:05 Gilberto Gil - “Quilombo, o El Dorado Negro”
61:28 Snakefinger - “The Man In The Dark Sedan”
65:46 Tom Waits - “16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six”
70:18 Sun Ra And His Arkestra - “Space Is The Place”
79:10 DJ Announcements
79:51 Sly And The Family Stone - “Ride The Rhythm” and “Family Affair”
85:23 Love - “You I’ll Be Following”
87:40 Yung Wu - “Aspiration”
91:17 The Mekons - “I Can’t Find My Money” [Cuts Off]


If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

Live from the WDCV Studio!  Assorted Pictures of DJs in the Booth

Cheryl A. De Bari, Class of 1981

Gregory E. Zimmerman circa 1982

Patrick Herward circa 1999

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

February 2nd 1992
DJ Meeting Poster

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

WDCV Shirt Logo Late 80’s/Early 90’s

Thanks to Pete Bilderback for the image!

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

WDCV Shirt Logo Late 80’s/Early 90’s

Taken from Pete Bilderback’s Blog

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

Assorted Show Flyers from Pete Bilderback ‘91
These were taken from a rather interesting blog post he wrote about his time as a dj and Station Manager of WDCV. 

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

Fall 1991 Schedule

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated! 

New Voices Article 1994

We aren’t sure what this is from but it is an article introducing stations and their staff.  Specifically, WDCV, WFNM 89.1 Franklin & Marshall, & WMSS 91.1 Middletown High School

Pictured: Jeanette Engert, Lee Shapley, Jeff Prather

If you are a WDCV alum we would love to hear more about you and your time at WDCV. Can you fill out this quick survey ? It would be much appreciated!