WUTM celebrates 50 years: student-led station provides experience, memories

Featured Photo provided by Dave Nichols

The young man dressed in all black pulls a set of headphones over his baseball cap and starts to read the day’s news. It’s a mixed bag today, with stories about driveby shootings and a sex abuse investigation sandwiched between a new hydroelectric plant and a new musical about Tina Turner. His voice is calm as he reads from the desktop monitor, and his Southern drawl resonates throughout the studio.

Next to him is a young woman with metal cat-eye glasses and dark brown curls pulled into a ponytail. She coaches him with a gentle voice, helping him figure out the timing of turning the microphone on and which of the glowing red and yellow buttons to press. It’s an experience that every person who takes part in UT Martin’s Mass Media and Strategic Communication program can relate to in some capacity.

WUTM-FM 90.3 “The Hawk,” UT Martin’s campus radio station, celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first broadcast this Sept. 15, and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its licensing under the Federal Communications Commission this Nov. 17. In the station’s main entry room, there are two glass cabinets filled with trophies adorned with microphones and shiny plaques with wood and metal, all bathed in soft lighting. However, the station wasn’t always so celebrated.

“The Hawk” got its humble start in a small brick building at the intersection of Hurt Street and Moody Avenue. There was a transmitter on the top of the building that was used for the local public television station. Inside the building were microphones and tape cassettes bought with the station’s starting money, as well as some other equipment donated by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The walls were covered with green burlap sacks to conserve the quality of the sound.

The building, referred to as “Old Motorpool” by the students, was formerly used as a garage facility and was located next to the antenna used to broadcast the local educational television network. The university found that it would be inexpensive to run cable from the building’s back room to the tower. 

“There’s nothing quite like starting a radio station from scratch,” Dave Nichols, retired radio and television broadcaster, said. During his time at WUTM, Nichols served as the station’s first music director, second program director and second student manager. 

The day Nichols first arrived at UT Martin in August 1971, there were only three groups of students on campus: football players, freshmen attending various events, and a handful of students working to establish the radio station. Nichols, along with his friend Terry Mathis, were on campus for freshman orientation and an honors symposium. Upon seeing what the radio station’s founders were up to, they quickly put themselves out there and joined the station’s ranks, which included Jimmy Hoppers, a local radio legacy who became the station’s first student manager, and Hunter Johnson, the station’s first program manager. The students were led by Dr. Robert Todd, a professor of English and the station’s first faculty adviser. 

About a month after Nichols joined the team, it was time for WUTM’s first test broadcast. The staff signed on at 8 p.m., and the students were on air playing music and talking until 1 a.m. The students followed this schedule Mondays-Fridays for a month, and played PSAs during the day when they were in class.

Soon, the daily responsibilities of the station began to materialize as the group fell into a routine. For Traffic Manager Janet French, this meant writing out all of the schedules with the names of the programs on a typewriter. For Nichols, this meant coordinating with record labels and distribution stores to cultivate the station’s music library. These records were often brought in by the truckload, with some exceptions coming from students’ personal collections.

Nichols went on to leave the station for a year to work in Jackson, but returned until his graduation in 1976. From there, became a founding member of Nashville’s first sports radio broadcast, “Sportsnuts,” and worked in various radio and television stations in the Nashville area until his retirement. 

“Starting at WUTM basically started out my career,” Nichols said. “It’s very important to me… It’s only amazing what we could have done if we really knew what we were doing.”

A few years later, the shape of WUTM began to change. Dr. Gary Steinke came to UT Martin and along with Dorotha Norton formed what is currently the Department of Mass Media and Strategic Communications in 1978. Steinke’s background in broadcast helped him prepare 36 years worth of communications students for a career and gave him the know-how to grow the station.

 Steinke went on to serve as the station’s adviser for 17 years, and taught at UT Martin until 2014. Steinke’s tenure at the station was followed by Carla Gesell-Streeter for four years, and current Instructor of MMSC Rodney Freed led the station for two. In 2001, Dr. Richard Robinson began working at UTM and became the adviser to the station, both positions he holds to this day.

During his 20 years at WUTM, Robinson has led and challenged his students to meet their potential. Many times, they have risen to the occasion, as WUTM has won more than 300 awards under Robinson’s leadership, including the Intercollegiate Broadcasting Society’s Abraham and Borst Award in 2012, which recognizes the best radio station overall, regardless of size. That year, Robinson traveled to New York with student employees Josh Lemons and Chad Brewer for the ceremony. None of the men were aware that they would bring home 15 awards, let alone the most prestigious one of them all.

“That’s when I thought the station really had done extremely well, and I told Josh, ‘Guys, get up there and grab that award before they change their mind. Let’s get that thing,’ So that was incredible,” Robinson said. His clear voice boomed throughout his office, which is filled to the brim with old radios and related equipment. Above a door on the back wall is a poster of a dachshund, a breed of dog that he has a soft spot for.

Today, things look a lot different for WUTM. The station’s music library is entirely computerized and comes from the top 30 music charts for pop, country, R&B and oldies. The green burlap sacks are no longer on the wall either; in fact, the station’s original building is no longer even on campus. The station now presides on the second floor of Gooch Hall, where there are multiple recording rooms that are soundproofed with small, dark gray foam squares. 

A typical day in the station now starts at 8 a.m., when Hannah Bilger, a senior MMSC major and news director from Tupelo, Mississippi, enters the station and prepares the day’s news, which students begin to read live at 9 a.m. Throughout the day, various students come in and out of the station to read the news or participate in the station’s numerous programs.

Robinson enters the station between 9-9:30 a.m. with his black briefcase and his daily to-do list. Between classes and meetings, Robinson collaborates with the station’s student employees, Freed and Brian Thomas, who serves as the station’s engineer, to make sure that everything is running smoothly in the station.

The station also plays music during weekends, and students are able to record voice tracks to play at various breaks during that time. One can listen to WUTM at any hour of the day, and since the station began streaming online in 2013, one can listen from anywhere they have a Wi-Fi connection.

“I have sat in New York at a conference with students in a restaurant listening to an OVC conference tournament basketball game. That’s huge. That’s a game changer for any station, but especially for a college station that has limited power,” Robinson said.

Despite the changes, the station still serves as a learning opportunity for students, just as it did for Nichols almost 50 years ago. Students get firsthand experience in the broadcast field through their work with the station, whether by interviewing university officials in the studio or calling a local football game. 

“(WUTM) has just given me the experience that I know I’ll need after graduation to go out there and have the confidence,” Tatum Baldwin, a senior MMSC major from Manchester and the station’s program director, said. “That’s why I took on the Program Director job, because I could have turned it down and just stayed News Director, but I know that in the long run, that’ll be better for me.”

WUTM-FM 90.3 “The Hawk” plans to ring in their 50th anniversary in a few ways. Firstly, they will host a number of giveaways on their social media. WUTM will also incorporate a tie-in to World College Radio Day, which is celebrated Oct. 1. Finally, they will make appearances throughout Homecoming, including a booth at Quad City as well as calling UT Martin’s homecoming game against Murray State University. The station will also play celebratory recordings from familiar alumni during breaks and will allow alumni to visit the station during Homecoming. 

“We’ll be on the Quad at Homecoming playing music through our big boombox, interviewing people, talking, letting people know, ‘Hey, we’re here, and we’re your station, and we’re trying to serve you.’ That’s really what radio stations do best, I think: provide information and promote things from within their own community,” Robinson said. “One of my favorite expressions is, ‘Don’t just do what’s required, do what’s necessary,’ and that’s what I try to get these students to do. Don’t just do the minimum; do everything you can and a little bit more and you’ll see the benefit of it, now as well as later.”