Changing Frequency
Newly formatted Black college radio stations work to jazz up their image, while serving campus and community

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

Before Fisk University's radio station recently began using the tagline "Smooth Side Up" to refer to its new smooth jazz format, the station's broadcasting image was upside down. At best, it played a hodgepodge of music, with no connecting format, and was known more for its somewhat low-brow syndicated programming and local talk shows, many of which were nothing more than fillers, according to the station's new boss.

In an attempt to achieve some local market share, the station, WFSK, aptly tried to appeal to Nashville's growing international community — with locally produced programs directed toward Latinos, Ethiopians and East Indians. But such attempts appeared to get lost amid the station's overall disorganization.

That changed in August 2002 when Fisk University President Carolynn Reid-Wallace hired Peter Woolfolk as vice president for communications and public relations. Woolfolk, a former communications consultant for a division of the National Institutes of Health, spent years in radio in the Washington, D.C., area. He says before he was hired at Fisk, he asked that the radio station be restructured under his control, a move that Reid-Wallace accepted. Before then, the station was under auxiliary services, he said.

"For all practical purposes, it was an embarrassment," Woolfolk says of the radio station before he came. "There was Celtic music on there; there was Hindu music; there was pre-recorded programs on there from various parts of the country. The quality of the broadcast was not good in terms of broadcast standards. … The perception of the few listeners that were out there is that it was awful. You could barely find anyone who knew Fisk had a radio station and fewer who would listen."

Now, just over a year later, and with the potential to reach 900,000 people in the Nashville area, thousands of residents are tuning into the first radio station on the FM dial — WFSK-88.1. The university's smooth-jazz format — which offers the flexibility of playing instrumental renditions of popular music, as well as the hip contemporary sounds of neo-soul artists like Jill Scott — has struck a resounding chord here.