A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

I WILL TELL YOU FROM MY CAST IRON CHAIR:  My college radio alma mater, WAMH 89.3 FM, where I started with a Fridays at 4am hour-long shift before eventually advancing to mid-afternoon, is cutting back its student dj hours to 4pm to 2am and letting NPR programming fill the rest of the day:

Although students used to clamor to fill 24 hours of programming every day and more than 100 student DJs were on the air as recently as 2000, in the past few years it’s been a challenge to fill more than 10 hours a day. Neel explained that, “as a result of various different things” including “radio falling out of favor” and “poor leadership,” student participation at WAMH has dwindled and around 3 years ago reached its lowest point. At the time, WAMH was in serious danger of disappearing and that, in part, is why the arrangement with New England Public Radio Network was so appealing. WAMH hadn’t been airing student programming during the early part of the day and Neel told me that students at Amherst College prefer time slots after 4pm.