WPCR Goes Live Online: An Interview With Manager Nick Landry

This week our college's radio station, 91.7 WPCR, went live with its web streaming service on its website, wpcr.org. To celebrate the event, I sat down with the manager of the station, my good buddy Nick Landry, who along with other affiliates of the radio, such as Paul Rogalus, Mike Davidson, Miles Winzeler, Sean Noonan and Chad Johansen, were finally was able to bring web streaming to WPCR. Below is our conversation.

How long have you been the manager of WPCR? 

I've been the manager since the beginning of this school year. I was elected at the end of spring 2012 and was able to contribute a little bit over the summer, but most of my duties started when school did. I've been involved with the radio for a while, though. I started my freshman year as a regular DJ and last year I moved up to Production Director.

How long has WPCR been attempting to achieve web streaming? How difficult was the process? 

It's been something like a 10 to 15 year process. It's hard to say when it all exactly began, but our advisor, Paul Rogalus, puts the estimate somewhere right around twelve years. It's taken a really long time to get to a point where we were logistically ready for webcasting. It took us awhile to get through all the paperwork and get our ducks in a row but it was definitely worth the wait.

I know you guys have been live for a while. When did you go live and how has the stream been working so far? 

Well, we went live unofficially this past week. We had some testing to do, and it took us a little while to figure out exactly how things were gonna run, but now we've got that down. It's still new and live-streaming makes doing a radio show a much more difficult process, so we might still have a few kinks to work out before we're running at peak efficiency. I have a lot of confidence in our DJs so I'm sure things will go smoothly.

You'll be celebrating web streaming with a launch event on Wednesday, March 6th, what can we expect from the event? 

Well, it's basically going to be our normal meeting, but we're hoping to have a cake and some other treats to thank everyone who put in hard work to make webcasting a reality. I'm really grateful that we have so many wonderful people involved with WPCR, so this is us saying thank you to them. They're what make accomplishments like webcasting so rewarding - that's what we're celebrating.

What do you guys plan to do now that you have the stream set up? 

There are a lot of big things in the works that I'm really excited about. Being on the internet is a really great opportunity for WPCR to get a lot of exposure. Technology has sort of moved away from FM radio, so being online brings us a lot of potential listeners who otherwise might not be able to listen to us. I'd like to use this to our advantage by making sure we have a strong web presence. I'd also love to get WPCR more involved in promoting Plymouth organizations, events, businesses, etc. But the first step to all of this is making sure people are listening to the radio. We need to be sure that we're playing what listeners in Plymouth want to hear.

To listen to WPCR online right now go to their website at wpcr.org. If you're interested in joining the organization, meetings are held every Wednesday at 9p.m. in Memorial 103, or you can contact Nick at nhlandry@mail.plymouth.edu.