By Pearce Hungate
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (UATV) — KXUA, the University of Arkansas’ own radio station, is set for a major upgrade in 2020.
The station, whose studio is currently perched in the sixth floor of the Student Union, will move into its new location in the second floor of Kimpel hall across from the Student Media Center sometime in May.
The switch seeks to improve on a few shortcomings of the existing studio by giving DJs more space, as well as bringing the station closer to the other student medias to improve their ability to collaborate.
Students from all majors serve as DJs within KXUA, playing a wide range of music from normal radio fare to more unique selections. A station rule preventing DJs from playing any songs from the top forty of the last fifty years results in a variety of music, most of which the DJs will assure that you’ll never hear otherwise.
Junior Haydn Babione, a newer DJ at KXUA, describes his music simply.
“This semester I’m going to be playing a new show that’s mostly focused around the funk and soul of the sixties and seventies.” Babione said.
Junior Drew Goodman fills his airtime with music that even he struggles to describe.
“I would say I listen to a lot of EDM, like house music, but more relaxed than that. Some people call it Soulwave, like vaporwave and soul combined,” said Goodman. “Sometimes I go up to synthwave, and sometimes I brush up against EDM, but I never go up to EDM completely.”
KXUA plays more than just music, however. The freedom offered has led to students using their airtime for everything from late night variety shows to early morning talk shows.
Paxton Dodd, a junior, has run a show in the morning with a friend for two semesters.
“The show is a little bit unique in that I don’t play music so much, but rather me and my partner talk about things: random topics that we think of, stories from our lives; if someone calls in to give us a topic we talk about it,” said Dodd.
That freedom to play whatever they want has led some DJs to adopt their own on-air personas, some of which have begun to bleed into their day-to-day life. Goodman has adopted an alternate ego as ‘DJ Droompa Loompa.’
“DJ Droompa Loompa, he’s a very carefree guy. His only job is to play music on the radio. When I play music in the car, when I’m on a roadtrip with other people, people seem to like my music even more when they know it’s coming from this character, DJ Droompa Loompa,” said Goodman.
The current, and soon-to-be-former, studio is on the smaller side.
“It has a lot of heart, it is charming, but it’s small, it’s cluttered, and there’s not a lot of space. For as big as we’d like to grow, it could be bigger, and I think that the new studio is going to be fantastic,” said Dodd.
Despite its size, the studio has been transformed by the countless DJs that have served the station for the nearly two decades that KXUA has existed on campus.
“I will feel nostalgic about the old studio, because it’s such a cool spot, you can tell there’s just so much history in there. There’s stickers everywhere there’s writing everywhere, it’s just filled with the culture of all the interesting people that have been in and out of there,” said Goodman.
With the switch to the new studio, there was the fear that what the space would make up for in size and technology, it would lose in its culture. Senior Josiah Johnson disagrees.
“I don’t think that the magic or the homeliness of the studio we have now will be difficult to create,” Johnson said.
“We are able to make the studio itself a space of our own.”
Students who are interested in becoming DJs can apply by submitting an application in the KXUA office in the sixth floor of the Student Union.