Go to the KWVA homepage and listen to the station live

Top 5 songs on KWVA for the week of 2/16/04

1 WALKMEN: "Bows And Arrows"

2 AIR: "Talkie Walkie"

3 XIU XIU: "Fabulous Muscles"

4 NUDGE: "Elaborate Devices For Filtering Crisis"

5 SAVATH AND SAVALAS: "Apropa't"

The offices of KWVA used to be a women's bathroom. The radio station wasn't a high priority at the University of Oregon when it started up more than 10 years ago. The student-funded and student-run radio station started broadcasting on 88.1 FM in May 1993, about three years after students applied for a broadcasting license with the Federal Communications Commission.

The fledgling station was filled with the analog leftover equipment from area stations that were switching to digital technologies. Analog equipment was practically Jurassic even 11 years ago, but it is only now that the campus radio station is switching over to the digital age.

In May 2003, the station was granted $118,438 for equipment and station upgrades from student fees, which fund the station. That's 57 percent more than the $75,072 the station received for general operations. It received an additional $31,794 in February 2004 when the project ran longer and required more work than expected.

That money has translated into a mess of activity: new doors, holes cut into concrete walls, wires stretching across hallways and most important to the station, all new digital equipment. The construction and installation will not be done for several months, and even then listeners will likely notice little difference in the sound quality improvements the gear brings.

Listeners don't really tune in to KWVA for professional quality, though. They come to hear what they will not find on commercial radio, what they have maybe never heard before. There is rockabilly, bluegrass, electronica, hip hop, noise collage, punk rock, emo, jazz, Mexican polka, Japanese pop. The list goes on and on, although Top 40 hits almost never enter the mix.

So who will notice? Why the thousands of dollars in upgrades? Convenience. Modernity. An up-to-date learning environment. It comes down to the fact that the DJs will notice. The staff will notice. And it is they, though ever cycling through, who form the heart of KWVA.