Chapter 1: Radio as Lightning Rod

WQAX

Many of WFHB’s early programmers got their start at WQAX (also known as QAX, pronounced ‘quacks’), a free-form cable radio station active in Bloomington, Indiana, from 1973 to 1993, at which point it entered an “indefinite hiatus” due to lack of financial support. WQAX was founded in 1973 by programmers at WIUS, Indiana University’s official student-staffed radio station at the time.[1] WIUS used closed carrier current transmission, or cable radio, a wired, low-power form of broadcasting technology. Listeners to cable radio must use an electrical cable to plug a radio speaker into a wall outlet that is networked with the radio station in question. WIUS’s signal was transmitted over a network confined to the university’s residence halls. These spatial limitations frustrated many of the student broadcasters, who proposed expanding their listenership beyond university students by connecting the station to the city-wide cable radio system. This would still limit the station’s reach, as the requirement for a wired connection to a properly networked outlet meant such stations could not be listened to in cars or in any private spheres without such an outlet. Per many of the former WQAX programmers I spoke with, cable radio in general was most often a feature of local restaurants and other public spaces, giving such stations potentially broad if fixed and passive audiences.

University administrators dismissed the students’ proposed plan and made clear that they had no interest in letting WIUS extend beyond the dormitories. Reportedly, the stated position of the then-Assistant Dean of Students was that students shouldn’t be talking to townspeople. Over fifty years later, it is unclear exactly when, how, and to whom this sentiment was expressed, but a core group of WQAX programmers (including a former general manager) still active in maintaining an archive of the station’s history confirmed to me in personal correspondence that it reflects the position of the WIUS administrative board at the time (not just the Assistant Dean), and was what prompted the formation of the breakaway IU Student Broadcast Corporation, which created WQAX.

The formation of WQAX was a watershed moment for radio in Bloomington. Operating with the explicit intent of being independent from but still accessible to Indiana University, it was open to anyone, not just students. It was a truly free-form station, in which programmers had full control over what they played, saturating the Bloomington airwaves with an eclectic range of programming that was up until that point unheard of in town. One of my WFHB colleagues, who programmed at a different cable radio station during college, explained that their experience with the form was that “if anybody’s listening, that’s the miracle. It’s more likely that no one’s listening than anyone’s gonna complain about anything you play.” For those I spoke with, this was not a negative. As with Pacifica and KRAB, WQAX encouraged programmers to follow their own interests.

Though not entirely a free-for-all, virtually everyone had a chance to program, at least as my colleagues explained it to me, and the vast majority attempted it in good faith. Said one:

QAX kicked along and was a really great thing to be involved with in so many ways. I made so many friends. It was like-minded people. It was an organization that you had to go to weekly meetings and you had to… the way it was scheduled is you got a show each week if you just showed up at the weekly meeting and signed up for it. And if you wanted to keep the same time slot, you had to come to that weekly meeting. Which was a pretty brilliant idea in terms of keeping just a bunch of spacey ‘70s kids in line. (Interview 15)

The management reserved the right to give feedback to its programmers and to cancel programs that they felt did not work, but operated with open minds and a vast library available to its programmers. “During my years at QAX,” wrote programmer and music director Anne Zender in a local publication following the station’s closure, “I was within arm’s reach of music by Richard Hell, Etta James, Public Enemy, and a head-spinning number of others. With all of these things to be discovered, doing radio shows at QAX became a business of cryptic juxtaposition—or it could be as straightforward as an hour of train songs, or an evening of songs two minutes or shorter in length” (Zender 1993). As a non-commercial station, WQAX was sustained by fundraising events. By 1993, though, the donations WQAX received were insufficient, and they were forced to suspend operations. It was coincidentally this same year that WFHB first went on the air. WQAX donated tens of thousands of vinyl records to the new station. Many of them remain as physical manifestations of philosophical continuities.

[1] WIUS would later change its call letters to WIUX, taking on the X from WQAX. WIUS/WIUX is notably separate from WFIU, a public radio station that is a member of NPR, Public Radio International, and American Public Media and that has been based on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus since its founding in 1950. While WIUS/WIUX is open to student programmers, WFIU is staffed by paid, professional broadcasters.