As Grinnell prepares to open the new Knapp Film and Media Studies building, a class taught there should be on the collapse of a creative commons. It is a fitting place to learn what happens when creative infrastructure decays. Students would have an excellent case study right in their own backyard in KDIC.
Some might see the Film and Media Studies Department as a replacement for what the radio station once was, a space for students to study and experiment with media. But replacement implies improvement, and that is not what happened with KDIC. The college did not build on what already existed, it built as if 50 years of institutional history and broadcast media no longer had any value. The two could have made each other stronger
Many Grinnell alumni have gone on to successful careers in the music and media industry without ever needing a dedicated building or program. With few exceptions, we all share the same connective tissue: KDIC. It was a network amplifier for a small college in rural Iowa, connecting it to the broader world of music and media. KDIC reflected Grinnell’s DIY ethos, taught us the value of agency, and offered the opportunity to turn creative work into a career path. I worked there for three and a half years, two of them as music director. Because of that work, I received a Wilson Grant for an internship and another from the Career Life Services (CLS) the following year. The college supported my work at KDIC because it understood how student media built real-world connections. That support helped me secure my first job at Verve Records before I even walked for graduation.
I came back to Grinnell for the first time in years this spring. Later, my partner Stephanie and I stopped for dinner at Rube’s in Montour, Iowa’s finest cook-your-own steakhouse. Driving north on 390th St., the landscape opened up the way I remembered it. But when we flipped to 88.5, there was only static. We turned instead to World Cafe on WOI, syndicated out of Philadelphia. A classic show, to be sure, but not native to the landscape.
Grinnell’s Prairie Studies Program began when I was a student. It is dedicated to “living in place” and exploring the intersections of art, science, and community, yet it apparently never considered the broadcast spectrum as part of the cultural ecology.
Radio has been part of that ecology since the first public transmissions from San Jose, Cali., more than a century ago. It is the open space of culture, the commons that allows a community to speak in its own voice. Public access to the air is what keeps a place’s sound alive. As Marshall McLuhan wrote, “the medium is the message.” When that medium disappears, so does a certain kind of community, not because the content is gone, but because the form that carried it is.
When the station went silent during the pandemic, the continuity of that knowledge began to fade. The students who came after were never mentored the way I was. They inherited a gap, not a tradition, and the skills that once passed between generations of broadcasters were lost with the silence.
Streaming and podcasting are not replacements for radio. They are digital descendants, but they are not public in the same way that radio broadcast is. Even after years of working in “big tech,” I still understand that radio lives in public space, and how crucial that public space is. Online broadcasting is often akin to holding up a plastic bottle of water in front of the ocean and deciding to pour it in. Algorithms simulate intention, but they do not build community.
Though this version of KDIC won’t be on the air, the goal should be to rebuild KDIC as a place where students produce audio and learn what it takes to make sustainable programming. With only a fraction of the staffing that once kept the station running, the system was destined to fail, broadcast or not. Rebuilding it will require reinvesting in student leadership and continuity. Define the audience and map the connections between campus, town and alumni. Tell stories compelling enough that people will want to listen.
If Grinnell ever has a broadcast license again, if the political winds change and a new FCC window opens, students should have already done the more important work first. Create programming that is compelling semester after semester. Build it into a strategic plan so that Grinnellians years from now can take the reins when that opportunity arises. Programming is your horse. Without good programming, there is no cart.
Even without a broadcast license, KDIC’s name could be protected. Though call letters are assigned by the FCC, the college could still register the KDIC brand with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), potentially under dual-class categories for education and entertainment, showing a commitment to its cultural legacy. Grinnell should follow the University of San Francisco’s example with KUSF, which protected its name and identity through the USPTO, ensuring the station’s cultural work continued online. The same effort should protect other student-founded institutions that define Grinnell’s creative life: Freesound, Bob’s Underground and more.
The Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership should play a role in this larger effort. The Wilson Grant was critical to launching my career, and as I’ve learned over the course of it, media and technology are not separate pursuits. One deepens the other. The center should support student media projects that reflect that relationship.
KDIC’s story should serve as a warning to every student manager of culturally important organizations. Stewardship alone is not enough. It is not just about sustaining these organizations; it is about growing them. If you only sustain and stay in place, you eventually shrink while everything else grows around you. What will make your organization more essential to the culture of Grinnell College five years from now?
To the current generation of students, I would say this: I hope you build something more lasting and durable than we alumni ever managed to. If current students desire it, I am sure alumni would be willing to help provide the kind of mentorship the current generation never received, now informed by professional experience. Self-governance has always required shared responsibility, and when that responsibility lapses, whether by administrators, alumni, faculty or students alike, it becomes a form of self-abandonment.
Garrett Shelton ’01 is a former KDIC music director, co-founder of Freesound, and guest lecturer for Professor Mark Laver’s Music & Capitalism seminar, where he is presenting Living with Music: Economies of Listening. He is also at Bob’s Underground on Wednesday, Nov. 5, for a CLS-sponsored talk, “Organizing Creative Futures.” Garrett worked in the music industry for more than twenty years, including at Apple, Decca, Verve and KDIC.
