GREENFIELD — When Greenfield-Central High School’s radio station first hit the airwaves, some of the hottest songs at the time were “Livin’ la Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin, “Learn To Fly” by the Foo Fighters and “Genie In a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera.
The station started broadcasting on Dec. 4, 1999. Music trends have come and gone over the past 20 years, but young communicators continue powering Cougar Radio, WRGF (89.7 FM), by creating content, covering sports, lining up music and learning skills along the way.
Tim Renshaw, who retired from the high school in 2013, built the station with the help of Gary Stouder. A couple years prior, Renshaw said, the school board president at the time had asked him what it would take to put a school radio station on the air.
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Renshaw first got involved in broadcasting when he was a high school student and went on to work in the industry professionally, including at the former WSMJ in Greenfield. He took up the school board president’s idea and spent the next couple years building the station.
WRGF started out with an eclectic musical format, Renshaw said, including soft rock, hard rock, country and metal. It also covered sports and local events like elections and the annual Riley Festival.
About a dozen students were involved with the station that first year, Renshaw said. For the first couple years, students participated on a volunteer basis. Then Renshaw worked with the principal at the time and the guidance department to turn the station into a vocational program from which students could earn credit.
Everything Renshaw built and put together at the station was recently replaced with what he called state-of-the-art equipment that students would find at any commercial radio station.
“It’s really neat that the school has put that much faith in the facility and the people running it that they’ve set it up to run for a lot more than just the 20 years they’ve experienced so far,” Renshaw said.
Today, Greenfield-Central’s radio/TV classes draw 70 students a semester. There are seven classes, two of which focus solely on sports broadcasting.
WRGF consists of two studios: an on-air studio and another set up the same way but used mainly for training and projects, like recording public service announcements and the Christmas murder mystery audio drama students created before the recent holiday break.
The on-air studio has microphones, a sound board and a computer packed with a library of songs. Posters of musical acts hang on the walls.
Jonathan Hudson, WRGF general manager, advances his students’ curriculum every year to keep up with the changes in the industry.
Hudson’s students follow a schedule prepared for each show, which last about an hour and 15 minutes. Students read news and the weather, engage in talk segments and play music.
Bill McKenna, director of telecommunications at Greenfield-Central High School, said the station never shuts down, not even over summer break.
“The goal is we’re live all the time,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing about the radio station. We want those kids to have a voice on the radio — terrestrial radio. That’s what I love most of all. The music’s whatever the music is, but I want to hear them… When we get four kids in here, we get a good show going, they just rock it.”
Hudson said students also play audio from their video projects, write and record public service announcements and produce an hour-long show called “Let’s Talk Sports.”
“They get into fiery debates,” Hudson said. “It’s really fun.”
Working in the radio station teaches communication, writing, making deadlines and teamwork, Hudson said, skills he added one needs in any line of work.
“The thing that we hear from so many alums, whether or not they decided to pursue this or not, is they’re coming to college very prepared from a communications standpoint,” he said. “We’ve had kids come in here that were just shy as all be and wouldn’t say a word; and two, three weeks with us, they’ll open up.”
Greenfield-Central 2011 grad Brittany Stillinger relocated to Greenfield with her family in 2010 and needed to fill some slots in her class schedule. McKenna was trying to get more female students involved in the radio program and convinced her to try it. She’d always had a passion for music, she said, and her former school didn’t have a radio station.
“That was interesting to me and just something completely different,” she said.
Stillinger started the station’s Twitter and Facebook pages and sharpened skills she now uses coordinating social media for her church.
She worked in the station during the school year and as an intern over the summer after graduation. Stillinger then went to Ball State University, where her WRGF experience gave her an advantage at the college radio station.
“I ended up not studying telecommunications, but it definitely opened up a lot of doors and allowed me to have a lot more experiences in college because of that,” Stillinger said.
WRGF also impacted her life in a personal way. She met her husband, Josh Stillinger, who graduated from G-CHS in 2012. The couple recently had a baby.
“Who knows where I would be if it wasn’t for the radio class,” she said.
Kyle Vail, a 2008 G-CHS graduate, worked for WRGF as well, including broadcasting football games and other sporting events.
“It seemed like a great opportunity to get hands-on experience and produce something,” he said.
He enjoyed working with others, interviewing people, following through on ideas and experiencing how an end product turns out, he said.
After high school but before starting a career in management consulting, he went to Indiana University, where he was sports director at the student-run radio station for a year. Like Stillinger, the experience he gained at WRGF put him ahead of the game.
“It was a fantastic opportunity,” he said of Cougar Radio. “If somebody wants to go into broadcasting, it was as close as you could get to the real thing.”
McKenna said he doesn’t know what’s in store for the future of radio. When he worked in the industry, every station had a complete staff, he said. Now, a conglomerate will buy multiple stations and task one or two people with running several stations at a time.
He hopes WRGF will continue to be available to students for decades to come.
“I just want them to still have that opportunity,” he said, “because terrestrial radio is not going away… I just want it to be here for these kids, because it makes our school system very unique. Twenty years — it’s a big deal.”
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