Two Tarleton State University attended the College Broadcaster Inc. National Student Electronic Media Convention located in Philadelphia from Oct. 20-22. Seniors Austin Bradley and Mark Smith represented the Tarleton Radio Station. Bradley and Smith gave their own presentation on ‘How a format change can save your station’ and had the opportunity to attend seminars.

“We presented on what we went through during our [radio] format change and how other stations can change their format and why it can benefit them.” Bradley stated.

The Tarleton’s Radio station switches from Indie Rock to popular Rock music, but according to Bradley, it was what their market wanted.

“We basically preached about tailoring to your market. The idea that college radio has to be Indie and different and or weird, is a cool theory, but it wasn’t paying our bills.” Bradley stated.

The radio station surveyed the student body at Tarleton during fall 2015 and found that most students wanted country. Bradley mentioned that being in Stephenville there were already a dozen country stations in the area. The next two results of the survey were Hip-Hop and Popular Rock.

“Tarleton is not going to allow students playing Hip-Hop all the time every day. Although, I argued how it would be easier to sell and more students would listen, but Dean Styron did not agree. So we play Popular Rock from 6 a.m. through 10 p.m. and the rest of the night we play Hip-Hop.” Bradley said.

“It had a real group-think tone to it,” said Bradley referring to their own presentation.

Their presentation led off with, “If anyone has any questions or ideas, please feel free to share. Just because this worked for us doesn’t mean it’ll work for you.” After that opening comment, the two said they received a large amount of interaction from students and advisors. They claimed that after the session was over several people who attended said that it was the best session they had been to this year.

Bradley stated that the next day their advisors had attended an advisor’s session. During this session Tarleton’s radio advisor said he had spoken with other advisors who didn’t even attend Bradley and Smith’s session, but had their own students speak about it to them. Students claimed it was “the best session they had been to.”