WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
The history of Bloomington’s community radio station; a continuing series.
When Jim Manion was 16, he tried to get a DJ shift at the University of Evansville campus radio station. He was told he had to be a college student to go on the air. “That’s the reason I’ve always been a strong advocate for Youth Radio on WFHB,” he says, “because I didn’t get the opportunity when I wanted it.”
A singer songwriter named Sarah Flint became a WFHB DJ soon after operations were moved into the Firehouse on 4th Street. Within a couple of years, she came up with an idea for a whole new community radio program. She, too, had fallen in love with radio as a kid. “I got my FCC license when I was 14,” she says. Radio, she reasoned, shouldn’t be the exclusive province of grownups.
“It just seemed so easy,” she says. “You just start talking! You play a song, you report the weather, you flip some switches, and gosh! I would love to hear what teens are thinking.”
She was a substitute teacher at the time so had access to a whole pool of potential kid radio personalities. Flint initiated the first incarnation of WFHB’s Youth Radio in 1995.
“It was exciting for the kids to think their voices might be heard, their ideas might be heard, their music might be heard,” she says. The music teen DJs played, she remembers, “was amazingly varied” — from classic rock to jazz. Flint ran the program for about five years, then Rhino’s Youth Center took over with Flint staying on as a radio mentor.
Rhino’s went out of business in 2019 but WFHB’s Youth Radio program has been revived in recent years. Directors Aja Essex (until the summer of 2024) and now Jessie Grubb have created a lively, exciting, welcoming space for people aged 13-20 to broadcast their voices, their ideas, and their music. Youth Radio airs every Saturday from 4-8pm.
NEXT POST: RADIO THEATER
Come back for more tales from the WFHB genesis story in this space as we celebrate our 31st year as Bloomington’s home of community radio.