Terrestrial Radio Remains Strong

03/01/2025
By Ed Brennen
In 1952, Percy Faith, Jo Stafford and Eddie Boyd were topping the music charts, and an industrial engineering student named Ed Bonacci ’54 was living in the former Eames Hall on North Campus, where the Pulichino Tong Business Center now stands.
Bonacci liked to play records in his dorm room, and he built his own amplifier to boost the sound coming from his speakers. One day, he was walking down the hall when he heard the record that he was playing coming from another room. Bonacci poked his head in the door and realized that some classmates had picked up the signal from his amplifier on their AM radio.
“We like your music,” they told Bonacci.
Inspired by this serendipity, the students decided to create an actual AM radio station at what was then the Lowell Textile Institute. They scavenged for equipment, set up a studio in the basement of Kitson (now Shah) Hall and, on Jan. 15, 1953, began broadcasting as WLTI.
More than 70 years later, the station lives on as WUML (91.5 FM).
Broadcasting on the FM dial and online, WUML has operated from the basement of Lydon Library on North Campus since 1971. Over the years, it has hosted live performances by artists such as Pixies, Jethro Tull and Frank Zappa at its sound studio, The Fallout Shelter. The station broadcasts UML hockey games and recently hosted its annual Rock for Tots charity concert at Moloney Hall.

Radio is not ‘over and out’
Despite the popularity of streaming music services, satellite radio and podcasts, terrestrial radio remains strong, with 82% of Americans age 12 and older listening in a given week, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Currently, WUML has 110 student broadcasters working as DJs, co-hosts and guests on 38 shows.
Carolina Tavares, a senior English major with a concentration in journalism, joined WUML as a first-year student and is now the general manager and genre director. She also hosts the show “Flowers in the Rain” on Fridays from 8 to 10 p.m. She says it’s “such a gift” to continue the station’s legacy.
“I've met some of my best friends through WUML and have learned so much—not just about radio, but also about commu- nication, leadership and working with others,” says the Milford, Massachusetts, native.
Freddy McWilliams, a sophomore chemical engineering major from Concord, Massachusetts, was part of a student radio station in high school. When he saw that UML had a station, he wanted to get involved.
“Streaming services and podcasts are taking over, but a lot of people still listen to the radio in their car to and from work,” says McWilliams, who hosts two shows this year, “Hub Premium” on Mondays from 6 to 8 p.m. and “The Haters Union” on Fridays from 7 to 9 a.m.
McWilliams also serves as the station’s chief engineer, working with Operations Manager Tom Tiger to “make sure that everything is running smoothly and everyone is able to do their shows.”
Tiger, who has worked as operations manager for two decades, says the popularity of podcasts has led to more students wanting to get on air in recent years.
“We used to have one or two DJs in our main broadcast room, and all of a sudden I’d find dozens of chairs in there because everyone is huddled around the microphones," he says.
Students aren’t the only ones playing music and expressing their views on the WUML airwaves: There are currently six shows hosted by nine UML alumni and seven shows hosted by 19 members of the Lowell community.
Rich Gingras ’79 and John Guregian both joined the station as business students in the 1970s. In 1980, they started a show called “Blues Deluxe,” which Guregian still hosts every Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m. He was recognized by the Blues Foundation with a 2023 “Keeping Blues Alive Award” in Memphis, Tennessee.
“It’s been great. I started out in college, and the show’s been on forever. It never stops,” says Guregian, a Chelmsford, Massachusetts, native who works as a senior contract analyst for Constellation Energy Solutions in Lowell.
Gingras remembers seeing an ad to join the station (then under the call sign WJUL) in The Connector student newspaper. He dropped by the studio, and the first person he met was Janeczek.
“And I never left,” says Gingras, who ended up serving as the station’s music director and on the broadcast crew for hockey games. After graduating, the Methuen, Massachusetts, native hosted a regular show until 1988. Today, he is a senior program manager for information technology services provider Avaya.
“The friends you meet in college are really the ones that stick with you for the rest of your life,” says Gingras