It’s almost time for a Friday night football against formidable Howard High School, and Thomas McKean High School sophomore Josh Coslar prepares to call the game for McKean’s radio station, WMHS, 88.1 FM.
Coslar and 2004 McKean graduate David Higgins, who volunteers at the radio station, hope the cell phone they’re using to transmit the signal has a strong battery. On opening night against A.I. duPont three weeks ago, the phone a teacher lent them died after half an hour.
Right now, a cell phone is the only way the McKean radio station can broadcast the games – a hookup to the station using a regular phone jack in the concession stand proved to be of poor quality. And as if that weren’t enough technical difficulties, they’ve had trouble finding a single headphone-microphone set that works among the jumble of equipment in the bowels of the school.
The game commences.
“It’s the McKean Highlanders against the Wildcats. Here we go. We don’t have rosters, folks, so we have to give you the numbers,” Coslar announces apologetically for the cardinal sin of broadcasting a game without players’ names.
Retired teacher Gus Highfield, the announcer on the other side of the press box calling the game for fans in the stands, passes over rosters for both McKean and Howard.
“Life is good and there is a Jesus somewhere,” Coslar exclaims, rattling off names like McKean running back Dakhere Jones, quarterback Teddy Patton and wide receiver Mark Flakes during play by play.
There is no color man. His partner last year, Andrew Neighbor, graduated and Coslar is the only one left to carry the McKean radio torch.
McKean has the only radio station among the seven high schools within the Red Clay Consolidated School District. In the cash-strapped district, it should be an attractive niche that captures attention and students.
But as much as Principal Sherry Gross would like to brag about the station and help stem the loss of students through choice, she knows the radio station has a way to go before she can do so.
At one time, the station reached an 11-mile radius and a healthy lineup of shows staffed by students or staff. But McKean’s radio program fell on tough times last year when the program’s instructor missed significant time, Gross says. With a substitute in much of the time, there wasn’t the usual buy-in. Essential equipment like the motherboard fell into disrepair, and there was no one at the helm to speak up and push for a new one.
Rashod Coleman was hired this year to get the program back on track.
“Rashod remembers what it was like when it was in its glory and knows what it could be, being one of our own,” Gross says.
Coleman is a 2001 graduate of McKean. He remembers when he was interviewed regularly by the radio station as a football player. He is also a 2005 graduate of Delaware State University, where he majored in communications and minored in business. Coleman is also connected to the school and community as an assistant coach with the football team.
Coleman has his challenges in trying to restore the radio station to its heyday. The 88.1 FM radio dial encounters interference as close to the McKennans Church Road school as the junction of Milltown and Limestone Roads, three miles away.
The station is licensed by the FCC for 100 watts, but equipment failures keep it transmitting at about 20 watts, Higgins says.
Even die-hard students like Coslar of Newport are discouraged.
“Our station’s kind of degrading. It’s slowly falling apart.”
New teacher at work
It’s Friday afternoon in the radio room.
“Grab a seat, grab a seat, grab a seat,” Coleman says as 20 students shuffle in. “Take out a piece of paper first. Jennifer, don’t talk when I talk. Write five questions for the football team.”
While some students don’t know much about football, they have to learn how to get their act together when they are put on the spot, Coleman says. He learned that as an intern for WHYY where 20 minutes before they go on the air they’re scrambling.
So, 20 minutes later, football players Chris Parsons, Teddy Patton and Mark Flakes arrive in the studio’s editing room to be interviewed. Some basic questions ensue, then junior Tahir Abdussamad gets to the point.
“What does your team have to do to stop Howard?” Abdussamad asks.
Students on what they’ve learned
Students have learned a lot in the hands-on classroom: they know how to hook up cameras, split video scenes, edit and add audio to scenes.
However, senior Mike Riley would like to move away from general broadcasting and television and learn more about radio. Riley, in the radio program for the second year, wants to be a radio producer and plans to study broadcasting at Delaware State University.
Renee Johnson of Newark is taking Coleman’s class because she aspires to be a journalist. In fact, it was this class that clinched her decision to attend McKean.
“Last year, when we came to look around the school they were talking on the radio and I said, ‘I want to do that’,” Johnson says. But it’s been somewhat of a disappointment. “I came this year and [the broadcasting equipment] didn’t work. I was like, ‘Aw, man.’”
A new motherboard is on order, and in the meantime, a backup computer is playing oldies music on autopilot. Once the motherboard is fixed, Coleman will be able to teach students hands-on radio exercises, such as recording and setting up commercials and playing more modern music that students can relate to. He also envisions students conducting more interviews with sports teams as well as other student groups and faculty members for a segment called “Highlander News.”
Students like Donald Bullock of Faulkland Heights are eager for what Coleman envisions. The “Highlander News” sounds especially good to Bullock, who wants to be either a television anchor or an architect.
Coleman has so many ideas, but first he’s got to get the equipment working so he can teach them the basics.
Restoring McKean radio’s power
In its heyday, the radius of McKean’s 88.1 FM was about 11 miles, Coleman says, but now it’s only two miles, and it seems to be getting interference from another radio station with a more powerful transmitter. Adding to the broadcasting muddle, iPods also broadcast on 88.1, leading to more interference. McKean must increase its power.
Higgins would like to see more resources from the Red Clay Consolidated School District or an association with a professional radio station that could give them old equipment.
Coleman would love to have state of the art equipment, but he says even without it, the show must go on.
“One thing Del State taught me is that you’ve got to work with what you’ve got,” he said. “You see people make whole movies with one camera.”
There are people out there willing to help.
McKean graduates Matt and Craig Clizbe of Clizbeats D.J. Services, were involved with WMHS when they were in high school, and have offered to help their alma mater, Gross says, the principal.
“They got some really neat ideas,” she says. “They want to see the radio station really take a turn toward getting out of the whole oldies genre and are working with Rashod.”
Even Coslar has been helping out in class, working on the computers and even donating a television to Coleman’s classroom.
“You look at the station, this big mass of wires and technology – things that people create and put their heart into,” he says. “It’s almost alive.”
