Who's listening?

At 11 p.m. on a Monday, Sam Taxy '11 is just getting to work.

"Welcome to Sam's Storytime Castle," he says into the microphone in front of him. "And thanks for listening to WPRB, 103.3 FM."

It's a typical Monday for Taxy, WPRB's program director and one of the 39 student DJs who keep the radio station on the air 365 days per year.

Two hours later, at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, Taxy finally exits the studio, his show completed. On his way out, he pauses to reshelve some records - no small task considering the size of WPRB's collection. The station has a full room of library-sized stacks packed with CDs and vintage LPs, including a first-edition Beatles album. It's an audiophile's dream come true, a veritable paradise for anyone even mildly interested in music.

Even more incredible is that the library is still growing. Every day, WPRB gets a crateful of CDs from labels and artists hoping to have their music played on air. And, amazingly, the music directors and station managers - with the help of the DJs - listen to everything, weeding out the music that doesn't fit with the station's mission from the albums that might be worthwhile.

Clearly, the music buffs who serve as the station's DJs love what they do. But in an age when few students even own a radio and even fewer could find WPRB on the dial, when the innovative and experimental music that was once the exclusive domain of college radio is now accessible to anyone with an internet connection, the question has to be asked: Who's listening?

"College students don't listen to the radio," station manager Ned Bennett '11 admitted. "They don't use the radio to find new music, and they don't need to. They've grown up in a world where music has been available to them on blogs and elsewhere online, and we're not what they're looking for."

When WPRB merged with the Nassau Weekly last January, expanded on-campus visibility for the station was supposed to be one of the primary benefits. But in the nine months since the merger occurred, that increased visibility has been limited to a few ads and a WPRB playlist printed in each week's Nassau Weekly.

Bennett said he still hopes the merger will allow the station to form "a strong relationship with the campus."

"But at the same time, that really isn't our target audience," he noted. "We're not trying to appeal to college students. We're trying to appeal to people in Philadelphia and New York and Northern New Jersey."

"For them," he added, "WPRB has a very particular place, and they'll always listen."

It is this outward focus that accounts for the station's continued success. The station now reaches listeners in three states, though it was started in 1940 as a pirate radio station broadcasted out of a dorm room by H. Grant Theis '42.

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"It was mainly through the generous assistance of Dean Christian Gauss '58 that I was able to persuade the Board of Trustees that we could technically couple the output of a transmitter to the high side of the University's power system without endangering anyone's life," Theis recounted in "WPRB's 50th Anniversary: A History of Princeton University Radio 1940-1990," a book by Adam Rosen '91.

With the help of engineering students from the Class of 1943, Theis established WPRB as a campus presence, and its broadcast studios eventually moved to Holder Hall in the late 1940s.

Even at that time, WPRB was a pioneering venture. It was the first commercially licensed college radio station in the country, and after appearing in The Saturday Evening Post magazine to discuss WPRB's creation, Theis received letters from students across the nation who were interested in beginning their own stations.

Nearly 70 years later, WPRB has expanded its broadcast range, switched from an advertiser-supported to a listener-supported model and managed to remain financially viable.

While most student groups receive at least some funding from the University, WPRB receives no financial support from Princeton, aside from rights to use the space in the basement of Bloomberg Hall that currently serves as the station's studio.

"We're a student organization, but we're out there every day competing with radio stations run by professionals, and we have very clear goals that we have to meet," Bennett said. "What we're trying to do is figure out how to make and sell a product to real people in the real world."

"WPRB's unique approach to programming helps us avoid getting shut out of the market like other radio stations," Taxy added. "Now that there's so much music available on the internet, there's much less of a need for a Top 40 station. What there isn't, though, is a place where you can hear music that you've never heard before. But that's what we can do: We literally have a show all about music you don't hear on the radio."

Part of what enables WPRB to broadcast such a rich variety of music is its eclectic pool of DJs. Not only do students, who are often experts in niche genres, take to the airwaves, but the station also showcases local community members, all of whom must display a certain level of knowledge about music before being allowed to broadcast.

Taxy explained that music fans with unique passions are the norm, not the exception, for WPRB DJs. "We have specialists who are uniquely knowledgeable about their favorite style of music," Taxy said. "We have someone who knows a lot about modern, avant-garde classical music, and people love him. People write in saying how much they love his show. We have someone who is an expert on Greek music - from classical Greek music to modern Greek pop."

For instance, community DJs Ryan McEnerney of Jersey City and Mike Piccoli of Philadelphia (also known as "VersimiliDude" and "DeadMike," respectively) share a passion for punk funk. Watching the pair as they play the final song of their Tuesday night show - an upbeat, lively punk anthem - it becomes clear why they drive for hours to Princeton each week to do this for free. Their humming begins quietly but quickly grows louder and louder until they drown out the sound of the actual song. They are in their element, doing what they love and loving what they do.

"In all honesty," Piccoli said, "we'd be doing this either way. It's just that we'd be doing this at home, and only we would be listening."

And sometimes the station's biggest fans, like the DJs themselves, can come from the most unexpected places. While students may not be huddled in Princeton dorms listening to 103.3 FM, the station has a surprising reach.

"I sometimes get collect calls that say something like, ‘You are receiving a call from a prisoner at a federal penitentiary,' " Bennett said. "They listen to radio a lot and end up listening to WPRB."