MAYHEW — Since its first broadcast nearly a year ago, East Mississippi Community College’s radio station on the Golden Triangle campus has grown its listenership through innovative content that includes original live radio drama that harkens back to the 1940s and early 1950s, when audio was king.
On Wednesday, EMCC’s WGTC 92.7 FM will debut the first episode of “Search for Happiness.” The storyline revolves around a fictional Bartlesville, Oklahoma, oil tycoon by the name of J.D. Gray whose three grown daughters discover he has eloped with a woman not much older than they are.
The characters in the script written by EMCC Drama and Speech instructor Don Vaughan will be portrayed on air by an all-female cast comprised of students in Vaughan’s speech class. The cast members are: Taylor Corder of Columbus, Chelsea Harrison of Starkville, Kaliyah Loggan of West Point, Kathleen Pohl of Alabaster, Alabama, and Ashton Smith of Columbus.
“I would think EMCC has to be the first college ever that has a speech class that will produce a live radio drama,” said Vaughan, who is also the station manager for WGTC. “Probably nobody has beaten us to that.”
Corder, who plays one of the three sisters, said during a recent rehearsal that the experience has been interesting.
“I have two sisters myself so I can kind of relate to my character by the way they bicker back and forth,” Corder said.
Recently, the radio station wrapped up a 10-week run of “Hope for Tomorrow,” a parody of the old daytime soap opera “Search for Tomorrow.”
“Hope for Tomorrow” was written by Vaughan and EMCC humanities instructor Laura Vernon and performed by students and faculty.
Listeners are tuning in.
“Sometimes I will have a student come up to me and say, ‘I don’t like that character,'” Vaughan said with a laugh.
The 100-watt station transmits north to West Point, south to Brooksville, west to Starkville and east to Columbus Nissan. Hopes are to garner approval from the Federal Communications Commission to boost the station’s power enough to extend the transmission out another 10 miles or so.
The station, which is commercial free, now boasts a newscast six minutes before each hour that features local, national and international news. Playlists include Mainstream Top 40, which is popular with students and features all the latest artists.
A TuneIn Radio app for the station has also been added.
About five months ago, Vaughan included a Solid Gold Weekend to the station’s mix that is patterned after the Chicago-based WLS Radio format of yesteryear featuring hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s. In fact, the voice-over introducing the EMCC program was recorded by former WLS veteran Chuck Buell, who is friends with Vaughan.
“At one time Chuck was the most listened to radio personality in the U.S.,” Vaughan said.
The Solid Gold Weekend amps up at 4 p.m. Thursdays and runs throughout the weekend, with 6,600 songs now in the growing library collection.
There is also an educational component. Journalism students write the newscasts and read them on air. In each episode of the radio dramas, Vaughan will throw in a bit of history and at least three words not commonly used. Listen Wednesday to hear how he references Helen of Troy and weaves the word “vicissitudes” into the script.
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