WDCB is a radio station

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

  broadcasting a public radio and jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 format. Licensed to Glen Ellyn, Illinois

Glen Ellyn, Illinois

Glen Ellyn is an affluent village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2000 Census, the village population was 26,999.-Geography:...

, USA, the station serves the Chicago area. The station is currently owned by College of DuPage

College of DuPage

College of DuPage, or COD, is a two-year community college in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The college also owns and operates facilities in the Illinois communities of Addison, Bloomingdale, Carol Stream, Naperville, West Chicago, and Westmont...

, District 502 and features programing from AP Radio and Public Radio International

Public Radio International

Public Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...

. The station is also broadcast on HD radio

HD Radio

HD Radio, which originally stood for "Hybrid Digital", is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals...

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History

WDCB 90.9 FM was founded as a 5,000-watt station in late 1977, and its original format was a mix of classical

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 and news programming. Jazz programming was introduced in the early 1980s and became the primary format by the end of the decade. Since then, WDCB's format has expanded to include roots-rock, bluegrass

Bluegrass music

Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

, traditional country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

, Celtic

Celtic music

Celtic music is a term utilised by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic people of Western Europe...

, folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

, New Age

New Age music

New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...

, Acid Jazz, Afro-Cuban Jazz, big band

Big band

A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...

, 1980s heavy metal

Heavy metal music

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

, and old-time radio

Old-time radio

Old-Time Radio and the Golden Age of Radio refer to a period of radio programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's replacement of radio as the primary home entertainment medium in the 1950s...

 shows, though straight-ahead jazz

Straight-ahead jazz

Straight-ahead jazz is a term used to refer to a widely accepted style of jazz music playing that can be thought of as roughly encompassing the period between bebop and the 1960s styles of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...

 makes up about 50% of its music programming. Classical music continued to be heard on the station until late 2005.

Unlike most college-based stations, WDCB-FM is not student-operated, but rather very much professional in design and output. COD students, however, do work at WDCB's offices as aides for limited hours during the week.

Current staff

The station manager of WDCB is Scott Wager; an employee at WDCB since 1981, he assumed the title in 2001 following the retirement of station co-founder Sid Fryer (Fryer's partner Robert Blake left in the mid-1980s). WDCB's programming director is Mary Patricia LaRue; she has held the position since 1984.

WDCB's current crop of on-air personalities include Bruce Oscar, Barry Winograd, Paul Abella, and John "British Buddy" Burnett, all of whom are prominent Chicago-based jazz musicians. WDCB is also the current home of "Those Were The Days," the long-running old-time radio program hosted by Chuck Schaden

Chuck Schaden

Charles Leroy "Chuck" Schaden, born June 29, 1934, is a Chicago-area broadcaster and historian who hosted the program Those Were the Days on local radio from 1970 to 2009. Schaden plays recordings of classic old-time radio shows and reminisces with radio personalities about the early days of...

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