WSVA first went on the air in 1970, broadcasting with an unreliable signal over 590 AM. John Davidson (BFA 1986 Media Arts), now an artist in Oklahoma City, was the station manager for its inaugural year.

According to Davidson, WSVA operated on unused broadcasting equipment belonging to the College, with the permission of the College’s founder and then-president Silas H. Rhodes. “I think it was Dr. Rhodes who showed me how to turn it on and use it,” he says. “It was pretty simple.”

Davidson and three other student DJs played a steady rotation of “rock and roll, R&B, some jazz and folk” out of a makeshift studio at 209 East 23rd Street. “I just loved music and thought I could do it,” he says now of his interest in starting the station. “It was just a

desire to be artistic in a different way.” A year or so later, though, WSVA went quiet, as the studio was moved to the sixth floor and its system made compliant with Federal Communications Commission regulations regarding campus-radio signal strength. Davidson took a break in his education, and when WSVA came back online he was succeeded as station manager by the late Jose Alvarez (BFA 1973 Fine Arts).

Though information about WSVA’s subsequent decade—and move to East 21st Street—is scarce, issues of Canvas, SVA’s student newspaper from 1981 through 1989, document its activity in the 1980s. Programs from that time included “Overtones,” which played progressive jazz fusion and new-age music; “16 Tons,” which billed itself as a “heavy music” showcase; the “Rockin’ Rob Show,” which played new wave, rock, rap, comedy and interviews; a classifieds-type show called “The Bulletin Board”; and “Homegrown,” for local music acts. (Bands now lost to history but featured on this last program include The Crunge, Me and My Bro, Norman Bates and the Showerheads, and Sidney and the Homewreckers.) In 1986 the station hosted a “Battle of the Bands,” with participants selected based on the strength of their demo tapes. As the College grew, so did the station’s reach: by the end of the ’80s, WSVA could be heard from the Sloane House residence hall, at 356 West 34th Street, and at 133/141 West 21st Street.

Ultimately, though, WSVA’s range remained modest, as did its public profile. John Devecka, now the operations manager of WLOY, the radio station of Loyola University in Baltimore, worked for carrier-current equipment manufacturer LPB Incorporated in the 1990s, and recalls visiting SVA in those years to explore the possibility of installing radiating cable FM to improve the station’s sound. (He also says he saw graffiti by the late 1979 Fine Arts alumnus Keith Haring in a stairwell.) Unfortunately, given the building’s layout, it was deemed to be too expensive.

Features

WSVA, the College’s radio station, has been making noise for more than 50 years.