Have you tuned in to 88.9 WRDL lately? If so, that means you have heard the new sound. Under new Faculty Adviser Steve Suess, the Ashland University radio station is undergoing some new changes.

Suess graduated from Illinois State University with a bachelor’s in mass media and a master’s in communication. With six years of radio station experience under his belt, Suess is excited to institute the new changes.

“What I’m trying to do is make it as close to a commercial radio station that you’d find out in the world as possible,” he said. “So when students leave and go get a job in radio, they’re working with the same stuff and the same principles.”

Assistant Professor of Digital Media Gretchen Dworznik said she likes the station, and that the work Suess is putting into it is already evident.

“I really like the music,” she said. “In addition to that it already sounds more professional. Everything that’s on there right now is really starting to reflect that professionalism that wasn’t there before.”

Perhaps the biggest change to WRDL is the new format. In years past, WRDL was strictly an alternative station. Now, the station is what the media world calls “Top 40.”

Dworznik said Suess is already fulfilling their hopes of the new station.

“The goal was a complete and total overhaul of the station,” she said. “What we’d been doing was just not working, so we brought Steve in to basically trash it and start it over again, and I think he’s done a really good job so far.”

According to both Suess and Dworznik, the new format will make the station more popular.

“There’s kind of a mix of some hip-hop, a mix of some electronic-sounding music, and then you’ve got the really popular rock stuff,” Suess said. “It’s more of a mainstream format than the last format was, and we think that’s going to give us more visibility.”

Dworznik said she hopes that because the new station is more popular, more students will listen to it.

“First things first was to decide on a new format which is ‘Top 40,’” she said. “It’s obviously the most popular music; music that we hope students will want to listen to, and then begin to listen to us, and so they can start using WRDL as a resource.”

In addition to changing the format of the station, Suess also said they are working on a website that will soon be up and running. This new website will include blogs, sports, news and streaming. He said he is most excited about the streaming, since it is somewhat overdue.

“I’m really excited to get the website off the ground, and get streaming up because I know there’s a lot of students and a lot of parents of our students who really, really want that streaming,” he said. “Streaming’s going to let these students who not only work at WRDL, but might go to Ashland and listen to WRDL while they’re here; they can now listen to it when they go home as well.”

While trying to focus on different formats, Dworznik said she is focusing on building the station up from the bottom.

“The goal would be sort of a slow and steady growth,” she said. “We want to focus on quality instead of quantity. We want to build it slowly with really great stuff that people will want to listen to and work up from there.”

WRDL will eventually become a local station as well. Suess explained that not a lot of stations focus on Ashland, and WRDL will take on that job.

The new station will also include all of Ashland’s home football games, high school games and other sporting games along with news.

“There’s nobody that really covers Ashland and there’s nobody that has that as their top priority, so that’s kind of what we’re going for,” he said.

Suess said he is most looking forward to having students arrive on campus so things can begin to pick up. He said he is excited to teach AU students about radio, while also encouraging their independence.

“I’m excited for the students to get here and I’m excited for even the students who might have preferred the old format, to kind of get in here and learn how radio’s done,” he said.

“I don’t want to stifle student creativity at all. I don’t want to take the fun out of this for students. But I do want to make it a learning process as well,” Suess said.

Dworznik agreed and said she is most excited about the possibilities of the new station.

“I’m really excited of the possibility of it finally getting back to what it is supposed to be, which is a really good learning opportunity for our students and something they can be proud of,” she said.