You probably don’t do a ton of driving in between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., and WMNF knows that. The community radio station is on air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but most of us are exercising our sleep apnea when shows like Grand National Championships, Psycho Realms and the Damn Jams are spinning overlooked records by the best alternative, industrial and hip-hop artists.
“Late night shows are usually not well supported because not that many people [are] awake,” Randy Wind told CL, adding that some “shows can find listeners among all night workers, insomniacs, and people who sleep in the daytime.”
Read: WMNF raised almost $275,000 on their Winter Fund Drive
Wind is the longtime program director at WMNF, and he explains that it is definitely harder for the overnight shows to hit their fundraising goals. In a world where the Trump administration wants to slash public broadcasting budgets, watching the money come in is the realest of necessary evils (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gives WNMF about $140,000 a year according to station manager Craig Kopp).
So how can the community show their appreciation for overnight programming and ensure their favorite shows don’t go on the chopping block?
Hitting the station archives to stream shows after the air and donating to specific shows online is a good start, but Michael Bagley — a Thursday programmer who spends midnight to 3 a.m. conducting a trip into the alternative music underworld — has helped create another avenue. On March 30, Bagley and his show Bodyrock will join forces with other “WMNF After Dark” programs for “We’ve Lost Control…,” a showcase of the area’s best coldwave and shoegaze music.
Reality Asylum, who opened for Youth Code and Daveed Diggs's Clipping. project in November headline the show, and they'll be joined by husband and wife led outfit Seafang (who CL profiled earlier this year) plus a Joy Division cover band, 31G.
Listen to the latest edition of Bodyrock bagley, then get acquainted with WMNF's late night slate of programming on wmnf.org. Music from Seafang (who we profiled in February) is streaming below.
This article appears in Mar 23-30, 2017.