The Multilayered Joy that is WNYU, as Explained by General Manager Cate Hynes

By Noela Franco

Cate Hynes is a graduating senior at NYU studying Journalism and Media Studies. Originally from right outside Chicago, Cate is currently the General Manager of NYU’s college radio station, WNYU. Entering almost a half a century in broadcast, WNYU has become infamous for its wide array of content, featuring diverse music shows, captivating podcasts, investigative news shows, and on-air interviews, of which have featured in the past legendary musicians Kurt Cobain and The Beastie Boys. Interested in what it takes to run such a distinguished radio station, The Greene Street Review met with Cate to discuss her role as general manager and find out what exactly it is about WNYU and radio more generally that has managed to latch onto the hearts of listeners in New York.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Thank you again for joining me! How long have you been working with WNYU, and why were you interested in the General Manager position?

I’ve been GM for a full year. I was elected back in April of 2021, and I’ve been a station member at WNYU since my first semester at NYU in 2018. Becoming GM was the dream for my college radio career. I started out as a rundown reporter doing news stories for our weekly news show, and then I became an editor, host, news director, and now GM. It was a natural progression.

I hadn’t realized how many different positions you held! What were your earlier positions on the show like?

I started with our weekly news show, The Rundown – it was the best. It has a lot of opportunities for students to not only learn how to write, report, interview and edit their own audio news stories, but also contribute to the larger organization as an editor reviewing other people’s stories. Starting out as a reporter was really great. Getting thrown to the wolves as a brand new field reporter and learning how to use audio equipment was really cool and made me realize what I wanted to do. I came into NYU as an MCC (Media, Cultures, and Communication) major, and wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then I found WNYU, and I realized, “Oh, I really like audio recording and I really love radio!”

What does the interview process and presentation look like through audio and radio form as opposed to print?

From start to finish for a radio story on The Rundown we have a weekly meeting with all of our reporters and editors to talk about pitches and stories for the upcoming week. People at the show taught me how to get the best audio, best setting, and interview etiquette when it comes to interviewing people. In print, when you’re not quoting someone, it’s your own words, so on radio, it’s just saying those things out loud. And similarly to print, a quote is a sound bite, instead of a phrase in quotes, it’s the same thing but you’re just hearing it.

So if anything it’s more accurate?

Yes.

That’s awesome, especially because sometimes you’re not able to fully catch the intonations and tones of certain responses in print. 

Exactly. I like how audio and radio is so intimate. You feel closer to the story when hearing it. 

Looking at the schedule and the lineup of different shows at the station, it’s incredible to see the range of podcasts, music shows, reporting shows -there seems to be a limitless lineup.

What’s so cool about WNYU is that whatever your interests are, there is a place for you here. We have a sports department, different music genres, journalism. We even have an archives department. I appreciate that there’s so much to do.

As GM, what are your direct responsibilities? What does that look like for you on a week to week, day to day basis?

On a weekly basis I manage a fifteen person staff. The station has department heads and associates for each department. Every semester, I hire those fifteen people, and we have weekly meetings to discuss programming, which we call “The Grid.” I do more administrative work, like managing our budget. I am also the direct contact between us and the university, so I have weekly meetings with our university administrator, Nanci Healy at the Center for Student Life at NYU. Because we are a 24/7 FCC Credited FM station, we have a lot of moving parts in the technical sphere, so I am a liaison for our technical operations specialist. I host my own show; I host meetings; I coordinate event planning and partnerships with record labels and partnerships with venues, artists. I wear a lot of hats.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s good to hear that you have a comprehensive team that seems as interested as you in moving the show forward. What has it been like overseeing such a diverse range of talk shows, podcasts, news shows, music shows?

WNYU historically has been a place for new, alternative, educational content – that’s kind of like our ethos statement: we are an alternative and educational college radio station. As a media representative of the larger New York University we want to showcase how diverse the NYU student body is through our programming, and the cool thing about college radio is that we kind of get to do whatever we want. We want to showcase interesting, unique things. We have a lot of really cool shows with music from around the world at very specific time periods, like we have an Arabic Hip hop show and a 1980s Japanese Jazz and Funk show. We want to use our platform to showcase how rich music culture is and how diverse music can be even in this little microcosm of NYU. 

Is prior experience hosting a radio show needed?

No, and that’s another thing about WNYU that I love so much is that it is a no-experience needed kind of place! I had never touched any audio equipment in my life nor stepped foot in a radio station when I applied. WNYU gives you the foundational skills that can translate into the working world. We teach people, and that’s part of our educational ethos, we educate the student body that works for WNYU. We make sure that even if you have experience, or you have no desire to work in radio ever again, you still get the fullness and richness of an education through WNYU.

I know we touched upon podcasts before, and I also saw they’re scheduled Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. What are the podcasts like at WNYU?

For the longest time we only had podcasts Wednesday nights after The Rundown. It actually wasn’t until this year that we realized there was a need for more podcast spaces, so we opened up our grid and the response has been incredible. We have over a dozen podcasts that have happened throughout the course of this school year, which is unprecedented for WNYU. We have shows ranging from interviews about love stories in NY, to comedy shows, satire shows about NYU news, shows that cover really interesting debates about South Asian representation in media. 

Why do you think podcasts and talk shows have become so popular in recent years, both for the listener to tune into and the host to produce? 

Everyone and their sister has a podcast. The market is so saturated right now. It’s incredible to see such a big return to such a simple medium. In the sense of radio and audio mediums there’s something so intimate about listening to someone’s voice in your ear that you feel like you’re a part of that conversation. It’s very comforting to hear someone else talk. Today there’s so much going on with streaming on TV and the Internet, and people are looking to return to something less complex. I think radio is super timeless and to see podcasts blow up like this in the last decade gives me a lot of hope for radio and audio. 

Hope for what exactly?

I won’t say radio is a dying medium, but it’s not as prevalent as mainstream media consumption. To see college students fall in love with radio and podcasts is so cool and a testament to how timeless radio and audio are. You don’t need a lot of skills or money to make a podcast and make a podcast well. You can record on your phone and computer, and we have such easy access to good technology on our phones, and it’s just fun. I think people like to hear themselves talk. Something about WNYU specifically, aside from our web traffic, we never know how many people are listening on the air. It’s really about the love of podcasts and radio. 

The concept of the “dying radio” is really interesting. Does this have to do with other music platforms like Spotify and Apple, or is it something about radio shows that could be contributing to less listeners?

There’s a lot of factors that have contributed to the decline in radio listenership. There’s so much content and so much media out there. It’s really just about preference: you can watch the news on Twitter; you can watch the news on cable television; Youtube. There’s so much content, it’s overwhelming. With the evolution of these platforms, it’s inevitable for other forms to see less attention or to decline in popularity, and radio is a more terrestrial media that has fallen out of favor. Famous radio companies are making that transition to multimedia companies because you can’t be just one thing anymore. Every news outlet has to have a podcast, a print version, an online version. 

So you don’t see it as a bad thing?

I don’t see it as a bad thing. I think it’s a part of the times that people are seeking out other forms of media. I do think radio will never die (laughs). Radio will be around forever because of spaces like WNYU, because of college radio stations cultivating this love for this type of media and breeding out people who love to talk and play weird music and do it for the rest of their lives, like me, that’s what I want to do. I think it’s a decreasing population of students and employers but I don’t think it will ever go away. The die hard radio fans will always listen to radio. 

You also have your own show, The Kitchen Sink. How did you come up with the name of the show, and how do you decide what content to feature?

I host The Kitchen Sink from 4-5pm on Sunday afternoons on WNYU.org and it is a weekly variety show. The title is a pun: everything but The Kitchen Sink is on there, so I play everything but. The goal of The Kitchen Sink is to highlight our existing shows but also have an open air space for random stuff to go. If a DJ does an interview with a recording artist but they run out of time to play it on their show, they can send it to me and I’ll play it on my show. It’s just a space to give stuff a little more attention. 

COVID has worked its way into everything in our lives. How have radio programs and WNYU been impacted by it? What were the general effects, positive and negative?

Back in March of 2020, WNYU went completely remote. We had to configure our systems to this program called remote PC, where from a laptop or PC from another location, you can tap into the computers that were in the station. Our former program manager who graduated last year, her name is Kelli Drake, she and her roommate took a lot of the station equipment and ran the radio station out of their apartment for about 6 months. 

Wow.

We wanted to keep the airwaves with music and content. Our DJ’s learned how to use this remote PC content from their home to go on the air. It was definitely very different, and not that fun. One of the joys of radio is to press the buttons and raise the faders. It’s such a tangible thing and to have to do it alone, it did make our content suffer. Our participation from station members and listeners definitely declined and a lot of morale was lost. The cool thing about WNYU is the community and to not see that was horrible. We didn’t have a lot of first years come in. No one was able to see the physical station, which was a big recruiting loss because our station is the probably coolest place on campus. 

What has changed with WNYU post-quarantine?

The pandemic gave us an opportunity to revamp WNYU and turn it into something new and start a new culture that we’d wanted to for a while. In previous years there was a lot of nepotism that went on with management, and we were super selective and a little exclusive when choosing music shows. We’ve changed that a little bit to be more lenient and have a better community mindset, and make sure people are getting opportunities based on their hard work. We got to start fresh which was positive. I’m glad that things are starting to look up regarding pandemic circumstances.

I’m super happy to hear you all got to go back to the station and do your thing and have that real-life, intimate experience on broadcast. Any closing notes to our readers?

No, no. I love radio, I love WNYU, and radio will never die. I’m so excited to see what WNYU does in the future when there are no pandemic restrictions and it can live freely in its own glory.