WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM held an open house Aug. 29 to celebrate its relocation to new facilities in the Stanton Building. 

“This complex opens up all sorts of opportunities to do things even bigger and better than we were previously,” said Scot Bertram, general manager of WRFH. 

The station, founded in 2016, originally operated out of the Knorr Student Center in a room adjacent to the Old Snack Bar. 

“I always made a joke last semester when I was doing my newscast that I was in a closet, so when I was doing the weather reports I could never look outside to see if that actually was the weather,” said junior Lauren Smyth, a student newscaster.

Despite cramped accommodations, the station won numerous awards over the past few years, including Radio Station of the Year in the College Audio category from the Michigan Association of Broadcasters in 2019 and 2023.

Freshman Megan Li said she attended the open house because she hopes to become involved in the program. 

“I just want to be a part of what people are doing here in some way, even if it’s not me talking into the mic,” Li said. 

Junior Megan Pidcock, assistant production director at the station, said there are benefits to working with the radio program. 

“It’s a really good way to become more articulate,” Pidcock said. “It provides industry standard experiences. It’s just a really great way to get a lot of skills in one place.” 

Plans to establish the studio in the Stanton building first began a year ago, according to Bertram. He said meticulous planning went into the studio design, from layout to sound-bleed considerations. 

“The planning was important to make sure the execution turned out the right way,” he said.

The new station boasts a dedicated editing workspace and three dedicated broadcasting studios, a sizable expansion from their previous single-studio setup. 

“Now we can have multiple students working at the same time when previously it was really only one at a time,” Bertram said. 

According to Bertram, tech updates include a shift from analog to digital control boards which will offer the station more connectivity between studios and more options for bringing content in.

“The journalism department has always been very strong through the Collegian, and now the radio and audio side of things is also,” Bertram said. “We are thrilled to be here, the students are amazed at the facility, and we are really looking forward to getting back to it.”