Scot Bertram records at the Radio Free Hillsdale WRFH 101.7 FM studio. Courtesy | Austin Thomason 

Listeners from Santa Cruz, California, to Memphis, Tennessee, can now tune into their local radio stations to hear from Hillsdale College faculty, staff, and friends, and enter into the conversations happening on campus. 

The weekly Radio Free Hillsdale Hour podcast and radio show now airs on 52 affiliate stations in 29 states across the country.

“The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour is designed to bring listeners as close to the Hillsdale experience as possible without having to be on campus,” host and general manager of WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM Scot Bertram said. “You can’t get [to Hillsdale] unless you intentionally want to be here. We have many people who like Hillsdale, love Hillsdale, admire Hillsdale. The show is an attempt to allow them to be close to what we’re doing without being here on campus.”

On the air since 2019, the interview-based show has featured multiple nationally-recognized guests, including U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, historian Victor Davis Hanson, Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist Mollie Hemingway, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, and then-congressman Mike Waltz. Other regular guests include Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and members of the college faculty and staff.

Vince Benedetto, president and founder of Bold Gold Media Group, airs the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour on two of his 15 stations, 94.3 WTRW The Talker in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and WVOS-AM Catskills News Talk in Sullivan County, New York. He said the show gives variety to his stations, which mostly broadcast conservative talk radio focused on current events. 

“Although the show will oftentimes relate things to current events or mention current events, most of the programming on it is more enduring things that they’re talking about — things that undergird our civil society, things that are informative about the college or informative about the arts, or entertainment, culture, history,” Benedetto said. “I think that type of discussion on broadcast radio is underrepresented.”

Associate Vice President for Institutional Advancement Programs Matt A. Schlientz, then vice president for marketing, had the idea for the show when Hillsdale was founding WRFH in 2016. After two years of thinking and designing the format, Bertram got the show up and running in early 2019. 

“We didn’t want it to necessarily be me talking, monologuing about stuff,” Bertram said. “We always wanted it to be guest-heavy.”

At the very beginning, the show had four segments and four guests per show. As the show continued to evolve, Bertram started keeping guests on for more than one segment at a time. Now, the program features two to three guests per show in order to encourage deeper conversations on the given topic.

Jeff Stein, news and program director for News/Talk 1540 KXEL in Waterloo, Iowa, said he likes the format of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour because it devotes multiple segments to worthwhile conversations. Most syndicated programs are driven by a certain pace and a high guest count, he said.

“The topic drives the format, and I think that is refreshing in an era of cookie cutter radio,” Stein said. “The beauty of the Hillsdale program is that topics are given the time that they need in order to be fully considered and to leave the audience smarter than when they started.”

The show is not afraid to take on complicated topics, he said. Instead, it gives the audience credit for intelligence and caring about complicated issues at a deeper level. 

“One of our slogans is ‘smart radio for smart people,’ and the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour fits that perfectly because there are intelligent conversations about important topics with a wide variety of guests that is simply unmatched in any other syndicated program,” he said.

Stein said he schedules the show for Sunday afternoons so listeners can enjoy listening to the conversations in leisure. He said the program gives people an opportunity to think about things they may not have sought out on their own and become better informed for having heard the program. The show has received positive feedback from many listeners over the past several years, he said.

“Usually listeners to a spoken-word radio station respond when they are complaining about something,” Stein said. “So the fact that I hear from anyone about this program really breaks the mold. In other words, for me to ever get a positive comment from a listener, that means the program is really special.”

The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour was one of the first shows Chief Operating Officer of Thomas Media LLC Joe Thomas brought on when he purchased WTON in Staunton, Virginia, two years ago. He was interested in the program much earlier.

“Hillsdale College is legend in the news talk business,” Thomas said. “When the show launched I was aware of it from the get-go.”

While the show itself is valuable, Thomas said he also appreciates the “little things” about working with Hillsdale, like customer service and smooth and easy access to the program.

Phil Arlinghaus has been airing the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour on Sundays at 5 p.m. for about a year on Talk Radio 92.3 FM/AM 760 WETR in Knoxville, Tennessee. It takes six months to get traction for a new show, Arlinghaus said, so not all responses from listeners so far have been positive. But airing the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour gives the station fresh content to play on the weekends rather than just the “best of” content from weekly programming.

“I love Glenn Beck,” Arlinghaus said. “I don’t know if I can listen to him 24/7.”

He said the show also helps promote a system of education that lines up with the values of his community.

“Hopefully it helps point out to people that there are options out there for either their kids or even themselves to get an education,” he said.

Excluding podcast listeners, Bertram estimates the show reaches 35,000 listeners on a weekly basis through terrestrial radio. He said he values airing the program on radio because it allows the college to reach an audience that may never intentionally search for the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

“People can be listening to a different show, and then they hear our show, or just flipping through the dial in their car, and then they hear the show,” Bertram said. “So it’s valuable that we’re able to reach an audience that might not know yet that they’re interested in Hillsdale College or that they even like the show, but they can accidentally find it on radio and then become fans.”