When WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale first aired, Dolly Parton’s national anthem opened the inaugural broadcast.  Vince Benedetto, the president and CEO of Bold Gold Broadcast and Media Foundation, chose this opening. Benedetto helped to launch Hillsdale College’s radio station in 2015. He envisioned using the station for education and community engagement, hoping to develop Hillsdale radio beyond another collegiate broadcasting platform. Radio is unique because of the intimate bond that forms as listeners tune in during dinner, at the gym, or on their daily commute, Benedetto said. 

“The secret sauce of broadcast radio and the reason it holds up so well in today’s world is, one, it’s free, but, two, the best radio stations thrive because they capture the pulse of their community,” Benedetto said. 

Benedetto said radio is the only medium that people are emotionally possessive about. 

“You have not seen wrath until you take somebody’s radio station and flip the format,” he said.“There’s loyalty to a local radio station because it is companionship-oriented.”

After completing counterintelligence and counterterrorism work for the Air Force, he founded the broadcast company that eventually put him in a position to help Hillsdale College start its radio station.  

“It was a big entrepreneurial move,” Benedetto said. “I recognized the importance of broadcast radio as a great spoken-word communications platform.”

Benedetto bought his first four radio stations when he was 29 years-old. In 2011, he purchased an FM station in Scranton, and converted it into a talk station featuring guests like Hugh Hewitt and Mark Levin.

That’s when Benedetto’s career intersected with Hillsdale. 

“I was very much aware of Hillsdale as a great liberal-arts school, but didn’t know much about it,” Benedetto said. “People would come up to me and say how much they loved the talk station and how a college advertising on it was offering online courses that changed their understanding of our country’s history.”

After the 2012 election, Benedetto decided to become more involved with the college. 

“I thought maybe Americans just weren’t properly informed about their history,” Benedetto said.

“It seemed like what they were learning was opening their thought processes. And so, I thought that it was probably good for me to get involved with organizations that were educating people.”  

Benedetto contacted Hillsdale College and joined the President’s Club. 

“I said, ‘Dr. Arnn, you should teach radio at the college. You use so much radio to reach people across the country and you are a household name in part because of the way you’ve used talk radio to educate people,’” Benedetto said.

Benedetto offered to work with the Federal Communications Commission and to help the college obtain a low-power FM station.

Once he secured the FCC license, he committed fully to the project

“I promised Dr. Arnn continued support,” he said. “My team at Bold Gold Media Group and I took on the task of bringing the station to life. We funded all the equipment, handled the engineering, and built the station.”

His team in Pennsylvania assembled the software, tested the transmitter, and prepared all the necessary equipment — from the right antenna to the essential cabling. 

And on July 9, 2015 at 4:42 p.m., WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale was born.

Benedetto’s discussions with Arnn also led to the establishment of a radio facility at the Kirby Center in Washington D.C. later that year.

“We knew we needed more young people going into this medium,” Benedetto said. “It’s a medium where free thinking ideas thrive because it’s rich for dialogue, debate, and discussion. It’s a persuasive medium and the one Winston Churchill used to rally the world to fight for freedom.”

While Benedetto’s efforts brought the station on air, the task of transforming it into a fully-operational college radio station fell to General Manager Scot Bertram.

Before then, patriotic music filled the airtime since the station was required by license to broadcast. 

“Once the college hired Scot, it was his job to take the patriotic music off and build it into a legitimate broadcast operation and a college radio station,” Benedetto said. 

Bertram created a platform for students to talk, argue, and practice rhetoric. 

“We wanted to give students the opportunity and freedom to create shows, features, and content that allowed them to talk about things that they were knowledgeable and passionate about,” Bertram said. “If you look around the country, there are not a lot of college radio stations that do what we do, if any.” 

Senior Addison Longenecker has worked for the station since freshman year and said she has had the opportunity to work for several shows in various capacities, including editing, promotions, and running the board for sports. 

“While radio may seem like it’s going out of style, working at the radio station has taught me just how important of a medium it is,” Longenecker said. “Whatever your future career plans are, I highly recommend getting involved in radio somehow. It made me a better writer, more effective communicator, and taught me just how important speech is.”

Under Bertram’s leadership, WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale quickly became an award-winning station, garnering both local and national recognition. The Michigan Association of Broadcasters has named it station of the year twice.

“I think it’s very important,” Bertram said. “They are there, so why not win them or why would we not try to? It’s important for students because. I don’t think students understand the number of people who are paying attention to the work they’re doing, and how good they are.”

Hillsdale competes against universities as big as the University of Michigan, Michigan State, and the University of California, Berkeley in Michigan.

“Being recognized as among the best, and occasionally winning is confirmation for us and hopefully encouragement to students that what they’re doing is noticed by others, and also acknowledged as being some of the best, if not the best in the state or in the country,” Bertram said.

Benedetto said he is proud of the radio’s success.

“It has really exceeded what we all hoped it could become,” Benedetto said. “The whole hope was that college would do on the broadcast side what it does in every other area of Hillsdale—pursuing truth and giving people exposure to the highest things.”