RMU is on the air

Moon Township-based Robert Morris University will mark the launch of its first campus radio station, RMUradio.com, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 12 noon Monday.

The web-based, student-run radio station will be located in a new radio studio at the Academic Media Center on the Moon campus.

Don’t visit rmuradio.com yet; there’s nothing there except one of those “placeholder” pages.

Limited broadcasts are expected to begin in connection with the formal ribboncutting, and a spokesman said programming will eventually air for about 10 hours daily, including a call-in sports show; a Hispanic music show; a poetry show; and simulcasts of news shows from RMU-TV, the campus cable station.

According to an RMU press release, two seniors — Dan Murtha, an accounting major from Conneaut, Ohio, and Ron Hendrickson, a marketing major from Economy — launched their own Internet radio station in 2006 that included a call-in music show on weekends, complete with contests and prizes for listeners.

The pair then proposed creation of an officially sanctioned station. RMU administrators agreed to build a studio near the university’s existing student-run TV production center.

The lack of a radio station was a little bit curious, since the university has a burgeoning TV and film production program, and already offers several degrees in media and communications related fields, including television and video production, applied journalism, communication studies, corporate communications and public relations, as well as a minor in documentary studies.

“Launching a campus radio station is a vital step in the expansion of opportunities for all students to extend their learning through direct participation in a media outlet,” said David Jamison, RMU provost, in a prepared statement. “RMUradio takes an important place in our student engagement initiative.”

Hendrickson says the station’s potential worldwide reach makes it “better than AM/FM radio.”

Hey, we resemble that remark, you consarned whipper-snapper. Try listening to your Internet radio station at the beach, or in the car.

What? You can do that now?

Oh. We’ll be sulking in the corner.