Over the pandemic, I went through boxes and boxes of old cassette tapes and completed a monotonous, years-long project of digitizing them. There were thousands of airchecks of radio stations around the region recorded in the 1990s and early 2000s, carefully labelled, stored, and never played.
There was one box that I saved for last because I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to hear it again: one labelled “The Beat.”
“The Beat” was my attempt as a late 1990s college student to bring some rhythm to Northland airwaves. Those who know the Duluth-Superior radio market know that commercial stations here have always been a little bit leery about the idea of a full-fledged Top 40 outlet. The format comes and goes with the seasons.
In 1996, the Top 40 station in town had quietly transitioned to Modern Adult Contemporary (and later flipped to Modern Rock). Anything remotely resembling Dance, Hip-Hop, or R&B wasn’t played on Twin Ports radio until the AC station picked it up as a gold track years later.
Even the Backstreet Boys’ mega-hit “Quit Playing Games” wasn’t heard anywhere on Twin Ports radio when it peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1997. It appeared later, once it hit the AC chart.
Remember that back then, there was no Spotify or Pandora, there was no satellite radio, and online streaming of radio stations was in its infancy. The only way Twin Ports residents could hear many current hits, especially those by diverse artists, was to buy the CD or drive to the Twin Cities to listen to KDWB.
I was about to enter my junior year at UW-Superior and determined to do something about it (though not because of the Backstreet Boys). By then I had been working as a student at KUWS, the Wisconsin Public Radio station located on the UWS campus, for nearly two years.
KUWS is an extremely unique station: Few people realize its 83kW signal makes it, by far, the most powerful Upper Midwest FM station carrying student-produced programming (I’m not sure where it ranks nationally). Through the agreement that connected KUWS with Wisconsin Public Radio in the early 1990s, up to 25% of its program schedule is set aside for student programming. Students are currently on the air from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. weeknights.
As a teenager who loved radio and the Twin Ports, it’s no wonder I chose to go to UWS.
Within days of arriving on campus in 1995, John Munson accepted my application for a job at KUWS. I didn’t care what I did as long as I got to do radio, so I board-opped football games, took “91 Jazz Street” shifts that no one wanted, and helped out with Mike Simonson’s debates and election coverage. It was thrilling. And by the summer of 1997 I had built up enough clout to ask a favor.
I asked the director of the Alternative program if I could take over their Friday night shift for a dance show. Surprisingly, I got a “yes” (I’m sure the challenge of staffing college radio on Friday night in the summer played a role).
Next I presented the idea to John. Prepared for disappointment, I got another “yes.”
I don’t think they fully realized what I had planned. My goal was to fill the void of rhythmic music on Northland radio and to make it sound as much like an actual Rhythmic Top 40 station as possible, complete with liners recorded by market veteran Roger Johnson, who was KUWS’ operations manager at that time:
When I started dubbing in those tapes, I expected to be embarrassed. There are certainly some embarrassing spots. My delivery is definitely AC and not CHR (I later got a job at an AC station).
I could have done more to get other students involved in the show, but the tapes remind me that there was more student involvement than I remembered. We received so many calls that I had to ask friends to come in just to answer the phone.
“The Beat” started out Friday nights from 9:30 to midnight and shifted to 10 to 2 when WPR went 24 hours.
Ultimately, “The Beat” signed off when I graduated in 1999. It wasn’t due to a lack of success — there was evidence of a large audience and strong student interest in working on both “The Beat” and “The Network,” the station’s long-running Hip-Hop and R&B show that aired on Monday and Saturday nights.
With a good amount of musical overlap between the shows and the need for a home of Hip-Hop and Dance hits in the Northland, we decided to merge the shows. At first, the plan was to be on the air six days a week, but it didn’t pan out in the long run. Unfortunately, “The Network” is no longer on the air.
Listening to those old tapes, I realize I did accomplish what I set out to do and I learned in the process that I’m definitely not a Top 40 DJ. Setting aside my Soft AC-style delivery, there’s production that’s sometimes tight (and sometimes not), decent imaging, actual cross-promotion for the other music shows, and station promos and PSA’s produced by colleagues that sound like real commercials.
Here’s how the first part of the show sounded in July 1998:
Keep in mind all of the songs on the show were exclusive to KUWS at that time, even the ones by Will Smith and the Backstreet Boys. Looking back, I’m almost shocked that none of the Duluth stations was playing these huge songs back in the late 1990s, but they were on KUWS a couple of nights a week:
- Spice Girls “Wannabe” and “Say You’ll Be There”
- Mark Morrison “Return of the Mack”
- Notorious B.I.G. “Mo Money Mo Problems” and “Hypnotize”
- Will Smith “Men In Black,” “Gettin’ Jiggy With It,” and “Miami”
- Blackstreet “No Diggity”
- TLC “No Scrubs”
- Daft Punk “Around the World”
- Jamiroquai “Virtual Insanity” and “Alright”
- Aqua “Barbie Girl”
- Usher “You Make Me Wanna”
Between “The Beat” and “The Network,” we were able to give them a couple of spins per week. Dance remixes and gold filled out “The Beat.” Rhythmic Top 40 lived in the Twin Ports!
Here’s a Spotify playlist of some of the songs from “The Beat:”