'Unique' Experience Offered on Local Radio Station

For a North Jersey resident experimenting with local radio, the medium isn’t about the talking or the technology, it’s about the music.

“What I do on my show is just so different from mainstream radio,” Keith Smollin said of the ‘Naked Brunch Radio Show,” which he hosts Saturday afternoons on WPSC 88.7 FM, William Paterson University’s radio station.

The show plays deep cuts from rock albums, both classic and contemporary.

“It’s not the Number 1’s. So, while it may be a band you know, it’s the deeper tracks from their albums,” Smollin said. “A lot of classic rock, and a lot of music you just don’t get to hear anywhere else.”

Smollin, a Paramus High School grad who moved to Ramsey two years ago, said he first experimented at the radio station when he attended WPU in the early 2000’s as an undergrad.

“It’s really just a hobby for me,” Smollin told Patch. “I’m not looking to go into radio professionally, like a lot of the other radio hosts here are. I just enjoy it. I like giving people something different to listen to.”

Smollin is a Special Education teacher in Union City who returned to WPU this year to take graduate classes on English Second Language teaching.

“I took a nine-year break [from William Paterson’s radio station].” I had started to do podcasting, but I missed this. So, when I started taking classes here again, I came back.”

The Naked Brunch Radio Show, which pre-dated Smollin’s tenure at the college, runs live Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Smollin shares hosting duties with two other students, and can be heard live on the air from noon to 3 p.m. Saturdays.

“With social media and online streaming, it’s a totally different world now [than the last time I worked at the station],” Smollin said. “We’ve actually built up a wider audience who listen in these new ways.”

Check out more information about the show, or stream it live, at its Facebook page and website.