By Dave Paone
Campus News
Video didn’t actually kill the radio star. At least not at Nassau Community College.
NCC’s radio station, WHPC-FM, has won seven awards from the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System, which describes itself as “your source for all things media at the college and high school level.”
NCC’s radio station is nothing new; it’s been around for 49 years. Winning awards is nothing new for it, either. In 2018, it won three and in 2019, it won five. But this year is a record for the station (no pun intended).
One of the seven awards is for Best College Radio Station Advisor. That would be Shawn Novatt.
A big part of Shawn’s job is commanding the 120 volunteers the station has, most of whom are on-air personalities. About 75 of the 120 are NCC students and the rest are community volunteers.
Only a small percentage of the students at the station are actually pursuing a career in media.
“I once had somebody who was majoring to be a mortician,” said Shawn. (He gave new meaning to the broadcast term, “dead air.”)
There are over 50 individual shows broadcast on the station and they’re as diverse as can be. There’s an all-Beatles show, an all-Billy Joel show, an all-Sly Stone show, The German Hit Parade, punk music, Irish music… and these are just some of the music shows. There’s also Jewish Talk, Sports Talk and a talk show with legal advice.
Shawn inherited many of these programs, but with input from his staff, developed several new ones. However, The Nassau Morning Madhouse was all Shawn’s idea and it’s his signature show.
“Prior to my arrival [five years ago] we weren’t doing a morning show, in fact, we weren’t even live in the morning until nine AM, which confused me,” said Shawn.
He learned in his many years in professional, New York radio that primetime is in the morning. “If you can get people to listen in the morning, they generally stay tuned all day,” said Shawn.
The plan was to put four or five students on air together, where they’d talk about “fun, wacky topics,” whatever is in the news, tell personal stories and take listener phone calls.
It worked. The program is on five days a week, each show with a different set of hosts. There’s one host who leads the group and four co-hosts who participate. Shawn borrowed the format from the Z Morning Zoo on Z100, where he interned for a short time.
Shawn had to perform a juggling act to make Morning Madhouse succeed. Each student has his own schedule to work around and then there’s the chemistry aspect. If co-hosts don’t have chemistry — or worse yet, have personality conflicts — then the show just won’t work. There were times Shawn needed to move players from one day to another to maximize results.
He feels everything clicks for at least one group each semester.
Wednesday’s host is Eleanor Ciampi and she feels her group is one of them. “I personally think our Wednesday show has great chemistry,” she said, “because we all are friends outside of the station.”
Eleanor thinks of herself as funny. “I get a lot of laughs,” said the 22-year-old. She likes to find material in real life and often tells stories about her “very crazy,” “big Italian family.”
IBS awarded Best Morning Show to The Nassau Morning Madhouse.
While the name of the show has the word “madhouse” in it, everyone tries to keep the topics appropriate for a community college.
Eleanor recalled a recent, on-air conversation she had with her four, male co-hosts when they spoke about what body types they’re attracted to in the opposite sex. The conversation went from body types to body parts, or at least hinting at them.
Eleanor was the recipient of WHPC’s Student of the Year award in 2020 and has bragging rights to say she’s on an award-winning radio show. She gives Shawn all the credit for making the station the success that it is.
Stephanie Lombardo is the host of Saturday’s The Party Mix, where she plays “a mix of feel-good tunes, ranging from hip-hop, techno, dance classics and current hits.”
It’s ironic that she plays what’s essentially club music because she was never much of a clubber.
“I think in my twenties I went a handful of times,” said the 32- year-old. “After like an hour I would usually get bored. I was such an old lady at 20.” Then she would complain to her friends that the music was too loud and she didn’t know anyone.
Regardless of the playlist, Stephanie always knew she wanted to be in radio. At nine years old she turned her bedroom into a radio station by recording herself on cassette tapes on a boombox with a microphone for announcing. Sometimes she had friends over and scripted a show. The call letters were WSAL (for Stephanie Ann Lombardo).
She even told her mother, “I’m going to be on the radio one day.”
That day came when she was 17 and a freshman at NCC. At the start of the fall semester someone told her about the campus radio station. “I knew immediately, this is the place I have to go,” she said.
She interviewed with Shawn’s predecessor who took her on. Her first time seeing the studio with the engineer on one side of the glass and the DJ on the other was just how she pictured it from what she saw in the movies.
It was a while before she started her own show but once it got going, it’s been on the schedule for over 11 years. During that time Stephanie received her AA from NCC, then a BA from Hofstra University, followed by an MBA from C.W. Post.
When Stephanie started the songs were played on CDs. (The days of “stacks of wax” were long over.) She’d bring a backpack full of them to the station, along with her playlist.
Technology has changed since then and NCC has a digital “audio vault,” which DJs access through a computer. This, along with the QGoLive app — which turns a cell phone into a microphone — allows the DJs to host their shows remotely during the pandemic.
The IBS awards are national, so WHPC competed with college radio stations from all over the country. The other awards it won are for Best Station ID, Best Underwriting Announcement, Best Use of Social Media, Best Overall College Radio Station in the Nation and Best Community College Radio Station in the Nation.
The station is at 90.3 on the FM dial, the NCC website, Alexa and Google Home smart speakers, as well as the iHeartRadio app.
“For students who want to pursue radio, Nassau is a great place to start,” said Stephanie. She thinks of WHPC as her “home-away-from-home.”
“As soon as I walked in the door, I felt at home. I felt like this is where I belonged,” she said. “It makes you feel part of something.”
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