College Radio Benefits this Week include Kucinich and Sean Penn Supporting Metal

It's not new news that college radio stations struggle with funding and according to a piece in the Daily Beacon, Knoxville, Tennessee's WUTK 90.3 FM actually receives no financial support from University of Tennessee (how does that happen?). They are holding a series of benefit concerts, including one this week. According to the Daily Beacon article:

"UT’s student-run radio station WUTK kicks off its second concert Saturday in its attempt to become more 'radio active' with the Knoxville community. Knoxville bands Ganasita, Llama Train and Big Deuce will be rocking out the World Grotto...The 'Radio Active' concert series allows local listeners of WUTK to help support the station, which is not funded by the university."

Another college radio station (Ohio's WJCU-FM at John Carroll University) benefit this week got a bit of buzz when Sean Penn and Dennis Kucinich dropped by and even introduced the metal band Ringworm playing the concert. That's the first time that I've heard of a politician publicly supporting college radio. The Cleveland Free Times piece quotes a station staffer:

"'Dennis was out campaigning and saw the listing in the paper for our WJCU benefit and wanted to stop out and support college radio. I talked to him and he was pretty up on the college radio scene here in Cleveland,' says concert organizer Bill Peters, longtime host of WJCU's Friday evening Metal on Metal show. 'I asked [Kucinich and Penn] if they would go on stage and introduce Ringworm and they said sure.'"