Marquette Radio DJs head to the basement of Johnston Hall every day to broadcast shows about sports, music or life around campus. But Marquee found three of the most noteworthy weekly campus broadcasts from this semester that dare to break away from the typical college airwaves.

These shows instead explore old-time radio theater, host frank discussions on societal attitudes and even present eccelctic in-studio performances.

The Venus Theater

Hosted by College of Communication junior Rebecca Dempsey

Wednesdays 6 – 7:30 p.m.

In homage to Orson Welles and his 1930s radio program, “The Mercury Theatre on the Air,” host Rebecca Dempsey reads classic stories live on the air to create a radio dinner theater experience.

“When I’m on the air, it’s not like I’m doing regular talk radio where I’m talking about my life or something lifestyle-y,” Demsey said. “I’m being someone else. For some of the stories I do, I could be up to 15 characters, so that could be 15 voice variations.”

Dempsey portrays characters of different ages and genders and said finding the right voice for each character can take hours of practice.

“Usually, I’ll make a list out of all the characters, and the main ones I make sure get a very distinct voice,” she said. “And I’ve noticed that lots of these radio shows are typically characterized with male parts, and I’m just like, ‘[sigh] I’m a girl. This is what I want to do.’ So I need six different male voices, which is very stressful, because I’m not- I don’t have- I’m a girl.”

Dempsey’s repertoire of classic radio scripts includes “War of the Worlds,” “Around the World in 80 days” and “The Hitchhiker.” For her Halloween show, Dempsey read “Dracula,” though her Transylvanian accent was one of her more difficult radio endeavors.

“I don’t even know what I did,” she said. “It just happened, and I was like, ‘That’s what it’s going to be.’ I don’t even think I can do it again. As I was sitting there, I’m sure that my face was beet-red even though only my listeners could hear me.”

Rebecca’s favorite radio stations: 103.5 FM KISS FM (Chicago) and 101.9 FM The Mix (Chicago)

Media Madness

Hosted by College of Communication sophomore Hannah Byron

Fridays 9-10:30 a.m.

On Media Madness, host Hannah Byron explores how the media shapes and reflects societal values through unfair coverage or misrepresentation.

“Media is constantly around us, whether we realize it or not,” she said. “Media comes in forms not just television and music and magazines, but it’s like advertisements. It’s constantly around us. We have our cell phones with us. We have social media. People should be more aware of the media and how even different things you say, different ways you look at people, it impacts everything.”

Byron often invites guests to speak on her show to get professional opinions on her topics.

“It’s mostly professors that I’ll bring in,” she said.

Byron recently invited journalism and media studies professors, Pamela Hill Nettleton and Ana Garner onto the show.

“Nettleton was very much on my show for the way women are represented,” Byron said. “(Garner) focuses her research on race and gender in the media, so I look for people like that, and even people who aren’t professors.”

While her topics cover a wide variety of demographics that Byron said she believes are misrepresented or underrepresented, Byron makes sure to get her audience involved in whatever she is covering.

“Usually every week, I’ll go to the AMU or hot spots on campus, and I’ll just poll random people ,and I’ll ask them, ‘Hey what do you think about women in the media?’” she said. “Or I’ll have them watch a clip and I’m like, ‘What are your initial reactions to this?’ I talk to people, and that’s how I also gauge what I want to talk about on the show, based on what they say. Like, if they say something that maybe I disagree with, I wanna hear that stuff because it helps me build the discussion on whatever the topic is.”

Hannah’s favorite radio station: NPR (Wisconsin Affiliate – FM 90.7 WHAD)

Sounds Like Suburbia

Hosted by College of Engineering senior Sam Kissel

Sundays 7:30 – 9 p.m.

Straying from the conventional “one station, one genre” format, Sounds Like Suburbia plays music from a variety of genres, like alternative, indie, rap, country and classic rock. The show is hosted by Marquette Radio program director Sam Kissel and is the longest running show on MU radio.

Kissel’s passion for music stems beyond just the songs he plays on his show (he claims to be “one of the few people (who) still buy CDs”), and it shows through the stories he tells between the music.

“If I’m playing a song from a band I just saw in concert, obviously I know that I’m going to talk about the concert, and I’m playing this song because it was my favorite song they played,” he said. “But sometimes I’ll just kind of start talking and I’ll come up with goofy segues or things that (will make) my friends text me and say, ‘That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’”

Occasionally, live bands come inyo the studio as a treat for listeners, something that Kissel said makes his show unique and more fun than the traditional music show.

“I’ve had bands come in and play on my show,” he said. “A band called The Hops that’s from Illinois came to a couple Marquette Radio events, but they’ve also played an acoustic set on my show. So I talked to them and interviewed them. I like to have fun on my show, and I think that people can see that, or, hear that.”

Sam’s favorite radio stations: 88.9 Radio Milwaukee and FM 102.1 Milwaukee