In what will soon be his office, Jamie Halla sits barefoot, planning WKNC’s future. Attached to the office’s door is a white board with the message “Do something sick,” with sick having seven “i”s. Layering the walls are various music show posters from the last decade and on his desk is a new poster for this week’s Friday on the Lawn.  Last month, Halla was appointed to the position of general manager of WKNC, the only student organization that broadcasts 24 hours a day.

“It’s a student-run non-commercial radio station,” said Halla, a senior studying English. “Basically what that means is that all of our DJs are students and everyone that runs the station are students aside from our advisor Jamie [Gilbert].”

Halla grew up in Raleigh and remembers listening to the station from a young age with his mother in the car. He was worked with the station since his freshman year of college.

Halla said that while other radio stations don’t worry as much about the actual job of playing music, it is the primary concern of the students at WKNC.

“We also have other programing like Eye on the Triangle, which is like an NPR-style news format,” Halla said. “And then we have other specialty shows. On Saturdays we have people playing emo-screamo. Various things like that. Different types of music, all student-run.”

Halla said he wouldn’t describe indie music as the main music played at the station. During the daytime block, from *6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the station generally sticks to indie music. This past year, the daytime block was shortened to this new time from a block that was four hours longer.

“That gave more focus to our other formats, which are underground [hip-hop], after-hours [electronic] and chainsaw [metal],” Halla said.

These variety shows play from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. and alternate depending on the day once daytime ends. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, it’s after-hours electronic music. Fridays are reserved for metal and hard rock. There are also smaller, more specific blocks sprinkled throughout the week like a 1930s through ‘60s female country music show, a local hip-hop show and “No Dudes Power Hour,” a two-hour genre nonspecific block featuring female artists only.

“It’s what our DJs want,” Halla said. “We noticed with the afterhours slots had too many DJs and not enough slots so we just knew that we needed to create more room for afterhours, in addition to the fact that we didn’t want to just be known as ‘that indie station.’”

Halla said the station’s specialty programming is completely based on what the DJs want, allowing for a lot of variety on air.

 “If you wanted to create a polka show, you can,” Halla said. “Whatever you want.”

According to the station’s staff advisor Jamie Gilbert, WKNC pays three performing rights organizations every year in order to broadcast songs. Those organizations are: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Broadcast Music Inc., and the Society of European Songwriters, Artists and Composers. The station also pays the organization SoundExchange for the rights to web stream music, which they do from the WKNC website.

WKNC accepts new DJs at three different times throughout the year, during the beginning of the spring, summer and fall sessions. Becoming a DJ is the easiest way to get involved with the station and work up to a staff position, according to Halla.

“There’s a position for everyone,” Halla said. “Say you find out about the station halfway through the year, you can come and get involved by reviewing CDs, helping out at events like Fridays on the Lawn and creating content for ‘Eye on the Triangle.’”

Halla said one of his biggest goals for the station is to have DJs working from 8 a.m. to midnight, so that there is always a voice on the air. Normally, when there isn’t a DJ at the station, an automated system plays music instead.

In the last month, WKNC has cut ties with long-time Raleigh concert series Local Bands Local Beer. Halla said he wants to keep the staff and the station involved with the community, but in a new way that has yet to be determined.

Tomorrow, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., WKNC will celebrating the last day of class with a Student Government-sponsored free Fridays on the Lawn show featuring Triangle artists Al Riggs and S. E. Ward. The event will be held on Harris Field outside of Witherspoon Student Center.

*Editor’s Note: Changed the start time of WKNC’s daytime block to 6 a.m.