Conn Country

By Aimee Lawton
Special to the Critic

Highlighting one of LSC's longest running radio shows.

“You’re listening to the Conn Country show on 91.5, the Impulse--keep it locked.”
That’s how DJ Slim ends every air break on his Thursday night show.

As WWLR, 91.5 the Impulse kicks off their 2008-2009 season, their listeners are offered with a wide array of student run radio shows. While there are many shows that are making their debut this Impulse season, others are returning in hopes of having another successful listening year.

One show that falls in to the latter category is the Conn Country show, one of the station’s longest running radio shows, as it enters in to its 7th consecutive semester on the radio.

Students can join hosts Tim Lavigne (DJ Slim) and Mike Grigas (the Sharpshooter) every Thursday night from 8-10 p.m. as they play a variety of new and old country favorites, and take requests from their fans.

“There was one show where we had about 75 requests,” Lavigne said. “The show ran for about 4 ½ hours that night. We kept it going until the requests stopped.”
Lavigne said that last semester he and Grigas received around 20 fan requests per show.

It is very rare that any request ever goes un-played on the Conn Country show, as the hosts always say that they are willing to buy any songs that are not already a part of their music libraries. The hosts offer a 99% guarantee that those songs will be played sometime within the duration of the show.

“You guys are the ones who keep the show running,” Lavigne said. “If we wanted to play the music that we wanted to hear, we could sit in our rooms and listen to it on our laptops while we played games,” Lavigne said on last week’s show.

Lavigne started the Conn Country show three years ago and has been running it faithfully ever since.

“I’d say I’ve had requests come in from about 10 different states,” Lavigne said, “some from as far as Georgia and Florida.” The Conn Country show has a very broad listening audience that stretches far beyond the Lyndon State campus.

The ability of fans to stream the Impulse on the web is most likely responsible for such a wide ranging audience, and yet another contributor to the overall success of the show.

Lavigne went through 2 earlier supporting DJ’s before Grigas joined him as the Sharpshooter in January 2008. The two have proved to be a dynamic duo ever since. Their ability to play off of each other’s dialogue during air breaks, and their sharing in the responsibilities of providing the music played on the show and taking requests from their fans keeps the show running smoothly, and contributes to its overall success.