WC Students Get Gelfman

When Dick Gelfman purchased Kent County's local AM radio station WCTR last year, he immediately sought to get Washington College students involved. A lawyer and Baltimore TV news veteran known for his "Get Gelfman" consumer investigations, Gelfman imagined the station as a classroom for students to learn about the media business, from journalism to marketing.

This spring, the College's business management students finally "Got Gelfman" as part of Professor Irv DeGraw's Entrepreneurship course.

"The purpose of the course is to remove students from the classroom and immerse them in an active learning experience that put them on the front lines of actual decision-making in a real business," said DeGraw. "This was an environment where the stakes are all very real—real jobs, real livelihoods, real money—and not some abstract exercise for grades."

So DeGraw's students rolled up their sleeves and worked with the management of WCTR to create and to conduct a survey of listener characteristics across WCTR's two-county region of Kent and Queen Anne's.

Although there are an estimated 80,000 residents in this area, Arbitron rating data for the region was not available, and since taking over the station in April 2004, Gelfman has been interested in building the station's audience and appeal. The students made 900 calls to a random selection of households in the listening area, collecting and compiling data from more than 200 responses.

"Students themselves made the cold calls, which can present quite a personal challenge and be a confidence-boosting exercise in itself," said DeGraw. "The results were analyzed and incorporated into formal business plans presented to the management of WCTR."

For business management major George Sperlbaum '05, the hands-on approach to learning business gave him the real-life experience of deadlines, planning and group work.

"This experience helped me gauge how long a project like our survey would take," Sperlbaum said. "Working with Mr. Gelfman showed me what it takes to keep a business running."

And the results were as practical for WCTR as they were for the students.

"WCTR was a natural, real-world laboratory for the class," said Gelfman, who enjoyed sharing the "in the trenches" project with the students. "Their work was very valuable to us, and I have good degree of confidence in their data. It will help us to redirect our own marketing efforts."