WRUV listeners tuned in for nearly 152 days of music — in just the past three days.
In the end, this listener commitment proved enough to win WRUV a national title among college radio stations: that of most listened-to college station.
WRUV-FM 90.1, a student-run station staffed by University of Vermont students and local DJs, competed against 63 other stations in Soundtap Madness, a bracket-style event patterned after the NCAA basketball tourney.
The contest started March 15, with pairs of college stations competing for online listening hours through the Soundtap platform. In the NCAA bracket tradition, winners advanced through rounds of 64, then 32, 16, 8, 4 and finally 2. Each round involved three days’ worth of listening, with each listener’s hours being added to the station’s total.
WRUV came close to being knocked out in the round of 8 when its competitor, KTRU of Rice University in Houston, Texas, logged 2,161 hours in the three-day round. WRUV managed to come out ahead with nearly 2,309 hours, or the equivalent of 96 days of listening, among more than three dozen listeners.
The final around — against WRCT of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Penn. — proved to be even closer.
Soundtap scheduled the tournament to end at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday, which was 2:59 a.m. UVM time Thursday. Dozens of listeners logged in to continue to accumulate hours.
In the end, UVM listeners logged more than 3,645 hours — just 23 hours more than Carnegie Mellon.