Colgate’s radio station, WRCU 90.1 FM, offers a place for students, faculty and community members to broadcast their personalities out on air. This year, seniors Hannah Ditto and Joey Bluhm began hosting a show together called “Ditto.” While the show is relatively young, the two seniors have been friends for a long time, although their paths to WRCU were different.

“It was the first day of orientation […] We were in a circle and I was like, ‘I’m from Minnesota’ and [Ditto was] like, ‘I’m also from Minnesota,’” Bluhm remarked of the connection that brought them together.

The two continued talking and became close friends that year, with a common interest in sharing music, Ditto explained.

“I mean we’ve been making playlists and stuff for each other since freshman year,” Ditto said.

This gave some insight into what was to come for the two as Bluhm reflected on the way Ditto’s mixtapes changed the way he listened to music.

“She gave me a cassette once on a walkman with a full playlist. And [be]cause I didn’t have a cassette player she gave me her walkman but the walkman was broken, so it was playing back stuff at 80% speed or something. It was the best way to listen to The Punch Brothers, I will say,” Bluhm said.

Despite the two’s mutual love for music, Bluhm was the only one who had a radio show before this year. Hosting a show alone since his first year, however, posed some challenges for Bluhm.

“I had always struggled with […] the space in between songs and I was a big fan of just [saying] […] ‘Here’s the thing you just heard, here’s the thing that you’re now about to listen to,’” Bluhm said.

Some of what Bluhm felt was missing in his show was filled in by guests which he began bringing on during his junior year. This eventually led to Ditto joining the show and the eventual formation of their joint show together.

“I had started having some guests on my radio show come in like junior year when some friends had a free hour. [I’d ask] ‘hey you wanna sit in and talk about music with me for a little bit?’ I don’t think [Ditto] ever did that with me but then [she] reached out and was like ‘hey do you know how I could get onto the radio station?’ I was like, ‘here’s the [application] you can get all this stuff set up.’ And then we started guesting on each other’s shows,” Bluhm said. “But we enjoyed co-hosting too much.”

“I sort of nepotism-ed my way in,” joked Ditto. 

With the two playing off each other, the new show is quite different from Bluhm’s earlier shows, Ditto explained.

“The concept is that […] every week one of us makes the playlist and then the other person gets to comment on it,” Ditto explained. “We do like hearing ourselves talk because every other song we’d have like five minutes of commentary on air.”

Bluhm also recognized the positive changes that have come with having a co-host.

“But now, especially having a co-host there we can have a moment to really explore […] what a song means, how it relates to our taste and then also just to have fun,” Bluhm explained.

Ditto and Bluhm have grown together through sharing music and now use their show as a platform to do the same with listeners. Tune in on Saturdays at 8 p.m. to hear the two on their new show, “Ditto.”