History of Prowl
Written By: Liz Lintonen
If there’s one thing Prowl Radio is full of, it’s passion. Passion for music, well-written lyrics and melody, for no-skip albums and curated playlists and Spotify wrapped. Passion for community, for getting together, for creating and creating with others, for believing in a project, for feeling understood, and for each other. Prowl Radio was founded as the first of its kind, and for one reason: students. As the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s first and only student run radio station, Prowl Radio is designed to be a third-space by way of a creative outlet. We are a blurry line, a bridge, because the same care and love and sense of belonging that make our college radio station have just easily made it home. We are built on believing in each other, and our successes come from an uninhibited joy for what we do and pride in who we are. Our radio came to be for one reason: the unmatched feeling of experiencing music live, and together.
Prowl Radio was founded by five women who wanted to engage with student involvement but on their own terms. Alexis Treadway, our founder and first president, wanted to get more involved on campus, but with something she loved and didn’t see a platform for. When Grace Pagel, another founding member, transferred out of UW-La-Crosse (good call) and reached out to Alexis, the project began to grow. The official founding members of our station are Alexis Treadway, Grace Pagel, Eliza Feah, Ivy Hamblen, and Brynn Purin.
Our first official meeting was on the Sandburg Lawn in October 2022, shortly after the first time Prowl appeared at an involvement fair. Nothing would happen until that following February 2023, when Prowl would go live on air for the first time. We would go on to conduct interviews with local Milwaukee bands, like Diet Lite, Scarlet Demore, and Chapped Lips, as well as national acts such as Hippo Campus and The Yellow Button. We would start attending concerts at Milwaukee’s staple DIY venues, which at the time were basements such as The Litehouse, The Washroom, and Club Cramer, as well as places like the Colectivo Backroom and The Cactus Club, and we would do man-on-the-street style interviews while we were there. We would host our first Battle of the Bands in September 2023, which featured Pop Sensation 9 A.M!, Lake Drive, Scam Likely, and Alley Eyes. At the student excellence awards in May 2023, Prowl Radio was awarded Outstanding Student Organization of the year. We’ve been featured in the Shepherd Express, Urban Milwaukee, and have started developing a partnership with Radio Milwaukee. In March 2024, Prowl Radio’s officer board traveled to New York City for our first radio conference. In July 2024, we traveled to Pitchfork music festival to interview artists and take photos. Somewhere in this timeline, an urban legend and original officer Benjamin Moyle invented the signature ‘Prowl Rowl.’
Since the conception and official take off, Prowl Radio has gained hundreds of members; writers, DJ’s, interviewers, film-makers, editors, and more. We are rapidly growing in all different directions, everything from national interviews to talk radio to social media content. There are truly no ideas too big, too crazy, or too much for our org, and we pride ourselves on being a safe space for everyone to explore the bounds of their creativity.
These days, Prowl Radio hosts a full lineup of live, on-air DJs, an impressive student interview team, and a door to a range of other radio jobs. We are not radio professionals and what we do has not been done before as far as UWM is concerned. We are one giant group of friends, determined to have left something behind when we graduate, to have done some good, made some space, created some change, and had fun while doing it. Every interview, song played, and event we’ve had has paved the way for the next generation of student music lovers to pick up where we left off. We understand that nothing connects people the way that music does, and the truest goal of them all is for others to feel what we’ve already felt. We are a tiny groove in the ever-spinning record of Milwaukee’s history, a b-side track.
But for a new student radio, we’ve made quite a song.