Mark A. Stoler, born in New York City in 1945, received his Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971. While a graduate student in 1968, he and others highly critical of the musical selections played over Madison's and southern Wisconsin's commercial radio stations began to explore the possibility of launching a program that offered a wide variety of folk, blues, and jazz. Initially supported by volunteers, a few small businesses and, later, at least one retail record sales establishment, the small band of dissenters made arrangements with WMFM owner and general manager Earl W. Fessler to rent late-evening and early-morning time at his station located on Madison's east side. Sometime in late 1968, the group of highly amateur programmers and one of Fessler's engineers, whose services were included as part of the hourly rental fee, launched WMFM-”Up Against the Wall” radio. Named after the “Battle Cry of '68” and modeled after programs in other cities with which the volunteers were familiar, “Up Against the Wall” was Madison's and Wisconsin's first serious and sustained attempt to present “alternative” radio. As such, “Up Against the Wall” introduced thousands of listeners to scores of folk, blues, and progressive jazz artists whose talents were seldom, if ever, carried over radio stations in the Middle West.
While the life of “Up Against the Wall” radio was relatively short, it breathed new life into Wisconsin's airwaves. By the mid-1970's in Madison alone, commercial radio stations no longer could ignore the sounds of “alternative” programming. WIBA, for instance, began “Radio Free Madison.” WORT-FM (“Back Porch Radio”) began broadcasting later in the 1970's as another largely-volunteer, publicly-supported radio station located, ironically, in the same building that “Up Against the Wall” had rented in 1968 from Earl Fessler.
