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Trophy case at college radio station WONC, with plaques and trophies

College Radio Watch: First Station?, Awards and Harvard Hubbub

College radio has garnered much news in the past few weeks thanks to a plethora of student media awards being presented by various organizations. It’s another reminder that awards can be a great reason to spread the word about college radio’s excellent work and pick up some media attention in the process.

Two New College Radio Stations

Additionally, it’s wonderful to see that new college radio stations continue to launch with regularity, as we see with word about college radio debuts at Texas Southern University and Wilmington College.

Funding Challenges for Campus Radio in Canada?

There’s much attention on some proposed funding changes to student media in Ontario, Canada. We’ll dig into this in great detail on next week’s Radio Survivor show/podcast, but in the meantime, read on for a bunch of articles on this topic.

Who has the Oldest Licensed Educational Radio Station?

Finally, my historian brain kicked into gear when I saw this tweet from DePaw University college radio station WGRE in Greencastle, Indiana:

#funfactfriday WGRE first went on-air April 28, 1949 as the first FCC licensed educational radio station! Our shows included only dramas, live music performances, DPU sporting events, and special events like the groundbreaking Roy O. West library! #longlivecollegeradio

I know that other educationally-affiliated radio stations were licensed before 1949, including the first wave of AM college radio stations in the 1920s, so I was curious about this pronouncement. Digging further, the WGRE website states, ” On April 28, 1949, WGRE went live as the first 10-watt educational radio station licensed by the Federal Communication Commission.”

So, it seems that this “first” claim is actually related to WGRE possibly being the first station granted a 10-watt class D FM non-commercial educational license. Those licenses are no longer granted and their numbers today have dwindled considerably. Digging up the history of class D is tricky.

If we look at non-commercial FM radio licenses overall, KALW launched as an educational station even earlier, in 1941. Its website states, “KALW is a pioneer educational station licensed to the San Francisco Unified School District, broadcasting since September 1, 1941 – when it went on the air as the first FM signal west of the Mississippi.”

High school radio station WHHS-FM at Haverford High School in Pennsylvania (see my tour) also purports to the be the oldest educational FM radio station. Its website states, “Welcome to America’s oldest non-commercial broadcast station licensed in 1948 [BPED-00099] run entirely by the students of the School District of Haverford Township, Havertown PA.” While licensed in 1948, it launched as a 10 watt FM station in December, 1949, which is after WGRE is said to have launched.

So the mystery remains. KALW may be the first educational FM radio station and WGRE may be the first 10 watt FM educational radio station. I’ll need to scour the history of class D radio to find out for sure, but this is another example of the variety of first claims. It’s important to look at the specifics, as there are many categories of radio, meaning that there are numerous ways that a station might be first.

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