I’ve been thinking about LPFM and college radio a lot this week. Three more colleges and universities were granted construction permits for new LPFM stations. Paul wrote about plans for stations at the Marshall University Graduate College (South Charleston, WV) and at University of Virginia, Charlottesville in his LPFM feature yesterday. In addition to those two schools, Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff, AZ) was also granted its construction permit.
According to its FCC application, Northern Arizona University has an existing student radio station called KJACK and hopes to put it on LPFM in order to “broaden the education of the student staff.” Additionally, the application states that, “KJACK strives to prepare students for the radio industry and to provide a diverse student voice for NAU.” The station currently broadcasts on campus at 1680 AM.
This week I also had the pleasure of visiting two college radio stations in Seattle that are preparing to get on the air over LPFM. Yesterday I stopped by Seattle University’s streaming radio station KXSU (formerly KSUB), which hopes to get on the air by next year. And, on Wednesday I toured University of Washington, Bothell’s online radio station UWave, which was also granted a construction permit for LPFM.
And, if it hasn’t been inspiring enough to hear about these new LPFM grants and then visit a few of these new stations, a number of LPFM applicants also shared their stories with each other during a roundtable discussion yesterday at College Broadcasters Inc.’s National Student Electronic Media Convention in Seattle. By my count, approximately 57 colleges and universities have been granted new LPFM construction permits this year. I feel lucky to have been able to hear from a few of them this week.
That’s all for this week, as I’m in full college radio immersion mode at the CBI convention. If you’re at the conference, please stop by and say “hello.” I’m speaking this afternoon at 3pm on a panel focused on the diversity of college radio. I’ll have more updates from the conference in the coming weeks and am sharing occasional tweets through both @radiosurvivor and @spinningindie.
To keep up to date on college radio news, read College Radio Watch every Friday.
