WJHU
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| WJHU | |
| Broadcast area | Baltimore, MD |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Internet |
| First air date | 1945 |
| Format | College radio |
| Owner | Johns Hopkins University |
| Website | wjhuradio.com |
WJHU is a radio station based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins University owns the station, a community radio station with student volunteers, who are mainly on-air deejays and other program hosts. Programming blocks are divided into formats, dealing mostly with music, sports and cultural life: classical, dance, folk, jazz, public affairs, sports, rap, and rock formats — along with a few specialty shows outside any of the formats. Its studios are located on the Homewood campus.
[edit] History
WJHU was founded in the mid-1940s and began as an informal broadcast from Levering Hall in the Homewood campus. In the early 1950s the station moved into the basement of the Alumni Memorial Residences II (the newer of two dormitory buildings), where it would stay for the next thirty years. It transmitted on the 830 AM frequency in the dormitories via carrier current (a low-wattage transmission using the wiring in buildings).
By the mid-1970s, the station operated with students running 3-hour shows on a 24/7 programming schedule. The station also carried away lacrosse games with student announcers. A long-time goal of the station was to transition to being an actual broadcast station on FM (which was the ostensible reason for requiring all staff to obtain an FCC 3rd class operator's license).
Technical issues in 1975 led to suspension of broadcasting for much of the academic year and to questions among the staff concerning management. This in turn led in early 1976 to changes in management, programming, and use of facilities, as well as to increased attention from the university administration.
In 1977, the manager and chief engineer for the station, finding that 88.1 was the last FM frequency available in Baltimore, decided to push for an FCC upgrade. Official and budgetary support from the university administration made this possible, and final approval for WJHU 88.1-FM came from the FCC in 1978. Starting professional operations in 1979, the station had a mixed format, jazz in the early morning, classical during the day, and rock in the evenings. The signal extended off campus and the students hired for the first time a non-student to oversee the station full-time and insure compliance with FCC rules and university expectations. The station operated twenty-four hours a day, broadcasting a variety of music, a half-hour daily news program, as well as several five-minute news updates throughout the day.
The student managers decided to apply for a 25,000 watt license in the 1980s to protect the frequency, extending the audience throughout Baltimore and Washington DC area. This became the largest radio station power increase on record. The station became less forward-looking and more professional. Over the years it progressively added more content from National Public Radio and its partners, shifting to the format of news/talk in the daytime and overnight weekday hours, and music (mainly jazz) programming during evenings and nights.
In the fall of 1998, WJHU added overnight coverage of World Radio Network (WRN), which provides English-language news programs from broadcasters around the world. The station and the spectrum were sold by the university in early 2002 to Your Public Radio Corp., a locally based group of station talk hosts and listeners, and became WYPR.
However, before it was sold, students founded in the early 90s the alternative on-campus WHAT radio. Its name was later changed to WHSR, standing for Hopkins Student Radio. This was an unregulated, dorms-only station that operated on a carrier current, transmitting within the dorms, Levering Hall, and the Charles apartments. During the summer of 2002, after the WJHU spectrum was sold, Hopkins students with the assistance of the Dean of Student Life, got the radio back to broadcast and its original name, this time as an internet-only station.
