WMOT

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WMOT
City of license Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Broadcast area Nashville, Tennessee
Branding Jazz 89
Frequency 89.5 (MHz)
First air date 1969
Format Jazz
Power 100,000 Watts
Class C1
Callsign meaning Middle Of Tennessee
Owner Middle Tennessee State University
Website www.wmot.org

WMOT is a radio station featuring jazz music programming and serving the metropolitan Nashville market. It is licensed to Middle Tennessee State University, located in nearby Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Its signal can be heard most clearly in the counties surrounding Nashville. It uses the branding Jazz 89.

Originally started in 1969 employing various forms of pop and rock music, WMOT adopted the jazz format in 1982. With the change in format to jazz, the station essentially switched demographic groups, from one consisting primarily of people aged 18-25 to one considerably older-skewing (mainly 35 and over). At various times in the station's history, it has broadcast MTSU football and basketball games as well; WMOT has resumed carrying games during the 2007-2008 season.

Up until the late 1990s, the station carried National Public Radio news programs, but discontinued those due to budget reductions, replacing them with hourly updates from the Associated Press radio service. Duplication of nearby WPLN-FM's carriage of NPR news also led to the switch.

Several staff announcers have been associated with the station for over a decade or longer, notably Greg Lee, John Egly, Randy O'Brien, and Shawn Jacobs. These men are heard weekday mornings and on newscasts, while MTSU broadcasting students take the air on afternoons, evenings, and weekends.

Overnights, WMOT airs the syndicated Jazz with Bob Parlocha, and on Sundays, several hour-long specialty shows are heard, produced by NPR and other packagers. The station takes considerable pride in featuring recordings by locally-based jazz artists in its playlist rotation.

In 1995, the MTSU student government body started another station, WMTS-FM, to serve the campus audience once served by WMOT. The State Board of Regents (higher education) is the body licensed by the Federal Communications Commission to operate WMOT Radio; general administrative responsibility is vested with the President of MTSU.

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