| City of license | State College, Pennsylvania |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | State College, Pennsylvania |
| Branding | Penn State Public Broadcasting |
| Slogan | "Public Radio for Central Pennsylvania" |
| Frequency | 91.5 MHz (also on HD Radio) |
| Translator(s) |
92.1 MHz DuBois 106.7 MHz Altoona |
| Repeaters | WPSX 90.1 MHz Kane (also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | December 6, 1953 |
| Format | News/Classical Music |
| ERP | 1,700 watts |
| HAAT | 365 meters |
| Class | B1 |
| Facility ID | 66239 |
| Callsign meaning | Pennsylvania State University |
| Former callsigns | WDFM (12/6/1953-1985) |
| Affiliations | National Public Radio Public Radio International |
| Owner | Pennsylvania State University |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wpsu.org |
WPSU (91.5 FM) is a National Public Radio member radio station owned by Pennsylvania State University as a part of Penn State Public Broadcasting. It reaches some 500,000 households in central Pennsylvania and southern New York, as well as a few households in western Pennsylvania. The station is rebroadcast on WPSX 90.1 FM in Kane. Both the 91.5 and 90.1 signals transmit in HD.
Its production facilities are located along Innovation Park Boulevard outside of State College.
With transmitters located throughout the region, WPSU-FM now serves over 500,000 listeners [1] in 12 central counties of the Commonwealth, 24 hours a day.
Through nationally- and locally-produced news, features and music programs, WPSU-FM offers a variety of programming for a widely diverse listening audience.
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The station went on the air December 6, 1953 as WDFM. It was first conceived by the Class of 1951 and given to the University as a class gift.[1] A faculty member from the College of Communications served as a hands-on manager and full-time adviser. The radio station enjoyed quite a bit of popularity (and even controversy) in its early days, with certain DJs (including future faculty adviser Robert Zimmerman) opting to play cutting-edge artists such as Elvis Presley when doing so was not widely deemed acceptable. In the early days of WDFM, jazz and classical music were played, but Zimmerman staged call-ins and requests to allow a wider variety of music to be featured. The primary goal of WDFM was to provide a hands-on learning experience for students interested in radio communications, but it also strove to serve the community with unique programming.
WDFM was open not only to student membership, but also to faculty and staff of the university. Through the years, and particularly in the 1980s, faculty membership increased gradually. Student-specific programming was also cut back little by little, with such programs eventually relegated to weekend nights.
In 1985, the station picked up the WPSU call letters after the radio station at Penn State Wilkes-Barre retired them. WPSU became a part of Penn State Public Broadcasting under the university's Department of Continuing and Distance Education as opposed to being affiliated with the College of Communications. This period of time also marked a dramatic rise in the involvement of non-students on the staff, no longer necessarily serving the goals of the original station endowed by the Class of 1951.[2] As faculty and academic involvement increased, student involvement began to wane. The radio station endowed by former students to serve their best interests was being turned into a faculty-run operation.
Because the faculty was now mostly (though not yet solely) responsible for providing programming for the station, WPSU began syndicating NPR shows to an area where NPR hadn't previously been available. Such programming increased gradually through the 1980s, but more markedly from the late 1980s through the early 1990s. Finally, by 1992, WPSU was a full-fledged NPR affiliate.[3]
WPSU-FM's signal is streamed across the Internet 24-hours a day. [2]
WPSU-FM also has podcasts of the following programs:
When it signed on in December 1953, WPSU-FM was the student station for Penn State under the call letters WDFM. In the mid 1990s, with more and more national programming from NPR taking up more time on the "student" station, a new station and signal was created -- WKPS -- that became the full-time student station. They operate independently from WPSU-FM.
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