WTXR
| City of license | Toccoa Falls, Georgia |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Toccoa, Georgia |
| Branding | The Eagle 89.7 |
| Frequency | 89.7 MHz |
| Format | Christian rock |
| ERP | 400 watts |
| HAAT | 42 meters |
| Class | A |
| Owner | Toccoa Falls College |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wtxr.com |
WTXR (The Eagle 89.7) is the student-run campus radio station of Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa Falls, Georgia. The radio station plays predominantly Christian rock and Contemporary Christian music but also features various specialty shows. It is a companion to sister WRAF, run by the college itself.
TFC students fill rolls such as radio station manager and program director, with tenures generally beginning at the beginning of the student's junior or senior year and ending with graduation. Though upperclassmen typically hold the role of radio station manager and program director, almost any student can be a disc jockey if approved by the station manager. This allows for great diversity in the material that is broadcast.
WTXR's current faculty advisor is Curt Wanner and the station manager is Craig Salmon, a communications student at TFC.
History
The station is housed in the Recital Hall, also known as Bandy Hall, on the back side. It is located in what used to be the original WRAF studios. When the time came to pick the call letters for the station it was known as "The Crossroads", which can be seen when looking at the call letters, W-TXR. Steve Dendrinos was the original faculty member to oversee this installation of the new student station.
WTXR has always been a student run radio station from every perspective and this makes for diverse and often very humorous shows. The students chose to change the to "The Eagle" or "Eagle 89", moving away from the moniker of The Crossroads. This allowed The Eagle 89 to move away from WRAF and focus on a more youthful crowd and not compete with it. Under the guidance of Jeremy Duke, the station bridged the programming demographic to the 18-24 age bracket and it targeted a pocket that was not being attended to in the Toccoa area.
Another notable student was Nate "Trendy Nate" Becker. Trendy Nate broadened the programming and allowed for a more fluid song rotation which allowed it to become more respected in Northeast Georgia. Nate and Dendrinos departed, making way for Stephen and Josh Altmanshofer to market the station as "Toccoa's Youth Station".
Some of the longest running shows of the Eagle included Dr. Everitt's show, featuring Bob Dylan classics. There was also the ChappyHour, which ran for 3.5 years on Sunday nights, and the Indie-Spam-Pit. The ISP collectively started as three individual shows. Spam was led by Spanky Willard and contained music of all sorts. The Indie show was fronted by Christopher 'The Dictator' Dentel, and was entirely Indie music, and the Pit was Josh Altmanshofer featuring hard core music. The three combined to create one of the most eclectic shows in the station's history, and took up the 10-12pm Sunday night slot starting in 2001 and lasted for a couple years.
Another very successful show, titled IndieAccess, was fronted by Desh and his wife. Although not students at all, they were locals within the community who wanted to get involved and loved the vision of the station. Thursday nights brought forth the most successful Indie show, which featured Indie acts from all over the world. Adopting social networking in its early stages, IndieAccess helped bring in listeners from literally all over the world to the Eagle 89.
WTXR currently stands as the only student run station at TFC and airs music 24/7 with student shows on a weekly schedule.