Alabama Public Radio

WUAL-FM
City Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Branding Alabama Public Radio
Repeater(s) WUAL-FM 91.5 (Tuscaloosa)
WQPR 88.7 (Muscle Shoals)
WAPR 88.3 (Selma)
WHIL 91.3 (Mobile)
Format Public Radio
Affiliations American Public Media, National Public Radio, Public Radio International
Owner University of Alabama
Website apr.org

Alabama Public Radio is a network of public radio stations based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that serves roughly the western half of the state of Alabama with classical music, folk music, jazz, and nostalgic music programs, as well as news and feature programs from the National Public Radio (NPR), Public Radio International (PRI), and American Public Media (APM) networks. The network is operated by the University of Alabama, with studios in Tuscaloosa.

Since the station is licensed to a university, students in the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences get opportunities for practical training in announcing and other varied production duties. Nonetheless, APR maintains a small professional staff, as well as several volunteer announcers from the larger community. The Alabama Public Radio newsroom has recently won over 50 awards for journalism excellence, one third of which are at the national and international levels. This includes RTDNA's national Edward R. Murrow award for Overall Excellence. The APR news team also works extensively with journalism students at the University of Alabama. Newsroom student interns typically put in 750 hours of work, which results in 142 minutes of Alabama-centric news, which airs statewide. This provides students with valuable real-life experience, and material for their resumes.

History

The University of Alabama established WUAL-FM in January 1982 as the state's fifth public radio station. It emphasized service to the immediate western Alabama area in its first several years, since most of the region had no other access to NPR programming. However, UA soon realized the potential for expansion into other parts of the state without NPR service. Since Birmingham, Huntsville, southeastern Alabama, and Mobile already had existing stations, WUAL and UA officials focused on developing relay transmitters to send WUAL's signal into northwestern and south central Alabama. Thus, WQPR, originally a joint project with the University of North Alabama in Florence, appeared in the late 1980s. It was followed in the early 1990s by WAPR, which is a joint venture of Alabama State University, Troy University (both of which already owned NPR stations of their own in the Montgomery area) and UA.

In September 2007, WQPR received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to assist in its conversion from analog to digital broadcasting.[1]

In 2011, due to the desire of owner Spring Hill College to exit public broadcasting, Spring Hill's NPR member station, WHIL-FM in Mobile, joined APR, effective July 1. That station had been affected, like many throughout the country, by declining listener contributions, which influenced the College to sell the 32-year-old outlet.

APR's studios have been housed in various locations on campus. They were first located on Bryce Lawn Drive and moved to Phifer Hall around 1990. In February 2014 they moved to the University's Digital Media Center, a facility located inside Bryant-Denny Stadium that houses WVUA-CD, the Center for Public Television and Radio (APR's parent organization), and Crimson Tide Productions.[2]

APR stations

Four stations currently comprise the network:

Location Frequency Call sign Coverage
Tuscaloosa 91.5 FM WUAL-FM Birmingham to Mississippi state line
Muscle Shoals 88.7 FM WQPR Northwestern Alabama to Decatur
Selma 88.3 FM WAPR Black Belt, Montgomery
Mobile 91.3 FM WHIL Southern Alabama, Gulf Coast

WLJS-FM (91.9 FM), the student-operated station of Jacksonville State University which broadcasts to eastern central Alabama, simulcasts the first hour of classical music on APR each weekday. No other affiliations, either in personnel or in programming, exist between the two entities.

Translators

In addition to the full-power stations, Alabama Public Radio did relay via a low-powered translator to widen its broadcast area... However, the translator station was transferred to; Edgewater Broadcasting, Inc under the authority of; Summit Media and is a translator of; WENN-AM 1320 with an effective radiated power of; 35 watts at a height above ground level of; 846 feet

Call sign Frequency
(MHz) 		City of license ERP
W 		Class FCC info
W261BX 100.1 Birmingham, Alabama 10 D FCC

Also, the WQPR signal has a translator (W264AI) that covers the Huntsville-Decatur market on 100.7 FM.

Weekday hosts

Local specialty programs

Unlike many stations in recent times, APR has always featured a heavy schedule of locally hosted programs, many of which are unique in featuring special genres of music. Among them are the following:

See also

References

  1. ↑ "CPB Awards Grants to 89 Public Radio Stations for Digital Transition" (Press release). Corporation for Public Broadcasting. September 20, 2007.
  2. ↑ Chaffin, Ashley (July 24, 2013). "Stadium will soon house new digital media center". Tuscaloosa News.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 1/25/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.