WSUM
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| City | Madison, Wisconsin |
|---|---|
| Branding | 91.7 FM WSUM |
| Slogan |
"Madison Student Radio" "The Snake on the Lake" "Innovative Radio for Independent Minds" |
| Frequency | 91.7 MHz FM |
| First air date | 1996 (online) February 22, 2002 (terrestrial) |
| Format | student radio, variety |
| ERP | 5,500 watts |
| HAAT | 103 meters |
| Class | A |
| Owner | Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wsum.org |
WSUM (91.7 MHz FM) is a student radio station in Madison, Wisconsin, affiliated with the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The station schedule consists of a wide range of music and talk programming serving the campus and Madison community.
The radio station, which was known as WLHA, began in 1952, but went off the air in 1993. It restarted when a group of volunteers, including Stephen Thompson, a member of a former student radio group, founder of the Onion AV page and now of National Public Radio, and Dean Troyer, the newly elected Student Services Finance Chair, submitted a budget and proposal to the SSFC, the Associated Students of Madison and the UW–Madison administration. Dr. James Hoyt, former chair of the UW–Madison School of Journalism, and General Manager Dave Black, a journalism graduate student at the university, were asked to lead the effort to bring a student radio station back to UW-Madison. The university approved the project in June, 1995. The key to the proposal was getting Dr. Hoyt and Dave Black involved to add long-term stability to the project and getting the administration to apply for the FCC license. The station began in 1997 with an internet-only broadcast. In 2001, the FCC agreed to a radio tower to be built in the town of Montrose in southern Dane County. The proposal was met with contention from local citizens of Montrose, but after a lengthy legal battle, the tower was constructed and terrestrial broadcasting of WSUM began on February 22, 2002, at 2:22 PM.
Since then, WSUM has expanded to near-24/7 programming. The station currently has over 250 members.
WSUM prides itself on the wide variety of programming it provides the community. Programming on WSUM is entirely free-form, in that hosts are allowed to completely program their own show. Programming schedules operate on a semesterly schedule. A typical schedule consists of a variety of sports, talk shows, and music shows, including indie rock, funk, house music, folk, and community affairs. Most of the programmers are students (of any area college), although there are some community members with shows.
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