WFDD
City | Winston-Salem, North Carolina |
---|---|
Broadcast area | North Carolina and Virginia |
Branding | 88.5 WFDD |
Slogan | Public Radio for the Piedmont |
Frequency | 88.5 MHz (also on HD Radio) |
Translator(s) | 100.1 W261CK (Boone) |
First air date | April 19, 1948 (in Wake Forest, moved to Winston-Salem in 1956) |
Format |
FM/HD1: news/talk/classical music HD2: Classical music HD3: Xponential Radio |
ERP | 60,000 watts |
HAAT | 285 meters |
Class | C1 |
Facility ID | 70708 |
Transmitter coordinates | 35°55′2.00″N 80°17′37.00″W / 35.9172222°N 80.2936111°W |
Callsign meaning | Wake Forest Demon Deacons (nickname of Wake Forest University sports teams) |
Affiliations | National Public Radio, Public Radio International |
Owner | Wake Forest University |
Webcast |
Listen Live (FM/HD1) Listen Live (HD2) Listen Live (HD3) |
Website | wfdd.org |
WFDD (88.5 MHz) is an FM public radio station licensed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It is the National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate for the Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point media market, also called the Piedmont Triad. Owned by Wake Forest University, WFDD serves 32 counties in Central North Carolina and South-Central Virginia. It also operates a translator, W261CK on 100.1 FM in Boone.
WFDD broadcasts from a 60,000 watt transmitter near Welcome, North Carolina.[1] It had used a 100,000 watt transmitter but that was destroyed in a 1989 tornado. The station airs news and talk shows from NPR during the day, with local news updates. From 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., the station turns to Classical music programming.
History
"This is station W-A-K-E coming to you from the campus of Wake Forest College in Wake Forest, North Carolina…"
With these words, a radio station was born. In the fall of 1946, Alva "Al" Parris and Henry "Randy" Randall, began broadcasting—illegally—from their rooming house. Their early five-watt broadcasts only covered an area of about 300 feet in all directions. Students in the girls' dormitory could barely hear the station. Over the next year, as students pushed for better broadcasting range, college president Dr. Thurman D. Kitchin and faculty advisor Dr. Marc Lovelace helped establish WAKE as an official campus radio station. Students successfully raised the necessary $200 start-up funds, and by spring of 1948, the station had its FCC license.
Brothers David and Ralph Herring, Jr. built the first 50-watt transmitter, relying on diagrams found in a book about electronics and on the advice of a Raleigh radio engineer. On April 19, 1948, chief announcer Roland C. "Woody" Woodward was joined by President Kitchin and student body president Horace "Dagwood" Kornegay as the "Voice of Wake Forest" hit the airwaves. As it turned out, the original call letters WAKE were already assigned to another station. Within the month, the fledgling station's call letters became WFDD, which stands for the nickname of the university sports teams, "Wake Forest Demon Deacons."
For the next ten years, WFDD was completely a student-run station. When Wake Forest College moved to Winston-Salem in 1956, WFDD moved as well. Early programming included classical and popular music, programs by faculty members, an hour of devotional material each week, some campus sports, news, and a nightly broadcast of the "Deaconlight Serenade -- beaming musical good cheer to you and yours, styled the Wake Forest way."
In 1958, Dr. Julian Burroughs, who served as student station manager in 1950-51, returned to the station as the first non-student station manager. Burroughs served both as a professor in the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts at Wake Forest University and as station manager for WFDD until 1981. During this tenure, WFDD became a non-commercial educational FM station in 1961. Local listeners helped raise money for the addition of a new antenna and 36,000-watt transmitter in 1967, making WFDD the first FM stereo station in Winston-Salem. WFDD became a charter member of National Public Radio - the first in North Carolina - in 1970.
In 1982, WFDD began operating with a new antenna and 100,000-watt transmitter. On May 5, 1989, this transmitter was destroyed by a tornado. 88.5 WFDD currently broadcasts from a 60,000-watt transmitter in northern Davidson County.
References
External links
- Query the FCC's FM station database for WFDD
- Radio-Locator information on WFDD
- Query Nielsen Audio's FM station database for WFDD
- Query the FCC's FM station database for W261CK
- Radio-Locator information on W261CK