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Announcement :: Media : UCIMC |
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Urbana’s New Low Power FM Radio Station, WRFU, to Hold First Meeting |
Current rating: 0 |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
13 Jan 2004
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WRFU First Meeting
Tuesday, January 20
7:30pm at the IMC |
Efforts to build a new low-power FM radio station in Urbana will kick-off with the first meeting of those interested in participating on Tuesday, January 20, 2004. The meeting will be held at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center at 218 West Main Street in downtown Urbana. The meeting time has been moved to 7:30pm to better accommodate people wanting to finish supper before the meeting.
The station recently received word that the FCC has assigned WRFU as the callsign for the station. It will operate on 104.5 FM with a power of 100 watts from somewhere still to be determined in downtown Urbana. While this doesn’t sound like a lot of power, with a good antenna the WRFU signal will be able to cover all of Urbana and most of Champaign.
There are several items on the agenda. The first order of business will be deciding on a regular meeting time. With less than 18 months to have the station on the air by the FCC-mandated date of June 19, 2005, it is important that regular meetings are held so that progress is maintained.
Second, the meeting is intended to concentrate on the process of building a station. Anyone interested in operating and programming is invited, as we do want to meet you, but initial meetings will mainly involve issues surrounding getting the station on the air. We need to create a timeline of the diverse tasks needed to build the station, as well as find volunteers to help with this work. As a community radio station, WRFU’s success is dependent on volunteer public support.
Third, several of us will have met with staff from the city of Urbana in the meantime, so we will have a much better idea of what zoning and other issues the station will face in getting on the air. There will be a short presentation of what we found out after talking with city staff and what planning we need to do.
Fourth, the preliminary agreement between Socialist Forum, which holds the construction permit and will be licensed to operate the station, and the UC IMC, which will be our partner in operating the station, will be discussed. A Broadcasting Board consisting of members of both SF and the IMC will be constituted to organize day-to-day operations at the station, which will be handled by volunteer members from both groups.
In concept, WRFU will operate much like Champaign’s premier community radio station, WEFT 90.1 FM, although the two stations are completely independent from each other. The aim of WRFU is to complement the programming offered on WEFT, so that the community will have twice the air time at its disposal as it did before, at very little extra cost. The low power nature of WRFU means that the costs of operating it will be minimal, once it is built and on the air. WRFU hopes to greatly expand the number of community members who have broadcasting experience, some of who will probably also be interested in eventually having access to the much higher-powered regional reach of WEFT by also volunteering there.
WRFU hopes to expand public affairs programming in our community, but we’ll also have plenty of time for a diverse selection of music that is intended to break out of the mold of stale, repetitive commercial broadcasting. Since the studio will be co-located at the IMC, its facilities will be available for newsgathering and media production. The IMC hopes to be in a new facility by the time WRFU begins broadcasting, one that allows a reopening of the very popular IMC performance space. This will allow broadcasting of live shows and events on WRFU, directly from the IMC.
Earlier reporting on WRFU on UC IMC is available here:
http://ucimc.org/feature/display/14814/index.php |
