WESU Middletown 88.1FM, Wesleyan’s Radio Station
For those of you interested in radio, Wesleyan has its own radio station: WESU Middletown. This station is actually the second oldest station in the country. It was started in 1939, when students living in Clark Hall connected radio wires to the water pipes in the building. The station has progressed greatly since this time, eventually becoming a legitimate station and broadcasting further throughout Connecticut.
Today, the station broadcasts at 1500 watts, which means that it reaches about 2.1 million people around Connecticut. We broadcast 24 hours a day and you can hear it in most of Connecticut and even some parts of Massachusetts at 88.1FM. WESU also streams live online at www.wesufm.org. While the studio was originally located in the basement of Clark Hall, it was moved down to 45 Broad Street, right above Broad Street Books (our campus bookstore), when the dorm was renovated in the year 2000. The studio’s new location is larger and has more equipment.
Today’s WESU is unique in several ways:
-We are a freeform station, meaning that we allow people to do radio shows in whatever genre they desire. So we have shows focusing on rock music, hip-hop, political talk, alternative medicine, surf music, gospel, reggae, jazz, and many more areas.
-We are a student-community station. So while Wesleyan University owns our license, we allow anyone to become a DJ at the station. About 50% of the DJ’s are Wesleyan students, while the other 50% are community members from the Middletown and Hartford area. This gives us much greater diversity in programming, as well as creating a link between Wesleyan students and Middletown residents.
-We broadcast NPR during the day. In the year 2005, WESU began streaming NPR during the daytime hours. NPR plays from 5AM-3PM on weekdays, with a break from 12-1PM when Democracy Now! airs. This allows our listeners to hear news during the day before hearing music and other talk shows in the afternoon and evening.
In April 2007, I was elected President of WESU and am working to make the station more accessible and unique. I invite you all to check out WESU and listen whenever you get a chance and to get involved if you attend Wesleyan. You can see a program guide listing times and descriptions of all our shows at www.wesufm.org, where you can also stream the station live, from anywhere in the world. I hope you get a chance to listen.
Jeff Wong ‘08
Senior Interviewer
