It was founded in 1939 as an unofficial AM carrier current campus radio station in the basement of Clark Hall. Upon gaining recognition, the station operated under the unofficial call signWES. In the 1950s, the call sign became WESU. Then on February 25, 1961, it began operating an FM station at 88.1 MHz, eventually abandoning the AM station.[3] Between 1967 and 1990, WESU was owned and operated by an independent student group, the now-defunct Wesleyan Broadcast Association, Inc.[4]
Today, it is owned by the Trustees of Wesleyan University, and operated by students and community volunteers. In 1999, the station moved offices and studios from the basement of Clark Hall to its current location next the Wesleyan Argus on 45 Broad Street.
Asked in 2020 whether WESU is not the oldest college radio station in the United States, its station manager Benjamin Michael gave an explanation of the complexities of what counts as a "college radio station" and then stated that WESU is "the last of the original student-owned and student-operated stations."[5]
Programming
WESU operates 24 hours a day. Until 2004, WESU's format had been entirely freeform, with DJs and student staff having complete freedom to program what they wanted. The university then announced its intention to seek an affiliation with National Public Radio (NPR), and to change the station's daytime format.[6]Douglas Bennet, then president of Wesleyan University, was a former president of NPR. The station now broadcasts news and information shows during the day. Nights and weekends, WESU continues to operate as a free-form station.[7]
WESU broadcasts with 6,000 wattseffective radiated power (ERP), circular polarization, from the top of Wesleyan University's Exley Science Center in Middletown. The programming is a mix of freeform music, National Public Radio, Public Radio International (PRI) and Pacifica Radio Network programs. From NPR and PRI, WESU airs Morning Edition, Diane Rehm, The Takeaway, Weekend Edition, The Best of Car Talk and Science Friday. From Pacifica, it broadcasts Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio News, The Ralph Nader Hour and Exploration in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku. The station airs Connecticut-made programs like The Jack Sullivan Radio Show, Voice of the City with J.Cherry. Acoustic Blender with Bill Revill[8] and Nutmeg Junction.[9] Most hours during the day, it airs NPR News at the beginning of the hour.
The radio station was featured in a plot on the TV comedy series "How I Met Your Mother." At the end of the episode "The Possimpible", Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor) is deleting his work experience at the radio station from his resume.
^Cynthia Rockwell (May 1, 2020). "Tuned In". Wesleyan University Magazine. Retrieved September 19, 2020. There were college stations before the 1930s," he says. "UConn, for example, had one. So, I would never say we're the oldest college radio station. But theirs was part of the agricultural radio network. Student radio—student-owned-and-operated radio—started at Brown in 1936. And Wesleyan's was the second in that model. And now Brown's FM radio is gone; they're an internet-only station. I often say that we are the last of the original student-owned and student-operated stations. That's the point of discernment.
