The Aggies are hitting the airwaves
Utah Public Radio’s broadcast tower getting a new addition
Cache Valley is getting a new radio station.
After years of preparation and fundraising, KBLU 92.3, run by Utah State University’s Aggie Radio, is finally going FM. While the official on-air date won’t be for a few more weeks, the new radio equipment has been installed.
“It’s been kind of a long time coming,” said Douglas Flint, a sophomore in liberal arts and a disc jockey for Aggie Radio. “Aggie Radio’s been trying to do this for a while.”
Going FM is a big step forward for the student-run radio station, Flint said. With more ways to tune in, Aggie Radio will have a greater reach to create awareness about the station and promote its content and events.
The transition will also help give the deejays, hosts, and student producers more exposure through radio, “and it’s good experience for people who want to do this later on for a career,” he said.
The new FM station won’t just be reaching more students, said Spencer Bitner, the associate director at the Taggart Student Center. Aggie Radio will be able to involve the Cache Valley community by coordinating activities and events with off-campus groups.
“I’m really excited,” Bitner said. “There’s nobody broadcasting the style of music and the style of talk shows that Aggie Radio is, so we’ll definitely fill something the valley needs and hopefully we’ll get people excited about radio.”
In addition to the new radio equipment, Aggie Radio will be airing a variety of new shows, with new deejays bringing fresh music, ideas and perspectives to the station every semester, Flint said.
Current shows include the “Aggie Morning Word”, “Nerd Lecture Hour”, “Grass Roots Utah” and “11 A.M. Midday Mayhem”, a weekly rush hour music segment that will soon be aired daily, said Morgan Pratt, the news director for Aggie Radio and opinions manager for the Utah Statesman.
New programs coming to Aggie Radio include the “Domingos Latinos”, which will have Latin music syndicated from Weber State University’s radio station, Pratt said. Another program, scheduled to premier August 5th, is a sexual education show that will be a late night show with guest obstetrician-gynecologist (ob-gyn) professionals and scientists who will talk about “all the stuff your parents should have taught you about sex but didn’t,” Pratt said.
For more information about upcoming shows or music segments, follow Aggie Radio on Twitter at @aggieradio, or check out previous podcasts and the full show schedule on the Aggie Radio webpage, http://www.usu.edu/radio/.
“It’s been a pretty rich history with Aggie radio, with going FM,” Flint said, “sort of a new chapter, and that history is pretty cool to be a part of.”
@miranda_lorenc