WNYU Radio

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Our History

WNYU started as the New York University Radio Club Workshop in 1949. The station broadcasted from studios in the basement of McCracken Hall at NYU’s then University Heights campus (now Bronx Community College) in the Bronx. The station used the call sign WNYU, but due to its carrier current signal, it was only accessible on campus. Meanwhile in the mid-1950’s, Bruce Morrow aka. Cousin Brucie, a student from NYU’s Communications Arts Group, started another carrier current station at NYU’s Washington Square Campus with the call sign, WCAG. While WNYU was started in NYU’s engineering school with a focus on training engineers to the technical responsibilities of radio, WCAG was founded by students studying journalism and communications.

In the early 1960’s the two stations merged to form the NYU radio network, WNYU. With a single telephone wire connecting each station, the students would alternate programming blocks between the studios in Manhattan and the Bronx. Currently, WNYU’s signal was only accessible on both NYU campuses, however, the students sought an FM signal.

With New York City’s airwaves crowded, the students of NYU finally found an open FM channel, 89.1fm. 89.1fm was (and is still) reserved for the United Nations, however, in 1964 the U.N. agreed to waive their rights. Since this was the last available FM channel in New York, the FCC held an open application for educational institutions. Two schools applied for the channel, New York University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Each application had errors or was late, so the FCC held several meetings over the next few years to determine which school would be awarded the coveted frequency. An intense rivalry developed between the two schools as to who would become the owner of the frequency. Finally, in 1969 a rare timeshare was agreed upon. WNYU-FM would possess 89.1fm Monday through Friday 4pm to 1am, while WFDU took the rest.

WNYU-FM made its first broadcast on May 3rd, 1973 from its University Heights studios. A few months later, on the brink of bankruptcy, NYU was forced to sell its University Heights campus. Even though the school, it’s students, and WNYU studios moved, WNYU’s antennaremains at the University Campus as of today.

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