A theme among some industry commentators about HD Radio — including RW’s Mark Lapidus and Paul McLane — has been that stations should look to colleges and high schools for possible creative partnerships that also populate their multicast channels.
Now comes word of one such arrangement in Florida.
Community station WMNF(FM) at 88.5 MHz in Tampa will carry programming of the student radio station of the University of South Florida on its HD2 beginning Sept. 5.
“Until now, Bulls Radio is only broadcast on AM in the vicinity of the USF Tampa campus,” the organizations stated. “This new partnership with WMNF will broadcast Bulls Radio over the greater Tampa Bay Area, including on all four USF campuses.” The St. Petersburg, Lakeland and Sarasota campuses do not have student stations, the participants said.
The student station manager Michael Rañon said in the announcement that its student-programmers “will gain the experience of working for a full-power FM station in a major radio market.”
WMNF’s station manager is Jim Bennett; the PD is Randy Wynne. Its engineer Bill Brown also is quoted in the announcement saying the arrangement will allow students to listen to their campus radio at the beach.
