In a recent Radio World there was a great story about visiting radio stations (mostly college). Fun story about things in common (like sticker covered cabinets and stinky couches) to their history. Though the web, here’s a chance to visit some stations from “the comfort of your own computer”
WAWL
Here’s a small noncom station with a tour from Morgan Hiu from a few years ago. This station is at Chattanooga State Community College in Tennessee. The station’s web site is www.wawl.org.
KEOM
Airing in the Dallas market is KEOM(FM) which I can attest is a great little station. When I worked in Dallas for KERA(FM/TV) and built KKXT(FM), I’d often listen to this high school radio station broadcasting from the nearby suburb of Mesquite, Texas. The station’s website is KEOM.FM. Here’s a story as reported by the CBS TV affiliate in Dallas about this radio station.
YouTube’ing It
This may sound like the easy way out, but the fact is this — there are probably a couple hundred interesting tours (and maybe some less interesting) on YouTube. From some home-brew “home radio stations” to big broadcasters. They can be fun to watch. So here’s a general search link that will give you a lot of options. You can pick from the stills that look interesting or base it on location or format.
Old Radio “Tour”
The most powerful radio station ever in the United States was Cincinnati’s WLW(AM), which was authorized to go to 500 kW in an emergency (with the cooling coming from a local pond). I’ve even heard that on program tests years ago, local lights “modulated” with the station at that power. WLW has a great history from the early days of radio (with Powel Crosley)!
Voice of America Museum
Something like AFRTS, Voice of America (VoA) serviced the world with programming. In some cases, it was used for American propaganda (we won’t kid ourselves … all countries had their own version), while in other cases it provided information and content to Americans and allies outside the U.S. Here’s a lot of great info, pictures and history of the VoA.
And finally …
If you like Iron Man, you’re gonna like this!
If you stumble across a good or unusual web site that might be of interest, please don’t hesitate to send me the link and any info you might have about it. My email address is [email protected].
