NC State’s student-run radio station, WKNC, upgraded its antenna array, which already stretches far beyond NC State’s campus, to reach a wider audience last weekend.
The upgrade will allow WKNC’s student DJs to reach an estimated 23,000 potential listeners in Rocky Mount, Wilson and Goldsboro. The radio station is also planning to switch over to HD radio by the end of the summer as part of a long-term project to switch from analog to digital radio, which is scheduled to be fully completed by the 2018-19 school year.
The upgrade cost $35,566.44 which was paid largely by student fees through the Student Media Reserve Fund. Though the installation is complete, WKNC is not currently broadcasting on its new pattern because there are still forms that need to be finalized with the Federal Communications Commission, but all of the paperwork will be filed over the summer, according to Associate Director of Student Media Advising Jamie Gilbert.
“By itself, [the new antenna array] is a pretty big deal for a college radio station I feel like, because we’re well beyond the campus at this point so it’s just even more exciting,” said WKNC General Manager Emily Ehling.
The station was shut down from about 10 a.m. on June 16 to about 5:30 p.m. on June 18 for the safety of the climbers who had to scale the more than 50-foot tower on top of D.H. Hill Library to remove the old satellite dishes and set up the new antenna.
“Aesthetically we are still on top of D.H. Hill Library, it just doesn’t look the same anymore, because we took down these big three satellites that didn’t have anything to do with us,” Ehling said.
WKNC will be tweaking its program schedule based on what it has learned from listener surveys as well as the interests of new DJs in the hope of drawing in new listeners, Ehling said. Of WKNC’s established platforms, or time blocks reserved for certain genres which include “Afterhours” (electronica), “Underground” (hip-hop), “Daytime” (indie rock), “Chainsaw” (metal) and “Local” (North Carolina-based music), some will be made earlier or longer to give them exposure to the station’s new audience.
“The program schedule will be giving more play time for our platforms that aren’t Daytime indie rock, so we’ll be bringing in more listeners that are interested in our other genres because of the earlier start times for those platforms,” Ehling said. “We’re basically going to be paying more attention to our other platforms and the fans of those genres.”
WKNC prides itself on serving local music fans as well as music creators, and the station doesn’t expect this new crop of listeners to change the core of what it tries to accomplish with the music it plays. Gilbert said that WKNC has always considered “local music” to include the entire state, and she hopes that having 88.1 show up on dials in these new markets will add to its platforms.
“It’s the exposure aspect,” Ehling added. “It’ll definitely strengthen our idea of local because we do consider all of North Carolina local but this time if more bands reach out to us that we didn’t touch before then it will make our definition as ‘local’ more validated.”
WKNC was able to expand its signal thanks to analog television stations switching over to digital in 2009. This removed interference from Wilmington’s channel 6 station which broadcasted its audio at 87.7, very close to WKNC’s 88.1 frequency, clearing the airways for WKNC to expand to the southeast, according to Gilbert.
“Your signal can only reach so far because of the other stations around you,” Gilbert said.
WKNC has broadcasted from the top of D.H. Hill, the tallest building on campus, since 1972, according to Gilbert. The higher a radio tower is, the further its range.
Though expanding its signal was always something it wanted to do, WKNC didn’t begin actively looking for ways to expand its range until fall 2013 when a listener in Sanford emailed the station to complain that he could no longer hear NC State’s baseball games on WKNC. This prompted the station’s engineers to look for room to expand their signal.
“People have always said ‘Hey, can you broadcast further?’ and with limited exceptions the answer is ‘no’ because we’re not the only 88.1 in the world,” Gilbert said. “One of the reasons that you can’t hear WXDU at Duke is they’re 88.7 and WSHA at Shaw University is 88.9 so they can only go so far into Raleigh before they start interfering with their signal.”
Sanford still sits just on the edge of WKNC’s southwestern reach, but its signal now includes formerly fringe cities Rocky Mount, Wilson and Goldsboro.
“By doing this we are also preventing another station from doing it,” Gilbert said. “So if another station had shown up in Wilmington, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.”
According to Gilbert, WKNC’s plan to switch over to HD radio, which will allow them to multi-cast similar to how HD televisions are able to broadcast channels such as 4.1, 4.2, etc., is still far off in the future.
“We’ve got to pay for this and then gather some more money and file that idea away,” Gilbert said.
