WRVU - History

History

Vanderbilt's first radio station, and hence WRVU's progenitor, can be traced to the early 1950s, at which time it was called WVU. The station eventually became known as WRVU and started to broadcast beyond Vanderbilt campus in the early 1970s. Prior to that time, WRVU had been a carrier current station, broadcasting its signal through the university's steam tunnels to small transmitters in each dorm. The transmitter emitted its signal to be received at 580 kHz on the AM band.

Prior to moving to VU's Sarratt Student Center in the fall of 1973, WRVU for many years broadcast from studios in one of the towers of Neely Auditorium. It was there, in December 1971, that University officials got FCC approval to begin broadcasting as a non-profit educational station at 91.1 on the FM band. The quest to move to FM had taken almost two years of effort; VU placed the transmitter on top of the Oxford House building. The station later transmitted from the WSMV tower in West Nashville.

While the station was known as "91 Rock" for many years, WRVU currently identifies itself using its call letters. The station is operated as a division of Vanderbilt Student Communications (VSC), an independent non-profit affiliated with the university to oversee student media. VSC is subsidized by a student activity fee, charged to each student's tuition bill every semester.

The station earned a devoted following among some Middle Tennessee-area youth during the 1980s and 1990s heyday of the college rock movement. WRVU was the only Nashville outlet for such music (and one of the few in the South, a historically conservative region), at least until bands like R.E.M. and the grunge rock movement achieved mainstream popularity. Rumors arose that the real core audience for the station was not VU students, but rather those in high school who were dissatisfied with traditional rock stations like WKDF, which kept to a standard Album Oriented Rock playlist in the 1980s. No other station in the market truly had as broad a rotation as WRVU, although WRLT made waves in the 1990s with its adult alternative format. That station, however, was aimed at older listeners, and did not really compete with WRVU. However, changing student tastes and concerns about diversity influenced the student station managers to implement a policy in 1995 mandating other programming such as jazz, folk music, blues music, and ethnic (i.e., foreign language) programming, along with more traditionally youth-oriented genres.

Developments in technology and social change, though, eventually caught up with WRVU. Beginning in late 2009, VSC began exploring the sale of the terrestrial radio facilities of the station, due to two factors: demographic research that found that people under 30 were among the least likely people to listen to radio and the most likely to consume music via downloads and Internet streaming, and the increasing desire of public radio licensees to set aside classical music programming onto different frequencies in order to free up airtime for news and talk programming on their main stations, which has become far more popular among audiences than traditional formats such as classical.

Despite the fervent protests of students currently involved with the station and alumni who once had been (supplemented by area musicians whose acts frequently got airplay on the station), VSC decided that an FM radio signal was no longer worth retaining, and that creation of a student media endowment would be a better use of the organization's assets. Nashville Public Radio offered $3.3 million for the license, and VSC agreed to a sale in early June 2011. The terms of the sale included a provision whereby Nashville Public Radio would allocate one of its HD signals for the continuing WRVU (same programming as online), and that VU students would be provided internships at WPLN/WFCL.

According to reports, the New Order song Waiting for the Sirens' Call was the final song heard on WRVU at 91.1 FM, at approximately 3 p.m. on June 7. For the next nine hours, Nashville Public Radio tested the signal for the new WFCL before beginning the new station permanently at midnight.

WPLN must still raise the remainder of the $3.3 million purchase price, and intends to do so through pledge drives throughout the next 18 months. During that time, WPLN must apply for a license transfer with the FCC, who can approve or deny the transfer. Additionally, Vanderbilt Student Communications, the licensee of WRVU-FM must receive from the FCC a renewal of license, which will otherwise expire on August 1, 2012. On July 2, 2012, attorneys Michael Couzens and Alan Korn, acting on behalf of WRVU Friends & Family, filed a petition with the Federal Communications Committee to deny the renewal of license WRVU Nashville arguing that Vanderbilt Student Communications was an unfit licensee and that renewal of the license is not in the public interest.