History
On June 2, 1949, the University of Tennessee filed with the Federal Communications Commission for a construction permit to build a new noncommercial FM radio station in Knoxville. [3] The idea to bring the university a radio station had been a campaign plank of future U.S. senator Howard Baker's campaign platform for student body president at UTK. [4] The FCC approved the application a month later, at which time the university announced that it was building studios on the ground floor of Ayres Hall and had bought equipment from defunct radio station WKPB. [5] WKPB had been a commercial station on 93.3 FM owned by The Knoxville Journal that broadcast from October 15, 1947 [6] to April 15, 1949; [7] the Journal, citing the uncertainty created by the advent of television, shuttered the station and sold its equipment to the university and its records to the general public. [8] For a total of $16,000, the university had the equipment it needed to set up its own radio station. [9]
WUOT signed on October 27, 1949. [10] The station's first regular programming schedule included broadcasts for five and a half hours a day, and it boasted two full-time staff. WUOT broadcast informational programs, classical music, and reports of student activities, and was entirely operated by students. [11] The radio station's facilities also provided a home for the university's offering of 25 radio programs, which were heard in 1950 on 17 commercial radio stations in Tennessee. [12] By 1956, the circulation of the university's productions had increased to 65 stations. [13]
Originally broadcasting with 3,500 watts, the station was approved to increase power to 70,500 watts in 1955, [3] with the station resuming operations from its new facilities on November 29. [14] This was made possible when station WROL gave the university a higher-power antenna and a 10 kW transmitter worth $50,000; [13] WUOT's transmitter facility was relocated to a parcel of university-owned land near the John Tarleton Institute. [15] WROL had operated an FM station until 1951. [16] A large crane was necessary to extend the tower a further 75 feet (23 m). [17] The increase brought WUOT to listeners in Bristol, Chattanooga, and as far away as Asheville, North Carolina, and Blue Ridge, Georgia. [18] The WUOT transmitter was relocated to Sharp's Ridge in 1961. [3] In 1968, the station boosted its power to the maximum 100,000 watts and began stereo broadcasts. [19] In 1971, the station added additional hours of jazz music to its schedule in response to requests from inmates at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. [20]
Discussions began to build a dedicated communications building in the mid-1960s, and the station moved into its new Circle Park home in 1969; the facility offered WUOT more room, and newer equipment, than it had in Ayres Hall. [9] WUOT was a charter member of National Public Radio and carried the first broadcast of All Things Considered in 1971; the new network program replaced its light classical "dinner hour" music, which prompted the ire of some listeners. [9] The station also began adding local news and public affairs programming in the mid-1970s, though the development of this area of the station came in fits and starts until the mid-1990s, when the station significantly expanded its news operation. [9]
WUOT remained a fine arts-oriented station, though students desired a station for rock music that catered more to their tastes; they would get one when WUTK-FM went on the air in the early 1980s. [9] In one case, the presence of a classical music outlet in Knoxville was reassuring. When future interim UT president Jan Simek moved from California to take a faculty position in Knoxville in 1984, his mother worried that he might not be able to listen to "real" music; when she visited him in Knoxville and learned of WUOT, her fears were assuaged, and she ended up moving to Knoxville herself. [4] WUOT's reach expanded when the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga signed on its WUTC in 1980. In order to get on air quickly, the new Chattanooga station simulcast WUOT's output. [21] The UTC station later severed its ties with WUOT in order to broadcast its own programming. [22]
In 2017, the station partnered with an independent producer to create "TruckBeat", a truck that traveled around east Tennessee to areas not typically covered by public radio and reported the impacts of the opioid epidemic on rural communities. The truck itself was a former WBIR-TV live truck that the station had purchased to cover the 1982 World's Fair. [23] TruckBeat was honored by the Online News Association for topical reporting among small newsrooms. [24]
