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| City | Grand Rapids, Michigan |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | West Michigan |
| Branding | Michigan Radio |
| Slogan | Your NPR News Station |
| Frequency | 104.1 MHz (also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | December 7, 1961 |
| Format | Public radio: News/Talk |
| ERP | 96,000 watts |
| HAAT | 221 meters (725 ft) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 66309 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°39′18″N85°31′38″W / 42.65500°N 85.52722°W |
| Callsign meaning | Frederick J. Vogt, Grand Rapids (Vogt led drive to launch station) |
| Affiliations | Michigan Radio National Public Radio Public Radio International American Public Media BBC World Service |
| Owner | University of Michigan |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www |
WVGR (104.1 FM) is a non-commercial radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan licensed to the University of Michigan as part of its Michigan Radio NPR network. It currently airs news and talk programming.
Grand Rapids is the second-largest city in Michigan, and the largest city in West Michigan. It is on the Grand River about 30 miles (48 km) east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 1,005,648, and the combined statistical area of Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland had a population of 1,321,557. Grand Rapids is the county seat of Kent County.
The University of Michigan, often simply referred to as Michigan, is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The university is Michigan's oldest; it was founded in 1817 in Detroit, as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, 20 years before the territory became a state. The school was moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres (16 ha) of what is now known as Central Campus. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet spread out over a Central Campus and North Campus, two regional campuses in Flint and Dearborn, and a Center in Detroit. The university is a founding member of the Association of American Universities.
For almost 40 years, WVGR blanketed West Michigan with a powerful 108,000-watt signal from an arm on local NBC affiliate WOOD-TV's transmitter. However, when WOOD-TV needed WVGR's old space for an HD transmitter, WVGR was forced to cut its power to 20,000 watts from space on CBS affiliate WWMT's tower. It moved to its own tower in 2006 and boosted its power to 96,000 watts, largely restoring its original coverage area. It is the only station in the network that directly competes with another NPR member station, namely Grand Valley State University's WGVU-FM.
West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for an arbitrary region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most narrowly it refers to the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland area, or more broadly to most of the region along the Lake Michigan shoreline of the Lower Peninsula, but there is no official definition for it.
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial television network that is a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. The network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting. It became the network's official emblem in 1979.
WOOD-TV, virtual channel 8, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States and serving the Grand Rapids–Kalamazoo–Battle Creek television market. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group as part of a duopoly with Battle Creek-licensed ABC affiliate WOTV, and is also a sister station to Class A MyNetworkTV affiliate WXSP-CD. All three stations share studios on College Avenue Southeast in the Heritage Hill section of Grand Rapids; WOOD-TV's transmitter is located in Middleville near the Barry and Allegan county line.
WVGR is a "grandfathered superpower" Class B, FM station. The maximum power that would be granted today, would be 23,500 watts effective radiated power, using the same antenna height of 221 meters. [1]
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM) technology. Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is capable of better sound quality than AM broadcasting, the chief competing radio broadcasting technology, so it is used for most music broadcasts. Theoretically wideband AM can offer equally good sound quality, provided the reception conditions are ideal. FM radio stations use the VHF frequencies. The term "FM band" describes the frequency band in a given country which is dedicated to FM broadcasting.
Effective radiated power (ERP), synonymous with equivalent radiated power, is an IEEE standardized definition of directional radio frequency (RF) power, such as that emitted by a radio transmitter. It is the total power in watts that would have to be radiated by a half-wave dipole antenna to give the same radiation intensity as the actual source at a distant receiver located in the direction of the antenna's strongest beam. ERP measures the combination of the power emitted by the transmitter and the ability of the antenna to direct that power in a given direction. It is equal to the input power to the antenna multiplied by the gain of the antenna. It is used in electronics and telecommunications, particularly in broadcasting to quantify the apparent power of a broadcasting station experienced by listeners in its reception area.
Height above average terrain (HAAT), or effective height above average terrain (EHAAT), is a measure of how high an antenna site is above the surrounding landscape. HAAT is used extensively in FM radio and television, as it is more important than effective radiated power (ERP) in determining the range of broadcasts. For international coordination, it is officially measured in meters, even by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States, as Canada and Mexico have extensive border zones where stations can be received on either side of the international boundaries. Stations that want to increase above a certain HAAT must reduce their power accordingly, based on the maximum distance their station class is allowed to cover.
WVGR broadcasts in the HD Radio (hybrid) format. [2]
HD Radio is a trademarked term for Xperi's in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data by using a digital signal embedded "on-frequency" immediately above and below a station's standard analog signal, providing the means to listen to the same program in either HD or as a standard broadcast. The HD format also provides the means for a single radio station to simultaneously broadcast one or more different programs in addition to the program being transmitted on the radio station's analog channel. It was originally developed by iBiquity. In September 2015 iBiquity was acquired by DTS bringing the HD Radio technology under the same banner as DTS' eponymous theater surround sound systems.. It was later acquired by Xperi in 2016.
