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WEXP (La Salle University)
Encyclopedia
WEXP is a Philadelphia
college radio station with a freeform
radio format
. It airs live on 1600 AM
in Philadelphia and online
.
WEXP opened its doors at La Salle University
in 1972. Initially, the radio station could only be heard inside the Student Union building, and the start-up price for the station was around US$7,500 ($1,000 of which came through a donation from U.S. Ambassador to Britain
Walter H. Annenberg). Airing on 640 AM, “EXPlorer 64” was founded as a co-curricular activity, and was tied directly to the Marketing
Department and the English
Department’s Speech and Drama
course. Much of WEXP’s early programming featured commentary opposing the Vietnam War
, and oldies
music. Coverage of La Salle basketball
was also aired live from as far away as Arlington, Virginia. The station only aired from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
After operating fairly successfully (despite a weak signal) throughout the 1970s, WEXP suffered what would arguably be its biggest setback in 1980. On September 15, a student installed a transmitter to WEXP’s existing antenna on top of the Union building. The student did so “without consultation” and “exceeded FCC [ Federal Communications Commission
] capabilities”, according to federal
documents dated in October. As a result of this setup, WEXP could be heard throughout the east coast. Listeners requested songs from as far away as Albany, New York
, and the station could be heard as far south as Miami, Florida
.
FCC officials in Washington
did not press any charges, which could have included a $10,000 fine and imprisonment for a year. The incident forced the university to shut down the radio station
entirely, and led to an apparent distrust of the student organization for many years.
WEXP was revived during the 1980s. The station featured mostly heavy metal music
. This was in sharp contrast to previous formats, which included easy listening
, adult contemporary, album-oriented rock, and freeform. After collapsing again in 1988, the station returned on 530 AM in 1989. “EXPress 530”, as the station was referred to, was again just a carrier current
AM signal. In February 1988, the university had the opportunity to purchase WPWT 91.7 FM
, and operate at an initial expense of $100,000. Many students, and most notably professors from the communication department, pushed for support of the project. The University Budget Committee, however, rejected the plan that would have given WEXP an FCC-regulated FM station with an annual operating budget of $50,000. Had the university allocated the funds to purchase the station in the late 1980s, it could probably be sold today for over a million dollars. It was yet another setback for WEXP.
In 1997, WEXP began simulcasting over La Salle 56
cable television, but the relationship between the two campus stations was short-lived. In 2000, a proposal to turn WEXP into a low-power FM station also failed. However, with the advent of computers in every dorm, where AM radios became scarcer to find, the station chose to embark on an Internet-only focus, setting up a partership with live365.com beginning in the fourth quarter of 2002. The shift in focus re-energized the station by recruiting more members and boosting listenership both on campus and across the country.
While WEXP's main format is popular music, it is not confined to any specific genre. There are also a series of call-in and campus news/discussion shows that promote campus interactivity through the telephone, particularly during the late evening hours. There is also a strong emphasis on college sports. From 2000-2009, WEXP students have broadcast over 530 live sporting events from La Salle University in football (discontinued), men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball, and baseball, promoting an interest in play-by-play announcing and radio engineering that continues to this day on the university campus.
WEXP has had live performances on its airwaves by many local bands, including James Dalton, Chris Meservey, Noringo, Rich Varevice, Matt Gauss Band, Cipher, How It Ends, Nook the Crook, Forever I Burn, Fall River, Falling Down, Jason Ager and the Three Formed Fates, The Divining, and Dead Again. Among several nationally notables, staff at WEXP live have also interviewed the members of Leftover Salmon, Rockapella
, and Killswitch Engage
, and also comedian Dane Cook
, to promote each of their Philadelphia tour stops in 2003-2005.
The longest running shows on WEXP were Steel Cage Radio (1999-2004) and Needle to the Groove with DJ Somavilla and DJ Helix (2000-2006). Another tradition of college radio that has continued to grow over the years has been the annual free picnic, which was branded as WEXPfest in 2005. The 5th Annual WEXPfest was 29 March 2009, and featured free food, WEXP giveaways and live bands.
WEXP now broadcasts independent student radio 24 hours a day throughout the academic year via the Internet
, and maintains a staff of over 40 members.
In May 2006, the station won an award for Excellence in Broadcasting, from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters
. Play-by-play broadcaster Adam Bagni, color commentator
Mike Petty, and sideline reporter
Andrew Neumann were the individuals honored based on their work at WEXP. The station won in the category of Best Coverage of a Local Sporting Event: Major Market for a January 21, 2006 NCAA basketball game between La Salle and Saint Joseph's University
. The award was also split with Merrill Reese
and Mike Quick
of Free FM
(WYSP) for their coverage of the Philadelphia Eagles
American football
team.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
college radio station with a freeform
Freeform (radio format)
Freeform, or freeform radio, is a radio station programming format in which the disc jockey is given total control over what music to play, regardless of music genre or commercial interests. Freeform radio stands in contrast to most commercial radio stations, in which DJs have little or no...
radio format
Radio format
A radio format or programming format not to be confused with broadcast programming describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. Radio formats are frequently employed as a marketing tool, and constantly evolve...
. It airs live on 1600 AM
Amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation is a technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting information via a radio carrier wave. AM works by varying the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent...
in Philadelphia and online
ONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
.
History
- Source
WEXP opened its doors at La Salle University
La Salle University
La Salle University is a private, co-educational, Roman Catholic university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. Named for St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, the school was founded in 1863 by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. As of 2008 the school has approximately 7,554...
in 1972. Initially, the radio station could only be heard inside the Student Union building, and the start-up price for the station was around US$7,500 ($1,000 of which came through a donation from U.S. Ambassador to Britain
United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom
The office of United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom was traditionally, and still is very much so today due to the Special Relationship, the most prestigious position in the United States Foreign Service...
Walter H. Annenberg). Airing on 640 AM, “EXPlorer 64” was founded as a co-curricular activity, and was tied directly to the Marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
Department and the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
Department’s Speech and Drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
course. Much of WEXP’s early programming featured commentary opposing the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, and oldies
Oldies
Oldies is a term commonly used to describe a radio format that concentrates on music from a period of about 15 to 55 years before the present day....
music. Coverage of La Salle basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
was also aired live from as far away as Arlington, Virginia. The station only aired from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
After operating fairly successfully (despite a weak signal) throughout the 1970s, WEXP suffered what would arguably be its biggest setback in 1980. On September 15, a student installed a transmitter to WEXP’s existing antenna on top of the Union building. The student did so “without consultation” and “exceeded FCC [ Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
] capabilities”, according to federal
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
documents dated in October. As a result of this setup, WEXP could be heard throughout the east coast. Listeners requested songs from as far away as Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, and the station could be heard as far south as Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
.
FCC officials in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
did not press any charges, which could have included a $10,000 fine and imprisonment for a year. The incident forced the university to shut down the radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
entirely, and led to an apparent distrust of the student organization for many years.
WEXP was revived during the 1980s. The station featured mostly heavy metal music
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
. This was in sharp contrast to previous formats, which included easy listening
Easy listening
Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...
, adult contemporary, album-oriented rock, and freeform. After collapsing again in 1988, the station returned on 530 AM in 1989. “EXPress 530”, as the station was referred to, was again just a carrier current
Carrier current
Carrier current is a method of low power AM radio transmission that uses the AC electrical system of a building to propagate a medium frequency, AM signal to a relatively small area, such as a building or a group of buildings...
AM signal. In February 1988, the university had the opportunity to purchase WPWT 91.7 FM
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...
, and operate at an initial expense of $100,000. Many students, and most notably professors from the communication department, pushed for support of the project. The University Budget Committee, however, rejected the plan that would have given WEXP an FCC-regulated FM station with an annual operating budget of $50,000. Had the university allocated the funds to purchase the station in the late 1980s, it could probably be sold today for over a million dollars. It was yet another setback for WEXP.
In 1997, WEXP began simulcasting over La Salle 56
La Salle 56
La Salle TV is a Public, educational, and government access cable television station that offers a Educational-access television channel run by La Salle University and carried within Philadelphia’s city limits on the Comcast Cable system...
cable television, but the relationship between the two campus stations was short-lived. In 2000, a proposal to turn WEXP into a low-power FM station also failed. However, with the advent of computers in every dorm, where AM radios became scarcer to find, the station chose to embark on an Internet-only focus, setting up a partership with live365.com beginning in the fourth quarter of 2002. The shift in focus re-energized the station by recruiting more members and boosting listenership both on campus and across the country.
While WEXP's main format is popular music, it is not confined to any specific genre. There are also a series of call-in and campus news/discussion shows that promote campus interactivity through the telephone, particularly during the late evening hours. There is also a strong emphasis on college sports. From 2000-2009, WEXP students have broadcast over 530 live sporting events from La Salle University in football (discontinued), men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball, and baseball, promoting an interest in play-by-play announcing and radio engineering that continues to this day on the university campus.
WEXP has had live performances on its airwaves by many local bands, including James Dalton, Chris Meservey, Noringo, Rich Varevice, Matt Gauss Band, Cipher, How It Ends, Nook the Crook, Forever I Burn, Fall River, Falling Down, Jason Ager and the Three Formed Fates, The Divining, and Dead Again. Among several nationally notables, staff at WEXP live have also interviewed the members of Leftover Salmon, Rockapella
Rockapella
Rockapella is an American a cappella musical group formed in 1986 in New York City. Their name is derived from the words "rock" and "a cappella". They sing original vocal music and a cappella covers of pop and rock songs; over time, their sound has evolved from high-energy pop and world music...
, and Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage is an American metalcore band from Westfield, Massachusetts, formed in 1999 after the disbandment of Overcast and Aftershock. Killswitch Engage's current lineup consists of vocalist Howard Jones, bassist Mike D'Antonio, guitarists Joel Stroetzel and Adam Dutkiewicz, and drummer...
, and also comedian Dane Cook
Dane Cook
Dane Jeffrey Cook is an American stand-up comedian and film actor. He has released five comedy albums: Harmful If Swallowed; Retaliation; Vicious Circle; Rough Around The Edges: Live From Madison Square Garden; and Isolated Incident. In 2006, Retaliation became the highest charting comedy album...
, to promote each of their Philadelphia tour stops in 2003-2005.
The longest running shows on WEXP were Steel Cage Radio (1999-2004) and Needle to the Groove with DJ Somavilla and DJ Helix (2000-2006). Another tradition of college radio that has continued to grow over the years has been the annual free picnic, which was branded as WEXPfest in 2005. The 5th Annual WEXPfest was 29 March 2009, and featured free food, WEXP giveaways and live bands.
WEXP now broadcasts independent student radio 24 hours a day throughout the academic year via the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, and maintains a staff of over 40 members.
Awards
On April 13, 2007 WEXP began an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for "Longest Radio Quiz", which was previously set at 30 hours.In May 2006, the station won an award for Excellence in Broadcasting, from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters
Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters
The Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, commonly referred to as PAB, represents radio and television broadcasters across the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is affiliated with the National Association of Broadcasters. Every year the organization holds a convention where its main attraction,...
. Play-by-play broadcaster Adam Bagni, color commentator
Color commentator
A color commentator is a sports commentator who assists the play-by-play announcer, often by filling in any time when play is not in progress. The color analyst and main commentator will often exchange comments freely throughout the broadcast, when the play-by-play announcer is not describing the...
Mike Petty, and sideline reporter
Sideline reporter
A sideline reporter, also known as a field reporter, courtside reporter , clubhouse reporter or dugout reporter , rinkside reporter or inside-the-glass reporter , on-court reporter , hole reporter , or boundary rider , is a member of the...
Andrew Neumann were the individuals honored based on their work at WEXP. The station won in the category of Best Coverage of a Local Sporting Event: Major Market for a January 21, 2006 NCAA basketball game between La Salle and Saint Joseph's University
Saint Joseph's University
Saint Joseph's University is a private, coeducational Roman Catholic Jesuit university located partially in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia and partially in Lower Merion Township and located in the Pennsylvania Main Line, Pennsylvania, United States.The school was founded in 1851 as Saint...
. The award was also split with Merrill Reese
Merrill Reese
Merrill Alan Reese is an American sports radio announcer best known for his role as the play-by-play radio announcer for the Philadelphia Eagles on SportsRadio 94.1 WIP-FM. He has been the voice of the Eagles since 1977.-Early years:...
and Mike Quick
Mike Quick
Michael Anthony Quick is a former American football wide receiver who played his entire career with the Philadelphia Eagles .-Playing career:...
of Free FM
Free FM
Free FM was a short-lived, mostly-talk-radio format and brand name for eleven FM CBS Radio stations in the United States, and was created because of Howard Stern's departure to Sirius Satellite Radio in January 2006. Free FM was given its name to highlight that its stations broadcast free-to-air,...
(WYSP) for their coverage of the Philadelphia Eagles
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
American football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
team.
Notable alumni
- Adam BagniAdam Bagni-College:Bagni is a graduate of La Salle University in Philadelphia. While at La Salle, Bagni served as General Manager of WEXP and was the play-by-play voice for the campus radio broadcasts. He was also a writer for The Collegian and the host of "Controversial Opinion" on La Salle...
http://www.montgomery-ala.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=109&Itemid=56 '07. - Brandon Davidow '07, of KXXV-TV.
- Matt Delucia '07, of KVVU-TVKVVU-TVKVVU-TV, virtual channel 5.1, is a Fox-affiliated television station serving the Las Vegas, Nevada market. It is owned and operated by Meredith Corporation. It transmits its digital signal on VHF channel 9. The station's studios and transmitter are located in Henderson, its city of license...
. - Brady HicksBrady HicksBrady Hicks is a Philadelphia area journalist, radio personality, blogger, columnist, wrestling reporter, professional wrestling manager, color analyst, and occasional Pro Wrestling Illustrated contributing writer....
'02, of Pro Wrestling IllustratedPro Wrestling IllustratedPro Wrestling Illustrated is a professional wrestling magazine. PWI is currently based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania and published by Kappa Publishing Group.-History:The first issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated was released in 1979...
. - Ben Rosehart '06, of KWQX NBC-TV in Davenport, IA.