WNAA is a 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...

  broadcasting a Variety

Variety (radio)

The term variety as a radio format is loosely defined as a format that plays music across numerous genera.Freeform variety is associated with a wide range of programming including talk, sports, and music from a wide spectrum. This format is usually found on smaller, non-commercial...

 format. Licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina

Greensboro, North Carolina

Greensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city by population in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. According to the 2010 U.S...

, USA, the station serves the Piedmont Triad area. The station is currently owned by Nc Agricultural & Technical State University.

Programming

WNAA plays music and serves the community while preparing students for broadcasting careers. As part of the A&T Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, WNAA operates professionally. General manager Tony Welborne is one of three full-time paid employees. WNAA also has several student DJs as well as community volunteers. Each day begins with "First Light", "a high-energy gospel music

Gospel music

Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

" program lasting from 5 A.M. to 10 A.M. Other styles of music include jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, R&B, and clean rap

Rap

Rap may refer to:*Rapping, performance in which rhyming lyrics are used, with or without musical accompaniment ; while an MC performs spoken verses in time to a beat/ melody**Hip hop subculture**Hip hop music...

. "King Mosley’s Smooth Jazz

Smooth jazz

Smooth jazz is a genre of music that grew out of jazz fusion and is influenced by R&B, funk, rock, and pop music styles ....

 Cafe" airs on Monday and Wednesday evenings, "The Blues Hangover" on Thursday evenings, "Wild Irish Rose’s 8-Track Flashback" on Saturday afternoons,

History

The station was established in 1979 as a direct outgrowth of A&T’s first radio station, WANT-AM, which was built in 1966 by electronics students (including Welborne) "as a class project". WNAA operated from 1979 to 1985 as a local Greensboro station, serving the campus and small areas of the city with 10 watt

Watt

The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...

s of power. In 1985, the station was granted permission to upgrade to a full power noncommercial FM stereo station.

WNAA now operates with 10,000 watts at 90.1 MHz on the FM dial, and has a licensed coverage area of 35 to 45 miles (56–64 km). The station experiences an actual coverage area of 35 to 55 miles (56–88 km) in most directions. WNAA is licensed to serve the Greensboro, High Point

High Point

High Point, in the northwestern part of New Jersey in Montague, Sussex County in the Skylands Region of New Jersey, is the highest elevation in the state at 1,803 feet . It is southeast of Port Jervis, New York. High Point is the highest peak of the Kittatinny Mountains.At the peak is the High...

, Winston-Salem metropolitan radio market. This area, coupled with the secondary coverage area allows WNAA to cover a 14 county area in Northern Piedmont

Piedmont (United States)

The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the eastern United States between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the main Appalachian Mountains, stretching from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the south. The Piedmont province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division...

 North Carolina and Southwestern Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

.

In September 2010, WNAA moved into a modern studio in Crosby Hall.