WFMU
WFMU-FM is a listener-supported, non-commercial radio station broadcasting at 91.1 Mhz FM in Jersey City, NJ, right across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. It is currently the longest running freeform radio station in the United States.
The station also broadcasts to New York City and to Rockland County, NY at 91.9 FM, and to the Hudson Valley, NYC and Lower Catskills in New York, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania via its 90.1 signal at WMFU in Mount Hope, NY. The station maintains an extensive online presence at WFMU.ORG which includes live audio streaming in several formats, over 17 years of audio archives, podcasts and a popular blog.
WFMU’s programming ranges from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to rock and roll, experimental music, 78 RPM Records, jazz, psychedelia, hip-hop, electronica, hand-cranked wax cylinders, punk rock, gospel, exotica, R&B, radio improvisation, cooking instructions, classic radio airchecks, found sound, dopey call-in shows, interviews with obscure radio personalities and notable science-world luminaries, spoken word collages, Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtracks in languages other than English as well as Country and western music.
All of the station’s programming is controlled by individual DJs and is not beholden to any type of station-wide playlist or rotation schedule. Experimentation, spontaneity and humor are among the station’s most frequently noted distinguishing traits. WFMU does not belong to any existing public radio network, and close to 100% of its programming originates at the station. (2022)
- Publications
- WFMU Music/Art Convergence, 1992, 33 pp, IA.
- Literature
- Elena Razlogova, "Freeform Radio and the History of Music Streaming", in The Oxford Handbook of Radio Studies, eds. Michele Hilmes and Andrew Bottomley, Oxford University Press, 2023. About WFMU’s early experiments in “streaming” music via telephone, gopher, and web. [1]
- Links
