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POTW: Tracing NCPR's Roots (1921)

October 24, 2008 by CNYRadio.com

This year is the 40th anniversary of North Country Public Radio, headquartered at WSLU/Canton, on the campus of Saint Lawrence University.  Even though NCPR has only been around for 40 years, the history of radio at the university goes back much farther.

As captioned on NCPR's website: "St. Lawrence University radio pioneers Harold Bergman, Ellis Manngin, Stan Barber, Charles Geyh and Ward Priest gather around a 50-watt experimental transmitter in an old pig barn near campus in 1921."

That experimental station was assigned the call letters 8SZ.  It would later make way for other stations like WCAD and KSLU, before the present-day WSLU took to the airwaves 47 years later, in 1968.  Jump ahead another 40 years, and WSLU is now carried on 7 full-power stations and 25 translators, stretching from the NY/Canadian border, all the way down to Boonville and Glens Falls.

Interested in more?  NCPR's website has an entire page detailing its own history and those of its ancestors.

 

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