WJHU is a radio station based in Baltimore , Maryland . The Johns Hopkins University owns the station, a community radio station with student volunteers, who are mainly on-air deejays and other program hosts. Programming blocks are divided into formats, dealing mostly with music, sports and cultural life: classical , dance , folk , jazz , public affairs , sports , rap , and rock formats — along with a few specialty shows outside any of the formats. Its studios are located on the Homewood campus .
24-566: New/Next Film Festival is an independent film festival based in Baltimore, Maryland founded in 2023. In May 2023, it was announced that Baltimore radio station WYPR , in partnership with former Maryland Film Festival director of programming Eric Allen Hatch, would hold the New/Next Film Festival in August 2023, taking place at The Charles Theatre . The festival was planned as a reaction to
48-417: A 10-watt student-run station owned by Johns Hopkins University . It took over from a carrier current station that had operated under the same calls on AM 830 since 1945. Originally a typical freeform college radio station, it boosted its power to 25,000 watts in 1985, allowing it at least secondary coverage of the entire Baltimore/ Washington corridor. Soon after the power increase, Johns Hopkins converted
72-480: A community group, bought the station and changed its calls to WYPR. In 2004, Your Public Radio Corp. bought religious broadcaster WJTM in Frederick, which became a relay of WYPR with the call letters of WYPF. WYPF's signal also covers Hagerstown. On July 30, 2007, Your Public Radio Corp. bought Ocean City, Maryland alternative rock station 106.9 WRXS, which began simulcasting WYPR starting September 10, 2007. That station
96-581: A coverage area roughly comparable to the other major Baltimore stations. Two years earlier, University of Maryland student station WMUC in College Park , which at the time also broadcast at 88.1 MHz , raised concerns about co-channel interference due to its class D license that does not protect it from interference, in contrast to WYPR's class A license. In May 2021, WYPR announced plans to acquire Towson -based WTMD , an adult album alternative station owned by Towson University . The $ 3 million deal
120-534: A second edition. The 2024 New/Next Film Festival took place October 3-6 with guests including Beach House , Conner O'Malley , Sam Pollard , Clara Mamet , Fantasy A , Alexi Wasser, The Ion Pack, Griffin Dunne , and members of Animal Collective . The festival offered the world premieres of the features Messy by Alexi Wasser, Softshell by Jinho Myung, Removal of the Eye by Prashanth Kamalakanthan and Artemis Shaw, as well as
144-640: Is simulcast in the Frederick and Hagerstown area on WYPF (88.1 FM) and in the Ocean City area on WYPO (106.9 FM). WYPR is Baltimore's flagship National Public Radio member station, carrying content from NPR, American Public Media (the distribution arm of Minnesota Public Radio ), Public Radio Exchange and the BBC World Service (on HD2). WYPR also provides Classical 24 on its HD3 subchannel. In addition, WYPR produces several of its own shows, including
168-418: Is contingent on Federal Communications Commission approval. WTMD will retain its format and programming. The sale was closed on November 10, 2021, officially making WTMD a sister station to WYPR. In 2024, the stations' parent changed its name to Baltimore Public Media and introduced new sonic identities for both WYPR and WTMD. WYPR is a media sponsor of the local Patterson Park Concert Series throughout
192-579: The Baltimore and Washington DC area. This became the largest radio station power increase on record. The application was approved in 1982, however the station went off the air in 1983-4 due to renovation of AMR II in which the studios were located. The station returned to the air in February 1985. In the summer of 1985, the university hired a full-professional staff to run WJHU. Broadcasting classical music and talk, it quickly out-paced its classical competition ( WBJC ) and scored solid audience numbers. Over
216-576: The U.S. festival premieres of The Dells by Nellie Kluz, The Code by Eugene Kotlyarenko , The Trick by Neal Wynne, and Physician, Heal Thyself by Asher Penn. WYPR WYPR (88.1 FM ) is a public radio station serving the Baltimore, Maryland metropolitan area. Its studio is in the Charles Village neighborhood of northern Baltimore, while its transmitter is in Park Heights . The station
240-451: The U.S. premiere of work by Lael Rogers and world premieres of work by Harrison Atkins, Albert Birney, Marly Hernandez Cortes and Stephen Schuyler, Danielle Criqui, Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald, and Gillian Waldo. Special guests at the 2023 festival included the band Beach House , who introduced a favorite film, Lynne Ramsay 's Morvern Callar ; filmmaker Sam Pollard , who presented both Spike Lee 's Bamboozled , which he edited, and
264-519: The area National Public Radio affiliate, and in the fall of 1998, it added overnight coverage of World Radio Network (WRN). The university decided to sell the station, due to the expense of maintaining it, and the fact that it did not fit with the Johns Hopkins' mission. The station and frequency were sold by the university in early 2002 to Your Public Radio Corp., a locally based group of station talk hosts and listeners, and became WYPR . In
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#1733085863681288-545: The documentary Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes , which he co-directed; and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott , who participated in a Q+A following a screening of The Body Politic , a documentary following Scott's approach to curbing the murder rate in Baltimore. The festival's opening night party featured performances by Baltimore club artists Dapper Dan Midas and TT the Artist. The festival announced in April 2024 that it would return for
312-590: The early 1950s the campus radio station moved into the basement of the Alumni Memorial Residences II (AMR II), where it would stay for the next thirty years. WJHU transmitted on the 830 AM frequency in the dormitories via carrier current (a low-wattage transmission using the wiring in buildings). By the mid-1970s, the station operated with students running 3-hour shows on a 24/7 programming schedule. The station also carried away Johns Hopkins lacrosse games with student announcers. A long-time goal of
336-472: The early 1990s, students founded the alternative on-campus carrier current AM radio station called WHAT radio and later renamed WHSR (standing for Hopkins Student Radio). Like the earlier WJHU-AM, this station transmitted within the dorms, but it also added Levering Hall and the Charles apartments. This effort ended in 2000. During the summer of 2002, a group of Hopkins students began a new radio effort, and with
360-617: The early morning, classical during the day, specialty programming in the early evening during weekdays and Saturday/Sunday morning including 60's oldies (with radio announcer Michael Yockel), acoustic/folk music (No Strings Attached with radio announcer Gary Kenneth Bass), art-rock (with radio announcer Janet Sanford), bluegrass (with radio announcer Carol Burris) and Irish music (with radio announcer Myron Bretholz); rock till midnight (predominantly new wave), and its signature NAR ("Not Available Radio") progressive programming at night, along with short news programming. The signal extended off campus and
384-455: The news that Maryland Film Festival was not holding a 2023 event. The first New/Next Film Festival was held August 18–20 in Baltimore's Charles Theatre. The inaugural edition of New/Next presented over 20 feature films. Among the features screened was the world premiere of the documentary Carpet Cowboys, directed by Noah Collier and Emily MacKenzie and executive produced by John Wilson . The festival also screened over 50 short films, including
408-611: The public affairs-focused programs Midday and On The Record, the award-winning, sonic-storytelling series Out of the Blocks as well as local news coverage and special newsroom series. Starting in 2015, the Baltimore Magazine Reader's Poll has named WYPR the Best Radio Station in Baltimore three years in a row. The station also won Best Radio Show Host, and Best News Website in 2017. The station signed on in 1979, as WJHU ,
432-428: The station into a full-time professional operation, allowing it to become Baltimore's NPR member station. It originally aired a mix of classical music and NPR programming, but on June 23, 1995, switched to a primarily news/talk format. Johns Hopkins put the station up for sale in 2000, due to the expense of maintaining it, as well as a change in focus that no longer included radio. In 2002, Your Public Radio Corp.,
456-500: The station was to transition to being an actual broadcast station on FM (which was the ostensible reason for requiring all staff to obtain a U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 3rd class operator's license). Technical issues in 1975 led to suspension of broadcasting for much of the academic year and to questions among the staff concerning management. This in turn led in early 1976 to changes in management, programming, and use of facilities, as well as to increased attention from
480-420: The students hired for the first time a non-student to oversee the station full-time and ensure compliance with FCC rules and university expectations. The station operated twenty-four hours a day. Faced with FCC deregulation of low-wattage FM stations in the early 1980s, and in order to protect the frequency, the student managers decided to apply for a 25,000 watt license, which would extend the audience throughout
504-538: The summer months. In addition, the radio station is also a media partner of Stevenson University 's Baltimore Speakers Series at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. 39°19′53″N 76°39′28″W / 39.33139°N 76.65778°W / 39.33139; -76.65778 WJHU WJHU had its antecedents in the mid-1940s with an informal broadcast from Levering Hall on the Homewood campus . In
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#1733085863681528-459: The university administration. In 1977, the student managers of the station and the university administration agreed to push for an FCC license to broadcast on 88.1 FM. Official and budgetary support from the university administration made this possible, and final approval for a 10-watt station on 88.1 FM came from the FCC in 1978. WJHU-FM began broadcasting in 1979, featuring a mixed format with jazz in
552-402: The years it progressively added more content from National Public Radio and its partners, shifting to the format of news/talk in the daytime and overnight weekday hours, and music (mainly jazz) programming during evenings and nights. WJHU-FM apparently encountered financial difficulties, and before some fundraising success in the early 1990s, the university considered selling it. WJHU became
576-450: Was renamed WYPO on October 3, 2007. The three stations provide at least distant-grade coverage to almost two-thirds of Maryland. For much of the time from the late 1990s to 2008, it operated at only 10,000 watts. While this provided a decent signal to Baltimore itself and most of its close-in suburbs, many of Baltimore's outer suburbs, including Annapolis , only got a grade B signal. In 2008, it increased its power to 15,500 watts, giving it
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