WWOZ

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WWOZ is a non-profit community-supported radio station in New Orleans, Louisiana broadcasting at 90.7 FM. The station specializes in music from or relating to the cultural heritage of New Orleans and the surrounding region of Louisiana.

1 Programming
2 History
- 2.1 Effects of Hurricane Katrina
3 External links

[edit] Programming

WWOZ programming is most heavily weighted toward contemporary jazz and rhythm & blues, with other programming including traditional jazz, blues, Cajun music, zydeco, old time country music, bluegrass, music of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

As the station is well known for its support of local music, local musicians are often guests on programs, and sometimes perform live over the air, especially for the station's twice-yearly membership drives. Musicians and singers such as Samirah Evans, Alan Fontenot, Hazel the Delta Rambler, Ernie K-Doe, Tommy Rigley, Davis Rogan, Tom Saunders, John Sinclair, Don Vappie, and Dr. Michael White, have had their own shows on the station.

WWOZ is also well known for its location broadcasts of live music events, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

[edit] History

The founders of WWOZ were brothers Walter and Jerry Brock, veteran community broadcasters from Texas who thought New Orleans needed a community radio station and began organizing it in the late 1970s. The Nora Blatch Educational Foundation (named after radio pioneer Nora Blatch, wife of Lee De Forest) was established as a non-profit organization to hold the station license. The call letters WWOZ were chosen as a reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, specifically the line, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," meaning that attention should be given to the program content rather than the personalities of the disc jockeys.

The station began broadcasting in December of 1980 from the tiny transmitter building in Bridge City, Louisiana beneath their shared rented broadcast tower. A few months later the broadcasts moved to the space the station had been using in a dilapidated two-room apartment upstairs from the legendary music club Tipitina's on Napoleon Avenue in Uptown New Orleans.

Conditions at WWOZ in the early 1980s were spartan. The studio/office had no air-conditioning, and for a time just before moving out of the Tipitina's site the only running water to the tiny bathroom was from a neighbor's garden hose run in through a window. Everyone who did a show volunteered hours of time on other tasks to keep the station going, from addressing envelopes to sweeping the floor. When artists performing live downstairs at Tipitina's gave their permission, their performances were broadcast via a microphone lowered through a hole in the floor. When permission to broadcast live perfromances downstairs could not be obtained, programing went to pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes, as the music downstairs made it too loud in the studio to talk over the microphones and the vibrations made it impossible to use the station's turntables.

In the mid 1980s they moved the studio to a building in Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme neighborhood. With the station facing financial difficulties, the license was transferred to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation (parent organization of the Jazz Festival) which helped subsidize the station. The station additionally had an office in a small house across the street from the studio.

In 1996, Better Than Ezra, an Alternative Rock band from New Orleans, wrote a song titled "WWOZ", where they mention this radio station.

[edit] Effects of Hurricane Katrina

WWOZ made the decision to go off the air at midnight on 27 August 2005 in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina to allow programmers to evacuate the city -- it actually went off the air slightly earlier, just after 10pm, as the guards were locking up the gates of Armstrong Park. Its studio was damaged in the storm, and its staff was scattered to shelter in several states. Within a week it resumed a webcast as "WWOZ in Exile" via Internet servers at WFMU in New Jersey. Many long term listeners from around the country donated tapes of WWOZ broadcasts from years gone by, some of which were rebroadcast in part or whole. On 18 October 2005 it resumed limited hours of broadcasting over the air in New Orleans, via studio space provided by Louisiana Public Broadcasting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The station returned to New Orleans in December 2005, using temporary office and studio space at the French Market office building, with live broadcasting from New Orleans resuming on 15 December. Much of WWOZ's programing has long been based on the large personal record collections of the various programers, many of which were lost in the disaster. For some time after the station returned to the air, one programer did a series of shows entirely from cds rescued from the debris in post-Katrina muck.