WANM radio has been heard over the airwaves since 1976, but Homecoming week marks the introduction of an additional medium for FAMU’s radio station-the Internet.
WANM is launching a Web site that offers many features to their listeners while staying on the air as regularly programmed.
Confirmed by the radio staff’s former operation manager, Gregg Bishop, 32, the site will give better insight into the station and also keep it ahead of the competition.
“It’s almost like you have to have a Web site in this day and age in order to be competitive,” Bishop said. “It helps with recruitment for journalism and obviously for Florida A&M. It also helps with advertising events [and] there are a lot of benefits with having it.”
WANM decided to take the station to the next level in January.
“It took over six months to place the idea together and build the Web site,” Bishop said. “It was originally set to appear in the summer but we decided to wait.”
One of the many features found on the Web site is pod casting. This feature allows listeners to hear the music genre of their choice, whenever they want.
“If you just want to specifically hear old-school jams, then there is a pod cast for that,” said Anna Taylor, 21, a senior public relations student from Miami, and the station’s promotional director. “We’re pod casting most of our genres so that we can give the listener the opportunity to hear other music if they do not want to hear hip-hop and R&B in the evening.”
Other than hearing the many genres the radio station offers through pod casting, from gospel to jazz, WANM wishes to raise the bar by becoming more than a broadcasting network.
“The Web site is also very interactive… you can interact with your DJ’s [and] we have local artist information and music that we can upload,” Taylor said. “This is something that we’re doing to involve the community. This is so that community knows that we’re not only a FAMU radio station, we’re the station for the community.”
Although WANM desires to become more than the average station, the station’s staff makes it clear that they still want listeners to focus on the airwaves and they prove that by applying a live feed over the Internet.
“Our Web site is very unique and you can listen live online and a lot of our listeners already know that you are able to listen live,” Taylor said. “We have a live feed and it’s not off by that much… probably a five second delay.”
The Web site, which was designed by Cold Finger Solutions, is designed so that the audience is able to navigate to a section with ease. Another area of the Web site features a message board where the audience can leave comments or make musical requests. It also includes multimedia for various uses.
“It’s a lot… I think it’s great for the radio station and great for the school as a recruiting tool to attract more students to come to the journalism school and even just to come to FAMU,” said Greg Miller, 22, a broadcast journalism student from Miami and WANM’s program director. “We obviously know it’s going to generate money for the station.”
The Web site will be updated bi-weekly, according to the radio staff, in hopes of keeping contact with many listeners.
“You get a chance to get in-depth with 90.5 and know us on a more personal level and that’s what we want to make sure to create,” Taylor said.