Although our area gets the usual mix of radio stations--pop, oldies, country, talk, and Christian--there are also some special stations worth exploring that broadcast from university-owned facilities.

Above is the studio of KZUU (90.7 FM), the student owned-and-operated station at WSU which has an extremely varied (not to say erratic) format emphasizing alternative popular music and excluding only top-40, which is the province of the other student station: KUGR (95.1 on cable), staffed by DJs-in-training.

KUOI (89.3 FM) is the low-wattage student station at the University of Idaho which offers more ambitious and varied programming than the WSU stations.

These are low-power stations which can't be heard very far from campus, unless you pick them up with a good antenna or on cable.

Professional public radio is represented on the WSU campus by Northwest Public Radio. KFRA (91.7 FM) presents more hours of classical music than any other station in the area, plus the big NPR news shows like "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" and other shows like "A Prairie Home Companion." Translators around the state give it a huge reach, so that the Pullman/Moscow area represents only about 10% of its audience. Programming is fairly conservative, heavily oriented toward familiar and popular classics.

The transmitter is north of town on Kamiak Butte, so if you're on the south side of a campus building you may not be able to receive KFRA clearly. An external antenna and a good radio may help.

KWSU (1250 AM) is the "news and information" station of NWPR, carrying non-stop news and talk shows from NPR, MPR, CBC, BBC, etc. Its content is also carried via FM at 89.9 FM on a rather feeble signal which in certain locations sounds better.

KPBX (91.1 FM) is Spokane public radio, with classical music in the mornings and most evenings; but with much more adventurous programming than KFRA, including opera, more modern works, and fine syndicated shows like "Performance Today," "Harmonia," and "Sunday Baroque" (two out of the show's four hours). KPBX also does some live music broadcasting of local artists. It also provides far more jazz than KFRA. I switch back and forth between KFRA and KPBX all the time. When they both wind up doing fund appeals at the same time, I switch to KING on the Web (hey--I do give to both--having paid, I feel entitled to tune out the yammer). Unfortunately, in Pullman the signal from KZUU usually blots out KPBX on cheap Walkmans, though more sophisticated tuners can keep the two separate.

KFSC (91.9 FM) is Spokane Public Radio's news and information station. It's low wattage, so you probably won't be able to pick it up unless you're visiting Spokane.

Finally, there's KEWU (89.5 FM), the jazz station of Eastern Washington University in Cheney (between Pullman and Spokane). You need good reception to pull this one in clearly in our area, but it's worth investing in an antenna to pull it in. Try your car radio--they often have more sensitive tuners than home equipment. It also carries opera on Wednesday nights.

TV cable subscribers can use a cheap splitter to feed an FM tuner and get most of these stations. All of them also provide Web feeds of their programming. Explore these links to find them:

KZUU
KUGR
NWPR
Spokane Public Radio
KEWU