KGOU is a

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

member news/talk/

jazz music Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

blues music Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narra ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio st ...

serving the

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, an ...

area, western and northwestern Oklahoma, and towns in Pontotoc, Seminole and Grady counties."KGOU."
Accessed December 23, 2017. It is licensed to the Board of Regents of the

University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , p ...

. It is operated by OU's College of Continuing Education (OU Outreach), with studios in Copeland Hall on the OU campus. The staff consists of ten full-time and four part-time employees. The station operates four full-power satellites: KROU (105.7 FM) in Spencer, KWOU (88.1 FM) in Woodward, KOUA (91.9 FM) in

Ada, Oklahoma Ada is a city in and the county seat of Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 16,481 at the 2020 United States Census. The city was named for Ada Reed, the daughter of an early settler, and was incorporated in 1901. Ada is ...

, and KQOU (89.1 FM) in Clinton, Oklahoma. It also operates translators K276ET (103.1 FM) in

Seminole The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and ...

, K250AU (97.9 FM) in Ada, K295BL (106.9 FM) in Chickasha and K286BZ (105.1 FM) in

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentuck ...

. The Clinton facility was added in December 2017, when

Cameron University Cameron University is a public university in Lawton, Oklahoma. It offers more than 50 degrees through both undergraduate and graduate programs. The degree programs emphasize the liberal arts, science and technology, and graduate and professional ...

transferred its license for KCCU transmitter KYCU to KGOU. The move expands KGOU's listener base to 32 counties, nearly all in central, western and east-central Oklahoma. The new call sign for the Clinton transmitter is KQOU.Pryor, Dick. "KGOU adds Clinton transmitter." KGOU. December 6, 2017.
Accessed December 23, 2017.

History

KGOU was originally licensed as a commercial

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States and ...

station to the University of Oklahoma in 1970, broadcasting at 106.3 FM. OU applied for a non-commercial Class A license and switched the station's format to NPR news and talk on New Year's Day, 1983. The studios were originally located in Kaufman Hall on the OU campus. The station's repeater network began more or less out of necessity. KGOU's main signal operates at 6,000 watts, which is fairly modest for a full NPR member on the FM band. This was necessary to protect what is now

KTUZ-FM KTUZ-FM (106.7 FM, "La Z") is a Regional Mexican radio station serving the Oklahoma City Metroplex area and is owned by Tyler Media. Tyler Media also owns KTUZ-TV (channel 30), for which the television station was given the radio station's calls ...

at nearby 106.7. As a result, KGOU's signal is spotty at best in most of Oklahoma City. To solve this problem, soon after joining NPR, OU sought a license for a repeater station that would better cover the northern suburbs. This station, KROU, officially signed on June 28, 1993. It was the first in a network of repeater stations that cover much of central and western Oklahoma. KGOU's format is primarily news/talk on weekdays, with jazz, blues, and world music programs on weekends, broadcasting programs from NPR, PRI and other public radio networks alongside locally produced news and music programming. KGOU renovated space in Copeland Hall on the OU campus in 2006 and moved its broadcasting studios that fall.

Repeaters

Translators

References

External links

KGOU station website
* * * * * * * * {{coord, 35.2895, N, 97.3586, W, type:landmark_region:US_source:FCC, display=title GOU NPR member stations Jazz radio stations in the United States GOU Radio stations established in 1970 1970 establishments in Oklahoma