WYPL (89.3
FM) is a non-commercial
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 ...
that serves the area of
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
, in the United States. The station is licensed to the Memphis Public Library & Information Center and provides an open
radio reading service to patrons, a type of service usually available elsewhere in the United States only on special leased receivers. This station is only of two such open-air broadcasting operations in the United States; the other is located in
.
Volunteers present daily readings of ''
The Commercial Appeal
''The Commercial Appeal'' (also known as the ''Memphis Commercial Appeal'') is a daily newspaper of Memphis, Tennessee, and its surrounding metropolitan area. It is owned by the Gannett Company; its former owner, the E. W. Scripps Company, also ...
,'' ''
USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
,'' and other newspapers. The station also features book readings, author interviews, news programming provided by BBC News, and audio
simulcast
Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultane ...
s of the midday newscasts of
WMC-TV
WMC-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Television. Its studios are located on Union Avenue in midtown Memphis, and its transmitter is located in northeast Memphis, ...
(Channel 5), along with the ''
NBC Nightly News.'' The station has been selected by the
American Foundation for the Blind as the Model Radio Reading Service.
Locally-produced programs include ''Book Talk'', which features interviews with authors; ''Library News''; ''Eye On Vision'', which features interviews with doctors and also provides information on research and development in vision and eye care; and ''Night Owl'', a story-reading program aimed at children aged six and under, co-ordinated to a probable bedtime.
It is unknown exactly when the station first signed on the air as a subcarrier station but it moved to the 89.3 frequency on April 17, 1991; that frequency first went on air as WLYX (whose date of first operations is also unclear), a station licensed to Southwestern at Memphis (now
Rhodes College), and was branded as "The Alternative." The freeform college rock station was operated by a student and volunteer staff with broadly eclectic tastes, and was widely influential in bringing genres such as punk and new wave to the Memphis area in the early 1980s. The station was discontinued in 1989, when Rhodes president
James Daughdrill, a strong social conservative, decided that WLYX was not in keeping with the college's core mission.
In perhaps something of a tribute to the old WLYX, though, WYPL added music programming in the evenings during the 2010s, mainly nostalgic material relating to Memphis' heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s as a recording center for rock, soul and blues music.
See also
*
Radio reading service
*
WRBH
WRBH (88.3 Hertz, MHz) is a non-commercial radio, commercial FM radio, FM radio station in New Orleans, Louisiana. It primarily provides a radio reading service for the blind and print-handicapped without the usual use of a private subcarrier de ...
, the only other open-air reading service in the U.S.
References
External links
*
WYPL Program Schedule
YPL
Radio reading services of the United States
Radio stations established in 1991
1991 establishments in Tennessee
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