WPOB (88.5 FM) is a

high school radio High school radio are radio stations located at high schools and usually operated by its students with faculty supervision. The oldest extant high school AM radio station is AM 1450 KBPS in Portland, Oregon. Portland radio station KBPS, first li ...

station

licensed A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

Plainview, New York Plainview is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) located near the North Shore of Long Island in the town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population of the CDP was 27,100. The Plainview post office has t ...

. WPOB is a

community radio Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popula ...

station funded by the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District and has been broadcasting since 1972. WPOB is broadcast by students at Plainview – Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School partaking in a three-year course in radio engineering, producing and broadcasting. The station airs from 7:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays and shares time with

Syosset High School Syosset High School (SHS) is a public high school located in Syosset, New York, United States, in Nassau County, on Long Island. It serves as the public high school for residents of the Syosset Central School District. As of 2012, the news mag ...

WKWZ WKWZ 88.5 FM is a non-commercial educational high school radio station licensed to Syosset, New York. The station is owned and operated by the Syosset Central School District, with studios located at Syosset High School in the basement of the f ...

in Syosset, New York.

Early days

WPOB was a project sponsored by Plainview-Old Bethpage School Board member Joseph Scholnick, a sound-effects pioneer of the 1950s broadcast radio scene, who also was the original FCC licensed engineer responsible for regulatory compliance at the station. Student run, with oversight from Dr. Louis Brown, WPOB initially broadcast, almost exclusively, news and educational programming. By the mid-1970s however, WPOB's programming format had shifted to include student-generated content and popular music programming, eventually adding more modern Rock & Roll content. The content produced by students was composed, directed and engineered as a learning experience and included regular episodic comedy, such as "The Adventures of Captain Kwizdo" (a thinly veiled homage to the "Mark Time" routine performed by the professional comedy troupe '

Firesign Theater The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM. They continued app ...

'), a weekly sports review (which mimicked the styling of the famous sportscaster

Howard Cosell Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...

), alternative music and current events programming, such as "Music You Dont Know From a Guy You Don't Care About", and various informational news magazines. Students were also encouraged to produce their own promotional material, jingles, and other content. Often recruiting school music students, actors, and athletes to contribute content such as jingles and other broadcast promotions for their work.

WPOB Today

The station updated their music library and computer systems in 2016 to include a mix of new popular music and all-time favorites. This update was spearheaded by past assistant station managers Colby Kusinitz and Joe Liszovics. WPOB DJs get approximately 40 minutes to do what they want with their shows, the station also livestreams music, public service announcements (PSA), and the news every Friday to WPOB.com. The station is a member of the

Emergency Alert System The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national warning system in the United States designed to allow authorized officials to broadcast emergency alerts and warning messages to the public via cable, satellite, or broadcast television, and bot ...

(EAS) and will alert the greater Plainview area of any dangerous situations. The newest update to the WPOB station is a TV being added to their booth and over 3,000 CDs donated to the station. The station's programming is student generated and there are courses available to further the student knowledge on broadcast communications. WPOB is run through the English Department at POB-JFK High School. WPOB now transmits to the local community through a RoIP system to provide the best quality sound, this update was conducted in July 2020.

References

External links

{{Long Island Radio POB Plainview, New York Old Bethpage, New York Mass media in Nassau County, New York

Early days

WPOB Today

See also

References

External links