WSRN-FM (91.5 FM, The "Worldwide Swarthmore Radio Network") is

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

's official

campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

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 ...

. It broadcasts out of the suburban

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

borough of

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Swarthmore ( , ) is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Swarthmore was originally named "Westdale" in honor of noted painter Benjamin West, who was one of the early residents of the town. The name was changed to "Swarthmore" after the es ...

. Prior to the 1970s, WSRN operated as a carrier signal broadcast to the campus of Swarthmore College only. The station went on the air with 10 watts on October 15, 1972. Following efforts by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC) to encourage as many Class D stations as possible to increase power, a campaign was raised by the students of the college, and in the late 1970s, the FCC granted a license for a 110-watt, directional, transmission. Additional information about the history of radio at Swarthmore College can be found in and. Programming has been eclectic from the 1970s on. Station programming is diverse; music spans "world," hip hop, blues, folk, rock, pop, R & B, and classical. Talk and comedy programs comprise much of the weekend line-up. Notably "Funk" which ran from fall 2012 to spring 2014 Friday mornings from midnight to 2AM. In 1986, the main on-air studio was completely refurbished, with a new control panel, turntables, microphones, and wiring installed. 1998 saw the rewiring and modernization of the production studio and the construction of an acoustically isolated sound studio connected to the production studio. Students have always manned the soundboard, and so, during most summers, the station is dark. Following the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

pandemic, the radio station had periods of limited broadcasting. During the 2021-2022 academic year, a significant effort by students, faculty, staff, and community members was successfully carried out to get the station back up to an operational state. As of April 1, 2022, the station has resumed broadcasting.

References

External links

WSRN 91.5 official website
* * * * SRN SRN Swarthmore College {{Pennsylvania-radio-station-stub