On the eve of the bicentennial, KRCU crackled to life on March 5, 1976, an alternative music college station powered by student on-air personalities and 10 watts. Which meant that the station’s limited daily broadcast schedule carried from its tower on Academic Hall all the way to Capaha Park.
The first campus radio station was WSAB, which began broadcasting in 1923 from Carnahan Hall when we were still Southeast Missouri State Teachers College.
But since KRCU powered up in 1981, when the FCC authorized the station to increase to 100 watts, KRCU grew into the role as the radio home of Southeast Missouri State, but also the flagship station providing public radio programming to the university’s traditional service area.
Under the guidance of general manager Susan Westfall, in 1988 KRCU transitioned from college rock to the regional outlet for public radio, joining NPR as a member station. With another increase in power from 100 to 6,000 watts, and a move from its original home in Grauel to fancy new studios on North Henderson Avenue, KRCU reached nearly 72,000 in Missouri and Illinois by the 1990s.
Today from state-of-the-art campus studios in Serena Hall, and sister stations in Farmington and Poplar Bluff, KRCU is a 24/7 full service public radio station providing listeners like you with in-depth news and quality cultural programming from NPR personalities along with announcers and hosts from the university community like me.
