WWOZ

WWOZ is a non-profit community supported radio station in New Orleans, Louisiana broadcasting at 90.7 FM. The station specializes in music from or relating to the cultural heritage of New Orleans and the surrounding region of Louisiana.

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The founders of WWOZ were brothers Walter and Jerry Brock, veteran community broadcasters from Texas who thought New Orleans needed a community radio station and began organizing it in the late 1970s. The "Nora Blatch Educational Foundation" (named after radio pioneer Nora Blatch, wife of Lee De Forest) was established to as a non-profit foundation to hold the station licence. The call letters "WWOZ" were chosen as a reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, specifically the line "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", meaning that attention should be given to the program content rather than the personalities of the disc jockies. The station went on the air in December of 1980 in a tiny studio in Bridge City, Louisiana beneath their shared rented broadcast tower. A few months later the studio and office was moved to comparatively larger space in a dilapadated two room apartment upstairs from the legendary music club Tipitinas on Napoleon Avenue in Uptown New Orleans.

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In the mid 1980s they moved the studio to a building in Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme neighborhood. Facing financial dificulties, the licence was purchaced by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival which helped subsidize them.

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WWOZ programing is most heavily weighed to contemporary jazz and rhythm & blues, with other programing including traditional jazz, blues, Cajun music, zydeco, old time country music, bluegrass, music of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

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As the station is well known for its support of local music, local musicians are often guests on programs, and sometimes perform live over the air, especially for the station's twice a year membership drives. Musicians and singers such as Tommy Rigley, Ernie K-Doe, Dr. Michael White, Tom Saunders, Samirah Evans, Hazel the Delta Rambler, Alan Fontenot, John Sinclair, and Don Vappie have had their own shows on the station.

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WWOZ is also well known for its broadcasts of live music, including from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

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WWOZ went off the air at midnight on 27 August, 2005, in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina to allow programers to evacuate the city. Its transmitter was damaged in the storm, and its staff was scattered to shelter in several states. It has resumed a webcast as WWOZ in Exile, via Internet servers at WFMU in New Jersey.

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Radio station: A radio station is a sound broadcasting service. Traditionally, radio stations have broadcast through the air via radio waves (a form of electromagnetic radiation), sent through a transmitter and antenna. Today, many if not most stations broadcast via cable FM, local wire networks, satellite, or th...

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