Workers began installing the first of two antennas for a pair of new FM stations at the Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s Newtown campus this week.
WLXL 95.7 and WLXU 93.9 will fall under the relatively new FCC designation of "low-power FM stations," which operate at a maximum of 100 watts. Collectively, they’ll be known as Lexington Community Radio.
"The thing that makes us pretty unique is that we're going to basically offer up our facilities to the community," says newly-minted general manager Hap Houlihan.
He says the goal is to train and equip community members to write and produce content by and for Lexingtonians, with an emphasis on reaching underserved populations.
"This is sort of all broadcast fields, inasmuch as we'll do Ira Glass type storytelling, we'll do straight news, we'll have cultural and entertainment programming and most, if not all of it, will be generated from right here within our broadcast range within central Lexington," Houlihan explains.
If all goes as planned, the first station, WLXL 95.7, is will hit the airwaves in the third quarter of 2015, with WLXU 93.9 following in 2016.
