Chattanooga State Technical Community College officials agreed on Wednesday to sell the school’s radio license and tower for WAWL-FM 91.5 to an unidentified buyer for $1.5 million, President Jim Catanzaro said.
The college will create an online version of the station, he said.
“Students today are into the podcasts and music downloads and with the new Web site, we will be able to archive and offer free downloads so they can listen whenever they want,” Dr. Catanzaro said.
Proceeds from the sale will be used to buy new equipment and to create a Web site that will serve as a hands-on lab for broadcast students.
Dr. Catanzaro said he has been working through a broker, as required by the state Board of Regents, to sell the station for about a year after it became clear that the school would be unable to afford the nearly $1 million it would take to convert the 11,000 watt station to digital by 2009, as required by law.
Chat State officials will use the $1.5 million from the sale to improve the school’s other mass communication facilities, and for “other improvements for the student body as a whole,” Dr. Catanzaro said on Wednesday.
The new equipment will allow students to produce, among other things, live remotes, which they cannot now do, he said.
The school began looking at what to do with the station about 18 months ago, he said. The station is licensed as a nonprofit with the Federal Communications Commission, which places limitations on how it can be used and utilized by students. Those limitations will not exist online, he said.
Judy Lowe, assistant vice president of distributed education and multimedia, said the sale and conversation to an online broadcast lab will allow the school to bring together its radio and television components within its mass communication departments.
“The students see themselves leaving here and going on to work on sports broadcasts and live events in television, radio and the Internet,” she said. “They are merging together, and this gives them experience in all of them. This will give us something unique.”
Dr. Catanzaro said the sale could take between three to six months. Once completed, the school will begin converting the recently purchased WTCI-TV 45 building, which sits on the Chat State campus, into the new mass communication building. It will house the radio and television labs.
The WAWL building will be converted into testing space for new students, he said.
Barry Courter is associate features editor, entertainment editor and books editor for the Times Free Press. He started his journalism career at the Chattanooga News-Free Press in 1987. He covers primarily entertainment and events for fyiWeekend and edits the Sunday books page. Born in Lafayette, Ind., Barry has lived in Chattanooga since 1968. He graduated from Notre Dame High School and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a degree in broadcast journalism. He previously ...
