By GREGORY ZELLER //
Now hear this: The official Stony Brook University radio station is broadcasting at full power once again.
Nearly 20 months after its (very) old transmitter broke down, WUSB – 90.1 on your FM dial, first in your heart since debuting in 1963 as an on-campus AM station – is back on the air.
Actually, it was never off, except for a two-day hiatus when that rickety old transmitter finally spit the bit in April 2022. Beaming out since then on a temporary, lower-power transmitter, WUSB has essentially, if not technically, maintained its on-air streak: 24/7, 365 days a year, since earning its Federal Communications Commission FM Broadcast Station License in 1977.
Now, thanks to a $43,000 gift from the university’s Facilities & Services division, the stalwart station – able to cover a meager 20-mile radius during its frustrating 18 months-plus of technical difficulties – is finally back at full strength.
In October, station masters replaced the temporary transmitter with a new 3,600-watt upgrade that not only re-establishes the station’s reach throughout Long Island and southern Connecticut – including local broadcasts on additional frequency 107.3 FM, which WUSB acquired in 2017 – but brings the station back in line with the requirements of that federal FM-transmission license.
Matthew Mankiewich: Within reach.
“Our FCC license tells us how powerful our signal must be and where it should reach, and we’ve had to accept less than that for more than a year,” noted four-decade WUSB volunteer Matthew Mankiewich, who earned a degree in physics from Stony Brook University and has held numerous director and training positions at the station since 1983. “Now we have a chance to get the word out and reach new listeners.”
The greater reach also befits an enterprise self-billed as “Long Island’s largest non-commercial freeform radio station.” Now ranging boldly into parts of New York City and Westchester County (and simulcasting on the Internet), WUSB takes that “freeform” format – essentially, carte blanche for the host of the hour – to heart.
Sports broadcasts (Mankiewich’s main bag) and a diverse range of interview/commentary shows mix it up with jazz, pop, metal, blues, reggae, movie soundtracks, African folk and just about any other music genre you can imagine (yes, even polka), with past and present students, university faculty and staff and even community members taking turns behind the microphone.
The innovative station – a member of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and other national organizations – is funded by listener donations, local-business underwriters and stipends from SBU’s Undergraduate Student Government and Graduate Student Organization.
Always grateful for that wide-ranging support, the radio station is especially thankful for the Facilities & Services stipend that re-established its regional prominence, according to WUSB General Manager Isobel Breheny-Schafer, who noted the last year-and-a-half has been “extremely frustrating for both our listeners and supporters.”
“We couldn’t guarantee our station’s capabilities because the transmitter had become so unpredictable,” added Breheny-Schafer, also the university’s assistant director of student media.
But quality programming – and a continuation of WUSB’s new uninterrupted streak – are virtually guaranteed now, according to 40-year mainstay Mankiewich.
“This new transmitter makes the station whole again,” he said.
