WMSV 91.1 FM Celebrates 20 Years of ‘World Class Radio’ BY SASHA STEINBERG, PHOTOGRAPHY BY BETH WYNN
“I love this place; I really do,” said manager Steve Ellis of Mississippi State’s noncommercial, community radio station, WMSV 91.1. For 20 years, the 14,000-watt FM station in the university’s Henry F. Meyer Student Media Center has broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout a 70-mile radius. WMSV is not, however, the first FM station on campus. That distinction is held by the late WMSB, a 10-watt station once housed in cramped spaces on the top floor of Lee Hall. WMSB, with a tiny signal didn’t reach much beyond the campus grounds, went silent in 1986. Explaining how the “new” station came about, Ellis said “a group of students wanted to have a college radio station again, so they started a petition, and were able to get it on a referendum that ultimately passed.” The enterprising students “then approached David Hutto, who was director of the University Television Center at that time, and asked him to apply for a license that, in time, was granted by the Federal Communications Commission.” Together, Hutto and Joe Farris, then-head of the University Relations office, approached Ellis about developing the new station. Ellis, broadcast coordinator for the university at the time and a radio veteran since age 16, accepted the task. 30
SPRING 2014
“Sometime in late 1993, I came over here and found absolutely nothing in these offices except light switches and lights,” the Columbus resident recalled. “I’d say it took us close to six months to get the station ready to go on the air.” At precisely 6 a.m. on March 21, 1994, music began flowing over the airways from the Tracy Drive location to ears of listeners across the Golden Triangle region and beyond. Ellis said the original WMSV slogan, “Radio with a Vision,” was changed to the current “World Class Radio” around 2,000 as the musical format evolved. “We had five student directors when we first went on the air,” Ellis said. “They worked long hours and very hard. One weekend, they even came out to my house to help build shelves for the station, and those shelves, in fact, still hold the CDs in our music library.” Ellis is one of the station’s two full-time university employees. News and public affairs director Anthony Craven is the other. A Clinton native, Craven is an MSU communication/broadcasting graduate who went on to complete a master’s degree in secondary education. He began working at WMSV in 1999, shortly after transferring from Hinds Community College.
www.alumnus.msstate.edu