Radio Free Binghamton | 90.5MHz WHRW-FM

:: Radio Free Binghamton :: 90.5 WHRW-FM ::

WHRW Quick Facts

On the AM dial in 1963 and the third FM station in Binghamton in 1966, WHRW is a free-format college/community radio station, offering the only true alternative on the FM radio dial.

WHRW broadcasts 2000 watts to the Binghamton area and surrounding communities. A clear, stereo signal can be heard at least 25 miles out of town.

Anybody can become a jock at WHRW. Click "Become a WHRW Jock" above for the 411.

Our DJs love do what they do because they love music and they love sharing it with and entertaining their listeners. In a sense, the most wonderful thing about WHRW is that our responsibility to them is to keep doing whatever we like, because it often makes for great radio.

WHRW sponsors a number of on-campus and off-campus events every year, including concerts and fundraisers, and we attend the local summer festivals to get the word out.

WHRW General Manager 1998-2000 Paul Battaglia was killed in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001. Paul was a legendary figure at WHRW and was one of the most popular and productive GMs we've ever had, not to mention a good friend to many at the station.

About WHRW

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(My apologies if this is a little long. WHRW's history, nor the history of FM radio it embodies with every passing broadcast day, doesn't get any shorter as I attempt to make this concise.)

Humble Beginnings

Many people are unaware that the technology behind FM radio was invented nearly thirty years before most people ever heard it for the first time.

Edwin Howard Armstrong, a pioneer of World War I radio communications and the holder of many patents for Amplitude Modulation (AM) radio, invented the technology in 1933, hoping that it would set about quickly solving the problems of AM radio's low fidelity. Instead, a legal battle ensued when Armstrong pitched the idea to a longtime friend who happened to be the head of RCA, who was under the mistaken impression that Armstrong was working on technology to improve AM fidelity. Since RCA had millions of AM-only receivers in the marketplace, it did not want to face the backlash that often accompanies the uprooting change of technology.

The legal battle raged on well into the mid-fifties, and after suffering a stroke and finding himself at violent odds with his wife, who refused to give up their retirement money to continue the struggle, he penned a letter of apology to her and leapt to his death out of a thirteenth-story window, realizing he had lost everything that was dear to him in pursuit of this dream. It would still be nearly a decade before FM radio would lay claim to any sizable amount of listeners.

By the time the early sixties were upon us, it was a time of social and political upheaval. Big business and big government, unpopular war, conservative moral thinking, and a lifestyle epitomized by Leave It To Beaver-style television were a wall barricading more bohemian ideals and values, and in a few short years that wall was all but obliterated. Young people, scared to be drafted for a war in which they did not believe, rose up in an unprecedented style against LBJ's Washington. The advent of easily available birth control pills took the responsibility and consequences away from casual sex. And then there was that Timothy Leary guy. The world had changed, whether some of the world liked it or not.

You could say that FM radio, as a whole, was in the right place at the right time.

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