WPOB (88.5
FM) is a
high school radio
High school radio are radio stations located at high schools and usually operated by its students with faculty supervision. The oldest extant high school AM radio station is AM 1450 KBPS in Portland, Oregon. Portland radio station KBPS, first li ...
station
licensed to
Plainview, New York
Plainview is a Hamlet (New York), hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) located in the town of Oyster Bay (town), New York, Oyster Bay in east central Nassau County, New York, United States. The population of the CDP was 27,100. The Plainv ...
. WPOB is a
community radio
Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial broadcasting, commercial and public broadcasting.
Community broadcasting, Community stations serve geographic communities and communities o ...
station funded by the
Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District
The Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District (POBCSD) is the public school district which serves the Nassau County, Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York ...
and has been broadcasting since 1972. WPOB is broadcast by students at
Plainview – Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School partaking in a three-year course in radio engineering, producing, and broadcasting. The station airs from 7:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays, handing off to
Syosset High School's
WKWZ in
Syosset, New York
Syosset is a Hamlet (New York), hamlet and census-designated place in the Oyster Bay (town), New York, Town of Oyster Bay, in Nassau County, New York, Nassau County, on the North Shore (Long Island), North Shore of Long Island, in New York (state ...
(which is on the air from 2:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.).
Early days
WPOB was a project sponsored by Plainview-Old Bethpage School Board member Joseph Scholnick, a sound-effects pioneer
of the 1950s broadcast radio scene, who also was the original FCC licensed engineer responsible for regulatory compliance at the station. Student run, with oversight from Dr. Louis Brown, WPOB initially broadcast, almost exclusively, news and educational programming. By the mid-1970s however, WPOB's programming format had shifted to include student-generated content and popular music programming, eventually adding more modern
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...
content.
The content produced by students was composed, directed, and engineered as a learning experience and included regular episodic comedy, such as "The Adventures of Captain Kwizdo" (a thinly veiled homage to the "Mark Time" routine performed by the professional comedy troupe
The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM. They continued app ...
), a weekly sports review (which mimicked the styling of the famous sportscaster
Howard Cosell
Howard William Cosell (; né Cohen; March 25, 1918 – April 23, 1995) was an American sports journalist, broadcaster and author. Cosell became prominent and influential during his tenure with ABC Sports from 1953 until 1985.
Cosell was widel ...
), alternative music, current events programming (such as "Music You Don't Know From a Guy You Don't Care About"), and informational news magazines. Students were also encouraged to produce their own promotional material, jingles, and other content. Station personnel often recruited school music students, actors, and athletes to contribute content such as jingles and other broadcast promotions for their work.
WPOB Today
The station updated their music library and computer systems in 2023 to include a mix of new popular music and all-time favorites. This update was spearheaded by the station managers Sawyer Bogaty, Logan Todisco, and Idreis Karimzada.
WPOB DJs get approximately 40 minutes to do what they want with their shows. The station livestreams music, public service announcements (PSA), and the news every Friday via WPOB'S official website. The station is a member of the
Emergency Alert System
The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a Emergency population warning, national warning system in the United States designed to allow authorized officials to broadcast emergency alerts and warning messages to the public via Cable television, cable ...
(EAS) and will alert the greater Plainview area of any dangerous situations. The newest update to the WPOB station is a TV being added to their booth and over 3,000 CDs donated to the station.
The station's programming is student generated and there are courses available to further the student knowledge on broadcast communications. WPOB is run through the English Department at POB-JFK High School.
Since July 2020, WPOB transmits to the local community through a
RoIP
Radio over Internet Protocol, or RoIP, is similar to Voice over IP (VoIP), but augments two-way radio communications rather than telephone calls. From the system point of view, it is essentially VoIP with push-to-talk. To the user it can be imple ...
system to provide the best quality sound.
See also
*
WKWZ
References
External links
{{Long Island Radio
Mass media in Nassau County, New York
Old Bethpage, New York
Plainview, New York
POB