{"id":28102,"date":"2019-11-07T12:07:27","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T18:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=28102"},"modified":"2019-11-07T12:07:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T18:07:27","slug":"apsus-wapx-fm-celebrates-35-years-as-campus-radio-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2019\/11\/07\/apsus-wapx-fm-celebrates-35-years-as-campus-radio-station\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU\u2019s WAPX-FM celebrates 35 years as campus radio station"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – The national anthem was missing. Inside a small, dilapidated building on the Austin Peay State University (APSU) campus, three students frantically searched through vinyl albums and beneath heavy reel-to-reel tapes for the record.<\/p>\n

It was the early 1980s, and the clock inside the University\u2019s new radio station, WAPX-FM, was about to hit midnight.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University’s Dr. David von Palko. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cBack then, we would sign off at midnight, and the only thing you could play on the air when you signed a station off was the national anthem,\u201d Dr. David von Palko, APSU professor of communication, said. \u201cThere were three students in there, and they thought doing the anthem was required by the FCC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Von Palko first arrived at Austin Peay in 1983 to create the campus\u2019 first radio station, and on October 1st, 1984, 91.7 WAPX-FM \u2013 a 3,000-watt station \u2013 opened inside a \u201cbeat all to heck\u201d portable building off Robb Avenue. The night the national anthem went missing, von Palko happened to be walking his dog across campus. A few minutes before midnight, he slipped on some earphones, turned on his portable radio, and heard something strange.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard the microphone open, and they started singing the national anthem,\u201d von Palko said. \u201cOne of them didn\u2019t know the words. The other couldn\u2019t carry a tune in a basket. And I\u2019m just rolling, laughing so hard. But there are so many funny stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, WAPX-FM marked its 35th year as Austin Peay\u2019s student-run radio station, and during the University\u2019s Homecoming on Saturday, Nov. 9, von Palko is welcoming back more than three decades worth of APSU broadcast alumni for a special celebration and tour of the new studios.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be so fun, inviting them and their families,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the ones who only worked for 91.7 have never seen this facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frequency Swap<\/h3>\n
\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University’s radio station WAPX-FM is located in the Music\/Mass Communication Building. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, von Palko sat at a mixing board while Donovan\u2019s 1966 hit \u201cMellow Yellow\u201d played over the airways. The studio, 91.9 FM, is now tucked away on the first floor of the Music\/Mass Communication Building, but during those early years inside the portable building, the station had a different, weaker frequency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started in the 3,000-watt mobile home, and we were there for a number of years before this building was built,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we moved over here, I negotiated a frequency swap with Moody Bible Institute, so we went from 91.7 to 91.9. In that swap, we got a taller tower, a brand-new transmission chain, and we went to 6,000 watts.\u201d<\/p>\n

[320left]For some of the out-of-state alumni returning to campus on Saturday, that\u2019s still not enough for them to hear their old college station. But von Palko has some good news for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now working with a vendor to stream the radio station,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to start setting up our streaming system, and it should be ready by the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

1999 Tornado<\/h3>\n

When the station first opened in 1984, it broadcast for six hours a day, five days a week. That eventually grew to 12 hours a day and then to 18 hours a day. Vinyl records and reel-to-reel tapes slowly disappeared from the shelves, replaced over the years by tape cartridges, carts, CDs and later mini-discs. Then, in January 1999, a tornado tore parts of the roof off the Music\/Mass Communication building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis building was not usable,\u201d von Palko said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t operate in here. We had no other facility except the transmitter, and the only way we could do it was with automation. We got that (radio automation system) and started running 24\/7. We\u2019ve been 24\/7 ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

September 11th, 2001<\/h3>\n
\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University’s radio station WAPX-FM won awards for its 9\/11 coverage. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, von Palko glanced at a television while dropping his daughter off at daycare. In that moment, he saw news coverage of a plane hitting one of New York City\u2019s Twin Towers.<\/p>\n

[320right]\u201cI rushed to the station and immediately went live using Associated Press wire copy,\u201d he said. \u201cMy assistant, the late John Moseley, sprang into action, providing me with a video monitor of CNN so I could use the images to explain and interpret what was happening.\u201d <\/p>\n

Moseley called in students to work the phones and set up in-person and phone interviews. Over the next nine hours, WAPX-FM reported on the tragedy while offering perspectives from religious experts, psychologists, criminologists and military commanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe following year, the station was honored by the Tennessee Associated Press Broadcast Association with a first-place award for our breaking news coverage of the attack,\u201d von Palko said. \u201cAnd, just like building and running the station has not and is not a singular activity, neither was winning the award. It was very much a team effort.\u201d    <\/p>\n

Information on the radio station is available at www.apsu.edu\/communication\/media.php<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – The national anthem was missing. Inside a small, dilapidated building on the Austin Peay State University (APSU) campus, three students frantically searched through vinyl albums and beneath heavy reel-to-reel tapes for the record. It was the early 1980s, and the clock inside the University\u2019s new radio station, WAPX-FM, was about to hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[29023,34283,23,10974,15715,18266,7464,262,512,825,19670,34282,13770,8303,7745],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7jg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28103,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28102\/revisions\/28103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}