WKNC 88.1 HD-1WKNC 88.1 HD-1

Student radio at NC State goes back further than almost anyone's: the callsign lineage starts with WLAC-AM in 1922 and runs through WOLF, WNCS and WVWP before WKNC took the letters in 1958 and moved to FM in 1966. Students have run it the whole way, which is the point rather than a footnote — the station exists to teach broadcasting as much as to broadcast. It pushes 25,000 watts across the Triangle, and in 2016 it split the signal in two so that one schedule no longer had to carry everything.

HD-1 is the side that took the indie rock, and INDY Week has named it the best in the region more than once. Around the broadcast sits an operation students built themselves: weekly charts, zines, Local Lunch Live for bands passing through, and the Double Barrel Benefit, a fundraiser that has run annually since 2004. The stated aim is music that doesn't suck.