WKNC 88.1 HD-2WKNC 88.1 HD-2

WKNC has been on air under one callsign or another since 1922, student-run from the start, and by 2016 a single schedule could not hold everything its DJs wanted to play. The answer was a second digital channel, carried on the same 25,000-watt licence out of Raleigh and staffed from the same pool of students. HD-2 is where the formats that never fit a daytime indie rotation went, each with its own genre director and its own hours rather than whatever slot was left at the end of the night.

What lands there is the harder and stranger end of the station's remit: underground hip-hop, electronic, metal and jazz, programmed by students who applied for the slot and answer to the music rather than a format clock. Nobody is handed a playlist here either, which is the whole inheritance from the parent signal, and it shows in how little the hours resemble each other.