HANOVER (AP) — Dartmouth College is selling its FM radio station, meaning that for the first time since at least 1958 the college will not broadcast on either AM or FM frequencies.
The sale of the school’s FM radio show that goes by the name 99Rock on WFRD-FM could take up to a year to complete, the Valley News reported on Saturday.
WFRD-FM had been operating at a loss, Dartmouth spokesperson Diana Lawrence told the newspaper, and the school decided that it was not, “fiscally prudent or sustainable to continue to operate the station.”
The sale of the FM station will also mean the elimination of the station’s one remaining employee.
The Federal Communications Commission first granted Dartmouth a commercial license for its AM frequency in 1958, and that station, WDCR-AM, stopped broadcasting and moved online in 2008. Students will continue to produce radio programming online after the FM station’s sale, the college has said.
Proceeds from the sale will support the ongoing work of Dartmouth Broadcasting, which is the student umbrella organization that had overseen both AM and FM stations, the school has said.
Former NBC News correspondent Bob Hager was a student who got his start working on WFRD-FM where he remembered broadcasting a Dartmouth basketball game from Madison Square Garden in New York City.
“I learned to write and to write fast under deadline,” he told the newspaper, crediting the experience with shaping his career.
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