Welcome!

Welcome to wprbhistory.org! This site gathers stories, photographs, archival recordings, and other ephemera pertaining to WPRB—Princeton University’s student-run radio station, now entering its 75th year of broadcasting.

With so much history under our belt, the 75th anniversary emerged as a great opportunity to finally put it to work for us. Last summer, we mounted an effort to begin organizing and cataloging the 1000+ 1/4 inch audio reels that had been sitting in deep storage here at the station. Among the treasures unearthed were archival airchecks and show promos which reveal WPRB’s long term trajectory from an ambitious station serving the immediate community, to the 14,000 watt broadcasting and online powerhouse it is today.

We also discovered an astonishing number of archival interviews with artists like Sun Ra, Mudhoney, Scrawl, James Brown, Leonard Bernstein, A Minor Forest, The Fall, Love Child, and countless more, all of which we’re currently working to digitize in-house. The fruits of these digital archiving efforts will be posted here in the coming weeks, so don’t assume the site’s existing content is all we have to offer! Our goal is to make wprbhistory.org an active resource for current and former DJs, devoted listeners, Princeton alumni, and college radio historians. As such, we urge you to follow WPRB History’s brand new Twitter and Facebook feeds so you don’t miss out on any of the action.

Seventy five years of history is a lot to navigate, so we’re categorizing posts by decade to help you find whatever it is you’re most interested in. If you’re an alum, former community DJ, or long-time listener with content you think is worth sharing, please get in touch. We’re hoping for an active discussion community on this site, so if you’ve got additions or corrections to anything you see here, please add your words to the permanent record by commenting on any applicable posts.

Finally, we’re thrilled to announce that a WPRB-themed exhibit will open at Princeton University’s Mudd Library this Fall. The exact opening date is still TBD, but when all the details are settled, we’ll announce them right here.

This site was conceived of by WPRB Educational Advisor Mike Lupica with critical support from Alex Wood ’02, Dan Ruccia ’05, Dipika Sen ’13, and Scott Konzelmann. It was built by longtime WPRB DJ Jon Solomon. On behalf of everyone involved, we bid you welcome!