WPOB is high school radio

High school radio

High school radio within the United States is almost as old as radio broadcasting itself. Simply defined as a radio station, with its studios located at a high school and usually operated by its students with faculty supervision, stations fitting this description existed in the mid-1920s...

 station in Plainview, New York

Plainview, New York

Plainview is a hamlet located on Long Island in the town of Oyster Bay, Nassau County, New York, USA. The population of the CDP as of 2010 was 26,217. The Plainview post office has the ZIP code 11803....

, USA. WPOB is a community radio

Community radio

Community radio is a type of radio service, that offers a third model of radio broadcasting beyond commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting. Community stations can serve geographic communities and communities of interest...

 Station funded by the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District

Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District

The Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District is the public school district which serves the Nassau County, Long Island community of Plainview and Old Bethpage, as well a small part of Farmingdale.-Mission:...

 and has been broadcasting

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

 since 1972. WPOB is run under the direction of Adam Weinstock. WPOB is broadcast by students at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School partaking in a three-year course in radio engineering, producing, and broadcasting. WPOB is a share time station with WKWZ

WKWZ

WKWZ is a radio station broadcasting an Educational format, licensed to Syosset, New York, USA. The station is currently owned by Syosset Central School District...

 Syosset

Syosset, New York

Syosset is a hamlet in Nassau County, New York, in the northeastern section of Town of Oyster Bay near the North Shore of Long Island. The population was 18,829 at the 2010 census...

 and broadcasts Monday to Friday from 7:30 am to 2:30 pm.

Early days

WBOB was a project sponsored by Plainview-Old Bethpage School Board member Joseph Scholnick, a sound-effects pioneer of the 1950s broadcast radio scene, who also was the original FCC licensed engineer responsible for regulatory compliance at the station. Student run, with oversight from Dr. Louis Brown, WPOB initially broadcast, almost exclusively, news and educational programming. By the mid 1970's however, WPOB's programming format had shifted to include student-generated content and popular music programming, eventually adding more modern Rock & Roll content.
The content produced by students was composed, directed and engineered as a learning experience and included regular episodic comedy, such as "The Adventures of Captain Kwizdo" (a thinly veiled homage to the "Mark Time" routine performed by the professional comedy troup 'Firesign Theater'), a weekly sports review (which mimmicked the stylings of the famous sportscaster Howard Cosell

Howard Cosell

Howard William Cosell was an American sports journalist who was widely known for his blustery, cocksure personality. Cosell said of himself, "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. I have been called all of these...

), and various informational news magazines. Students were also encouraged to produce their own promotional material, jingles, and other content. Often recruiting school music students, actors, and athletes to contribute content such as jingles and other broadcast promotions for their work.

See also

• High school radio
  High school radio
  High school radio within the United States is almost as old as radio broadcasting itself. Simply defined as a radio station, with its studios located at a high school and usually operated by its students with faculty supervision, stations fitting this description existed in the mid-1920s...
  
  
• Firesign Theater
• Joseph Scholnick
• Howard Cosell
  Howard Cosell
  Howard William Cosell was an American sports journalist who was widely known for his blustery, cocksure personality. Cosell said of himself, "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. I have been called all of these...