A fresh sound could hit the airwaves in Hillsborough soon, as volunteers look to bring a new community radio station to life.
“Hillsborough right now is just crawling with all kinds of creative people and there’s this amazing critical mass of creative energy in the town and we thought that a community radio station would be a good way to catalyze it and provide an outlet for some of that,” says Bob Burtman, one of the organizers hoping to launch the low-power station.
The station, known as WHUP 104.7, will take to the air next May. Burtman says the organizers chose the call letters after finding more traditional choices were not available.
“WHUP came up and people were just going ‘WHUP, whoop, that sounds pretty interesting- that sounds like fun.’ Then there’s all these permutations like ‘put a whoopin’ on you’, or ‘big whup’, or one that’s probably not appropriate for broadcast. We all just sort of gravitated towards it.”
The station will broadcast a variety of music, talk and current affairs programming, but Burtman says the signature sound will be live music.
“We’re going to have a focus on live music, which is not being done in very many places. Live in-studio, live from various venues on a weekly basis, live from special events and rebroadcasts of live music. There’s a treasure trove of that out there floating around that has never been heard.”
The station will broadcast to a small geographic area, but will be accessible outside Hillsborough through online streaming. About 70 people are already volunteering their talents to the planning effort. The group is looking to outfit studio space in January and launch the station in the spring. To make that happen, organizers hope to raise $70,000.
The organizers are hosting the first WHUP fundraiser Tuesday, September 30, at 7 p.m. at the Mystery Brewing Public House in Hillsborough. The event will feature an evening of music by Yep Roc recording artist Josh Rouse.
Tickets are $5 and are available either at the door or in advance via etix. For more information, click here.
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