Radio station in Sweet Briar, Virginia
WNRS-FM (89.9 MHz) is an adult album alternative formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Sweet Briar, Virginia, serving Amherst and Amherst County, Virginia. WNRS is owned and operated by Stu-Comm, Inc.[2] and simulcasts WNRN-FM full-time.
History
WUDZ ("woods") signed on in late 1979 as Sweet Briar College's student radio station, replacing an earlier Part 15 station that had the unofficial callsign of WSBC.[3] The station was originally licensed for just 10 watts – good for reception at a five-mile radius from campus – but upgraded to 100 watts during 1980.[4]
By 1997, WUDZ was broadcasting for the legally required minimum of 36 hours per week: 6 p.m. through midnight on Sunday through Thursday, off on Friday, and noon through 6 p.m. on Saturday.[5] In February 2000, the callsign was changed to WNRS-FM. That April, Sweet Briar entered into a local marketing agreement to rent its extra airtime to Stu-Comm, Inc., who filled the hours not programmed by students with a relay of WNRN.[6] The station moved to a 30-watt transmitter from the 2,900-foot Tobacco Row Mountain west of Sweet Briar in 2002, allowing reception in car radios in Lynchburg.[7]
Sweet Briar College sold WNRS-FM outright to Stu-Comm in 2010.[7] By this time, Sweet Briar programming had dwindled to a single three-hour window on Mondays through Thursdays during the school year.[8] WSWE-LP has since launched as a new outlet for student programming.
In 2011, Stu-Comm attempted to move WNRS-FM to a 20-kilowatt transmitter on near Appomattox Court House, which would have given the station a 50-mile radius from the Roanoke metropolitan area east to Powhatan County and south to the North Carolina border. A first application was dismissed in 2011 as the Federal Communications Commission primarily determined a signal on 89.9 from this location would cause unacceptable interference to multiple other stations.[9] A second application on 89.5 from the same location progressed to the construction permit stage and received local zoning approval, but was abandoned in July 2015.[7]
Stu-Comm has since moved the station off of Tobacco Row Mountain back to the town of Sweet Briar, in order to increase its power from 30 to 1100 watts.[7]
