WUOT (91.9 FM) is the National Public Radio member station in Knoxville, Tennessee. Owned by the University of Tennessee, it airs a mix of news, classical music and jazz, along with programming from NPR, American Public Media and Public Radio International. It primarily features classical music programming, but carries NPR news programs daily, as well as jazz music for ninety minutes every weeknight and all evening on Fridays and folk music Saturday evenings. Its studios are located in the Communications Building on the UT campus. History On June 2, 1949, the University of Tennessee filed with the Federal Communications Commission for a construction permit to build a new noncommercial FM radio station in Knoxville. The idea to bring the university a radio station had been a campaign plank of future U.S. senator Howard Baker's campaign platform for student body president at UTK. The FCC approved the application a month later, at which time the university announced that it was building studios on the ground floor of Ayres Hall and had bought equipment from defunct radio station WKPB. WKPB had been a commercial station on 93.3 FM owned by The Knoxville Journal that broadcast from October 15, 1947 to April 15, 1949; the Journal, citing the uncertainty created by the advent of television, shuttered the station and sold its equipment to the university and its records to the general public. For a total of $16,000, the university had the equipment it needed to set up its own radio station. WUOT signed on October 27, 1949. The station's first regular programming schedule included broadcasts for five and a half hours a day, and it boasted two full-time staff. WUOT broadcast informational programs, classical music, and reports of student activities, and was entirely operated by students. The radio station's facilities also provided a home for the university's offering of 25 radio programs, which were heard in 1950 on 17 commercial radio stations in Tennessee. By 1956, the circulation of the university's productions had increased to 65 stations. Originally broadcasting with 3,500 watts, the station was approved to increase power to 70,500 watts in 1955, with the station resuming operations from its new facilities on November 29. This was made possible when station WROL gave the university a higher-power antenna and a 10 kW transmitter worth $50,000; WUOT's transmitter facility was relocated to a parcel of university-owned land near the John Tarleton Institute. WROL