had operated an FM station until 1951. A large crane was necessary to extend the tower a further . The increase brought WUOT to listeners in Bristol, Chattanooga, and as far away as Asheville, North Carolina, and Blue Ridge, Georgia. The WUOT transmitter was relocated to Sharp's Ridge in 1961. In 1968, the station boosted its power to the maximum 100,000 watts and began stereo broadcasts. In 1971, the station added additional hours of jazz music to its schedule in response to requests from inmates at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Discussions began to build a dedicated communications building in the mid-1960s, and the station moved into its new Circle Park home in 1969; the facility offered WUOT more room, and newer equipment, than it had in Ayres Hall. WUOT was a charter member of National Public Radio and carried the first broadcast of All Things Considered in 1971; the new network program replaced its light classical "dinner hour" music, which prompted the ire of some listeners. The station also began adding local news and public affairs programming in the mid-1970s, though the development of this area of the station came in fits and starts until the mid-1990s, when the station significantly expanded its news operation. WUOT remained a fine arts-oriented station, though students desired a station for rock music that catered more to their tastes; they would get one when WUTK-FM went on the air in the early 1980s. In one case, the presence of a classical music outlet in Knoxville was reassuring. When future interim UT president Jan Simek moved from California to take a faculty position in Knoxville in 1984, his mother worried that he might not be able to listen to "real" music; when she visited him in Knoxville and learned of WUOT, her fears were assuaged, and she ended up moving to Knoxville herself. WUOT's reach expanded when the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga signed on its WUTC in 1980. In order to get on air quickly, the new Chattanooga station simulcast WUOT's output. The UTC station later severed its ties with WUOT in order to broadcast its own programming. In 2017, the station partnered with an independent producer to create "TruckBeat", a truck that traveled around east Tennessee to areas not typically covered by public radio and reported the impacts of the opioid epidemic on rural communities. The truck itself was a former WBIR-TV