WWOZ (90.7 FM) is a non-profit community-supported radio station in New Orleans. It is owned by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation. The station specializes in music from or relating to the cultural heritage of New Orleans and the surrounding region of Louisiana. The playlist includes jazz, blues, local, regional and world music.
The studios and offices are on North Peters Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The transmitter is on Canal Street at Lasalle Street atop a Tulane University building.
Programming
WWOZ programming is most heavily weighted toward contemporary jazz and rhythm & blues, with other programming including traditional jazz, blues, Cajun music, zydeco, old time and country music, bluegrass, Gospel, Celtic music and World music.
As the station is known for its support of local music, local musicians are often guests on programs and sometimes perform live over the air, especially for the station's twice-yearly membership drives. Musicians and singers such as Rob Cambre, Samirah Evans, Alan Fontenot, Bob French, Hazel the Delta Rambler, Sam Cammarata, Ernie K-Doe, Bobby Mitchell, Davis Rogan, Tom Saunders, John Sinclair, Don Vappie, Dr. Michael White and others have had their own shows on the station.
WWOZ is also known for its location broadcasts of live music events, including the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, co-owned with the station.
In 2018, WWOZ was honored with the Prestige Award for Station of the Year by the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters in recognition of its on-air programming, the large number of volunteer hosts, live music broadcasts, as well as its "WWOZ in the Schools" program.
History
The founders of WWOZ were brothers Walter and Jerry Brock, from Texas, who thought New Orleans needed a community radio station and began organizing it in the mid-1970s. Jerry is also the co-founder of the Louisiana Music Factory and a record producer engaged in the works of various local artists. The Nora Blatch Educational Foundation (named after radio pioneer Nora Blatch, wife of Lee De Forest) was established as a non-profit organization to hold the station license. The call letters WWOZ were chosen as a reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and specifically the line, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", meaning that attention should be given to the program content rather than the personalities of the disc jockeys.
The station began broadcasting on December 4, 1980 from a tiny transmitter building in Bridge City, Louisiana beneath their shared rented broadcast tower. A few months later the broadcasts moved to the space the station had been using in a dilapidated two-room apartment upstairs from the music club Tipitina's at Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street in Uptown New Orleans.
Conditions at WWOZ in the early 1980s were spartan. The studio and office had no air conditioning, and for a time just before moving out of the Tipitina's site, the only running water to the tiny bathroom was from a neighbor's garden hose run in through a window. Everyone who did a show volunteered hours of time on other tasks to keep the station going, from addressing envelopes to sweeping the floor. When artists performing live downstairs at Tipitina's gave their permission, their performances were broadcast via a microphone lowered through a hole in the floor. When permission to broadcast live performances downstairs could not be obtained, programming went to pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes, as the music downstairs made it too loud in the studio to talk over the microphones and the vibrations made it impossible to use the station's turntables.
In 1985, WWOZ moved the studio to a building in Louis Armstrong Park in the Tremé neighborhood. With the station facing financial difficulties, in 1986 the license was transferred to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation (parent organization of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival) which helped subsidize the operation. The station later added an office in a small house across St. Philip Street from the studio.
In 1996, the station began streaming their broadcast online, before this practice became common. In the same year, Better Than Ezra, an alternative rock band from New Orleans, released a song titled "WWOZ", where they mention this radio station.