City Fort Myers, Florida First air date 1983 | Broadcast area Southwest Florida | |
Frequency 90.1 MHz (also on HD Radio) Repeater(s) 91.7 WMKO-FM (Marco Island) Format News/Talk/Jazz
HD2: Xponential Radio | ||
WGCU-FM (90.1 FM) is an NPR-member radio station. Licensed to Fort Myers, Florida, USA, the station is owned by Florida Gulf Coast University. WGCU also operates WMKO-FM 91.7, a full-time satellite station licensed to Marco Island to serve the Naples area. WGCU's schedule consists of jazz and NPR news and talk.
WGCU-FM first signed on in 1983 as WSFP-FM, a station owned by the University of South Florida in Tampa, owners of public broadcasting stations WUSF FM and TV. At the time, Fort Myers / Naples was the only media market in Florida without any public broadcasting stations. WSFP-FM was largely a rebroadcast of WUSF-FM.
The broadcast license was transferred to the new Florida Gulf Coast University in 1996. WSFP-FM changed its calls to WGCU-FM on June 13, 1997, two months before FGCU opened.
Despite operating at a full 100,000 watts, the main WGCU-FM signal is barely listenable in parts of Collier County. This is because its transmitter is located in southern Charlotte County; however, its grade-B signal reaches much of northern Collier County, including much of Naples itself. Soon after FGCU opened, it requested funding for a second station to improve its coverage in Naples. WMKO signed on for the first time in 1999.
HD Programming
For its first 13 years as a locally focused station, WGCU-FM aired a mix of NPR news and classical music.
Both WGCU and WMKO run a 67 kHz subcarrier featuring a Radio Reading Service for the visually impaired.
WGCU is also referenced for hurricane information on signs across southwest Florida.