Western Iowa Tech Community College’s student-run radio station, Comet Radio, ready for FM dial debut on KWSR 94.3.

SIOUX CITY (KTIV) – It’s a rite of passage for many mass communications students in college, doing your own radio show live on the air.

One local college is getting an upgrade to its station that will be a first for students.

“So this has been a long time coming,” said student London Russell.

London Russell is a third-year student at Western Iowa Tech Community College, and he’s a familiar voice on the campus radio waves.

“Personally, I’ve seen the growth of the infrastructure happening in this room at Western Iowa Tech, and it’s quite impressive,” said Russell.

The student-run radio station gives students a real-life look at what it takes to be a DJ and introduces listeners to a variety of tunes.

“So the groups that I have in recent rotation is a bit on the softer side with Swans and Primus,” said 2nd-year student Jack Stahle. “However, my main fallbacks are Longshore, Methwich, which a lot of Black Sabbath.”

The student-run radio station has been broadcasting radio shows for more than a decade at the campus of Western Iowa Tech Community College, but you could only listen online. That is about to change.

“Last year we were granted a construction permit from the FCC for a low-power FM station,” said Program Coordinator Chris Mansfield.

For the first time, the student-voices station will be broadcast on the FM dial.

“Well, this is the first time since the mid-70s that a new College Station has gone on the air in Sioux City,” said Mansfield.

Live on the air, bringing a new challenge for students.

“And I think it is an amazing opportunity for young students to actually have an environment where they can actually design their own studio show, radio show and have it actually be listened by people in town,” said Russell.

“The live production of radio just helps to teach us to monitor levels, to make sure that everything sounds good,” said Stahle. “So it’s like less that we have to do in post.”

It’s also a new opportunity for student learning.

“It is a tremendous benefit to this program. It’s very exciting. It’s going to give our students an opportunity that some of them didn’t have entirely before,” said Mansfield.

“But having that freedom to do whatever you want within a radio show, whatever style, whatever creativity you can do, you can do it right. And to be able to showcase that is very awesome,” said Russell.

“I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything,” said Stahle.

Western Iowa Tech’s Mass Communications Department received a grant to help get them on the air. The department was awarded a $20,000 grant from the Gilchrist Foundation that helped fund the start-up costs for the FM tower that was added to the broadcast tower at KWIT, which is also on WIT’s campus. The school also helped fund the project.

They’ve worked through the last school year and the summer to move the radio station from streaming-only to over-the-air.

Mansfield said they’ve waited for this opportunity for many years.

“The window for applying. You can’t just do it at any time,” said Mansfield. “The FCC only opens the window once every decade, and we learned that they were going to do this in the fall of ’23. And so we kind of got our ducks in a row and when they opened up the website to the application, we sat down and did our best to give them the information they were looking for.”

Mansfield says the final pieces should be installed in the coming days, and then the station can begin tests.

They hope to be live on 94.3 FM KWSR in the coming weeks, and you can still tune in online at any time.

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