Guilford College’s own WQFS will soon be webcast, making it available to the entire world. The radio station has been taking small steps toward gaining access to the Internet for about a year and a half. In March of last year, WQFS received a new transmitter allowing it to provide better sound quality and broadcast digitally. This also helped the station obtain a contract with Collegemusic.com to begin broadcasting on the web.
As to when this will happen, senior and station general manager Tim LaFollette said he makes “no promises on when exactly we’ll be webcast, but it should happen soon.”
All that is left to do is install a few more pieces of equipment and everything will be ready to go.
WQFS will become available via the Internet, which will help to involve more people in Guilford College, and allow parents and prospective students to listen. As junior and DJ Amos Huron noted, “now my mom will be able to listen to my show on the Internet.”
Parents and prospective students are not the only ones who will enjoy having WQFS on the internet. As senior Earnie Bailey said, “It will be nice to be able to listen to QFS even after I graduate.”
Involvement with community is important to WQFS. Senior and music director Devender Sellars said that “QFS is probably one of the biggest clubs on campus and is the largest it has ever been.”
The station employs around 130 DJs, one-quarter of whom are community DJs, some of whom have been involved with the station for over 10 years. The contribution of these people is best heard in the variety of music featured on WQFS.
Junior and head music director Adam Thorn stressed how diverse the station is and that he likes it because he “can turn on QFS and listen to anything from spoken word, to raggae, to hip-hop, to punk rock, et cetera.”
This is a change from the original programming of WQFS, which was located in Duke Memorial hall and featured classical music, revealing that the call letters “QFS” stand for Quaker Fine Listening Society.
WQFS celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and soon the rest of the world will be celebrating too, via the Internet.