WHUS wins Hartford Advocate reader poll

WHUS 91.7, the radio station broadcasting out of the UConn Student Union building, has won the Hartford Advocate’s Best of Hartford Reader Poll for Best College Radio Station. The poll is conducted annually by the newspaper to get the local area’s reader picks in a variety of areas and topics.

WHUS is a non profit radio station operated and governed by students and community members. It can be heard locally on 91.7 FM and streaming online at whus.org.

Zach Savage, operation manager for the station, is very pleased with the results of the poll though he admits it was not a total surprise. “We’ve won the poll for the past 13 years except for maybe 2006.”

For winning the poll, The Advocate brought some of the WHUS senior staff for a short photo shoot and wrote a blurb about them in the paper. The station also received a plaque from The Advocate commemorating the win.

Savage credited two main reasons the radio station wins the poll year after year. One is the wide broadcast area. “We have lots of reach,” covering most of the northern and eastern parts of Connecticut, “We even go into parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” Savage noted. In addition, the internet allows it to reach an even broader audience.

The other advantage WHUS has is the wide variety of offerings on the station. From the WHUS website, “WHUS music programming covers everything from polka to techno. Our formats include indie rock, RPM, punk, metal, noise, jazz, classics, world, polka, bluegrass, folk, blues and many other kinds of music.”

Not only is there just about every genre and niche of music available but there is also a large amount of time devoted to public affairs. Public affairs programming covers a wide range of topics and includes local commentary as well as syndicated programs from Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.

Savage explained that there is a lot of UConn sports coverage as well. “We will cover every baseball game this year.” They also cover UConn football and softball as well as men’s and women’s basketball, soccer and hockey games.

The show schedule for WHUS is available at whus.org along with the live stream.