WCAL

The history of WCAL at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota goes back to an experimental station built by five students and a professor in 1918.  The college received an AM radio license and the WCAL call letters in 1922.  Financial difficulties later in that decade required them to ask for donations in order to stay on the air which made WCAL the first listener-supported radio station in the United States.  They were funded entirely by listeners from 1928 until the mid-1950s.  Experimental FM broadcasts took place in 1948 and they officially went on the air at 89.3 in 1967.  St. Olaf College sold WCAL to Minnesota Public Radio who turned it into Adult Album Alternative KCMP "89.3 The Current" in 2004.