WUOT

[4] With that power and antenna height, WUOT can be heard around Eastern Tennessee and reaches into Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.

[5] The idea to bring the university a radio station had been a plank of future U.S. senator Howard Baker's campaign platform for student body president at UTK.

The university announced that it would be building studios on the ground floor of Ayres Hall and had bought equipment from defunct radio station WKPB.

[7] WKPB had been a commercial station on 93.3 FM owned by The Knoxville Journal that broadcast from October 15, 1947 until April 15, 1949.

[8][9] The Knoxville Journal, citing the uncertainty created by the advent of television, shut down the radio station and sold its equipment to the university and its records to the general public.

The first regular programming schedule included broadcasts for five and a half hours a day, and it boasted two full-time staff members.

[19] The increase brought WUOT to listeners in Bristol, Chattanooga, and as far away as Asheville, North Carolina, and Blue Ridge, Georgia.

[21] In 1971, the station added additional hours of jazz music to its schedule in response to requests from inmates at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.

With NPR programming, WUOT replaced its light classical "dinner hour" music, which prompted the ire of some listeners.

When future interim UT president Jan Simek moved from California to take a faculty position in Knoxville in 1984, his mother worried that he might not be able to listen to "real" music.

[6] WUOT's reach expanded when the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga signed on its own FM station.

[24] In 2017, the station partnered with an independent producer to create "TruckBeat", a truck that traveled around Eastern Tennessee to areas not typically covered by public radio.

[26] While many public radio stations have switched to a format of mostly news, talk and information, WUOT remains true to its roots in music.

WUOT-HD2 was launched in 2009 with additional public radio talk programs that the main channel didn't carry.