Imagine your own home for a moment. Do an electronics inventory in your head. Do you have a radio in your house, apartment or residence hall? If you’re under 30, you may not. Technology has drastically changed the way we consume radio over the last 10 years, and it continues to evolve.
Now there’s a WEKU app for that.
“This is a strategic investment in new ways of listening and fitting into our listener’s schedules and lifestyles. This is a big step toward the future of broadcasting,” said WEKU Director and General Manager Mike Savage, who began developing the app as one of his top priorities when he took the helm of the station in 2018.
Eastern Kentucky University’s radio station WEKU, an NPR affiliate, has launched a phone app that allows you to take WEKU with you from your house to your car and anywhere in between without any interruption in service.
“This is the future of radio, now you can listen to anything you want to and listen to it on your own schedule. And that’s incredibly convenient,” Savage said.
The app is available on Apple iTunes and Google Play, and gives WEKU listeners complete control of the WEKU experience. Appointment radio has become a thing of the past for WEKU consumers.
“This is groundbreaking technology and easy to use. The app is much more than sound. You can read new stories and articles. You can listen to WEKU programs on demand, or you can still listen live. It truly is a one-stop shop for all things WEKU,” Savage said.
Listeners can experience multiple layers of the station now through the app, including NPR content and local content.
Some non-radio features of the app include being able to donate to WEKU through the app, an alarm clock and sleep timer allow you to wake up and go to sleep to WEKU and a community calendar.
“Because of the app, WEKU is positioned to make whatever changes are necessary to make sure listeners have a convenient, mobile way of not only listening to the station, but consuming all the media that’s available through WEKU,” Savage said.
Despite a rich experience, the WEKU app is surprisingly light on data usage. Streaming WEKU at 128 kbps for an hour uses just 0.05 GB (56.25 MB) of bandwidth.
To download the app, go to http//:go.eku.edu/iTunes on your iPhone or http://go.eku.edu/Google on your Android device.