88.5 WFDD is the NPR member station for the Piedmont Triad, a broadcast service of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, bringing local news, NPR programming, arts and culture, and classical music to 32 counties in North Carolina and Virginia.
88.5 WFDD is the NPR member station for the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina, broadcasting from the Wake Forest University campus in Winston-Salem under the name Public Radio for the Piedmont. Its 60,000-watt signal on 88.5 FM, from a tower in northern Davidson County, and a translator at 100.1 FM in Boone reach a listening area of 32 counties in North Carolina and Virginia, including Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point and the High Country.
WFDD is a broadcast service and unit of Wake Forest University, which holds the station's FCC license. Station staff are university employees, and full-time openings are posted on the Wake Forest University staff careers site.
The station traces its roots to 1946, when Wake Forest College students began broadcasting from a rooming house in the town of Wake Forest. It signed on as a licensed station on April 19, 1948, and its call letters stand for Wake Forest Demon Deacons. WFDD moved with the college to Winston-Salem in 1956, became a noncommercial educational FM station in 1961, and was a charter member of National Public Radio, the first member station in North Carolina. It is the longest continuously broadcasting public radio station in the state and a member of the North Carolina Public Radio Association.
On weekdays WFDD carries news and talk programming from NPR and other public radio networks with local news throughout the day, and it plays classical music late at night. Its HD2 channel carries classical music around the clock and HD3 the BBC World Service. The newsroom covers the region's economy, education, environment, health and safety, politics and government, and race, and the station produces local programs and series such as Carolina Curious. WFDD also runs Radio Camp, a week-long audio journalism camp for middle school students, and is starting a podcast incubator for community, news and youth-oriented shows.
The station's mission is to inform, connect, educate and inspire. Its recent openings have included a news director to lead the newsroom, a podcast producer for the incubator, and fill-in hosts for newscasts and special coverage.
