Goodbye to Student Radio at KAUR and Hello to MPR

After getting a comment on an old post of mind about college radio station KAUR at Augustana College in South Dakota, I decided to loop back and find out the status of the station. Back in May I reported that the school dropped the station's FM signal and that KAUR would continue to broadcast as an online-only station.

At the time one of the reasons cited for this change was outside interest in the signal from religious and public radio groups.

Well. It turns out that public radio won and college radio lost on this one.

KAUR is on the air over FM now, but as of September 15th it's been broadcasting an all-news format from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and there are no plans to air local content. Additionally, the school decided to no longer maintain even an online-only student radio station.

I just hate stories like this.

Apparently in recent years the staff of KAUR had dwindled down to one student and that lack of student interest is cited as one of the reasons for the administration opting out of managing the station.

It's sad to me that such an amazing campus resource (around since 1972) just faded away.