It's the best around

I am 20 years old and I was raised on NPR. I'm very attached to WMUB, which is what my parents have listened to for years. In all honesty, I remember when I was little and Tana Weingartner read the weather and did local news updates at night.

 

I have gotten to pick and choose when it comes to public radio stations. My hometown receives WMUB, a station broadcast out of Ball State in Muncie, and WFYI in Indianapolis.I also go to school in Bloomington, IN and could listen to their station when I'm at school. Out of all these, my overwhelming favorite is WMUB. I listen to it via the internet at school and at work.

 

For the life of me, I can't understand why the Indianapolis station doesn't have programs I consider vital, like Talk of the Nation. Bloomington's station plays classical music 23 hours a day (it seems like). Ball State's station is off the air erratically and isn't really dependable. I can't really get my NPR needs met anywhere locally except WMUB.

 

The only thing I would change about WMUB is I wish they would play the BBC World Service newscasts overnight. I listen to that online via a Lousville, KY station when I am up late. (But programs cost money and it seems that times are tight, so I don't complain too much. I can live with overnight jazz.)

 

I was very upset when I heard that Miami University was cutting funding to WMUB. It is so hard to garner charitable contributions from private citizens; what's the station to do without considerable university support? Grants and corporate sponsorships are hard to come by as well. Miami needs to support WMUB because it is a valuable community resource and, in terms of programming, far outperforms any of the other stations I have access to.

--Ali Diercks, Hagerstown, IN