A Brief History of WXCU

Capital’s first radio station was WCAP, a low-power wire-only station limited to campus buildings. It was founded in the 60's by Armin Langholz — our current studio’s namesake. Portions of Huber-Spielman were custom-designed for WCAP, so its founding coincided with the completion of that building. In it’s original location, WCAP featured a studio, an audio library room across the hall with custom-built cabinets and shelving to hold 45 and 76 discs and an attached live-production studio for ensemble live productions. It was state-of-the-art for 1964.

In the early 2000s, Capital began negotiations to convert WCAP into a low power FM station, however, this also happened to coincide with the rise of internet/streaming radio. Ultimately the Radio/Television Program decided to look to the future and convert WCAP into a streaming operation in the fall of 2006 and thus WXCU was born. The choice ended up being a good one: WXCU won a national award for best new college streaming radio service in at the end of that inaugural 2006-2007 school year.

WXCU moved into its current custom-designed studio suite — made possible through the generous support of the family of our station founder Armin Langholtz — in the Convergent Media Center when the building opened in 2017.