Why just win when you can dominate?
K-State swept 51.6% of all first-place prizes at the 2024 Kansas Association of Broadcasters student awards.
The 16 primo awards ranged from the Morning Mix-Up talk show to news reporting about the Kansas City Chiefs post-Super Bowl rally shooting. Even the Dungeons and Dragons podcast brought home gold.
Wildcat Electronic Media, a combo of Wildcat 91.9 radio station and Channel 8 News, landed 40 awards — more than triple the honors won by any other college. And in five categories, K-State won every prize awarded.
Wildcat 91.9 was named best radio station in the nation by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System in 2023.
Still rocking after all these years
Although some colleges were on air earlier, Wildcat 91.9 claims to be the nation’s oldest college FM radio station. The station has aired on the FM band since 1951.
In 1949, when it still aired at the weak 560 kHz on the AM band, the joke was that you could only hear it on the steps outside Nichols Hall, its home at the time.
The station was gutted by the 1968 Nichols Hall fire — the same blaze that, according to legend, torched all the band’s sheet music except for the beloved “Wabash Cannonball” song.
A surprisingly calm student DJ on the mic at the time reportedly announced, “Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are leaving the air early.”
