Hayley Benton

hbenton@citizen-times.com

A listener-favorite in Western North Carolina, WCQS news radio and classical music station announced recently that it will be operating under a new self-created parent company called Blue Ridge Public Radio, as well as launching a new sister station, BPR News.

While WCQS will remain the same station fans have known throughout the years, the local listener-supported station will heavily invest in its news team for the new venture, "creating and producing stories that would match the quality of NPR coverage, but for our region specifically," said general manager and CEO David Feingold.

"WCQS will keep its format, which combines news with great classical music," he explained. "Both channels will carry the news they currently do, but when WCQS goes to music, BPR News will go back to news" — including programming like BBC News Hour, NPR's "Here & Now," "Fresh Air" and "State of Things."

"Our classical audience is still strong, but our growth has been on the news side," Feingold said. "It really shows that our listeners want high quality, independent journalism."

New additions to local programming, for example, will be a new show on social and community issues, hosted by UNC Asheville professors Darin Waters and Marcus Harvey. The new show has around 10 30-minute programs on significant local race and minority issues lined up thus far.

Answer Man: Major expansion, new signal for WCQS?

Not so locally, "there are a lot of popular NPR shows that we have not been carrying," Feingold said. "And the investment ... gives us six new frequencies (across the region)."

Last summer, WCQS hired News Director Matt Bush, formerly of the Washington, D.C. NPR station, and, with its increasing attention to its news programming, the station boosted local hosts Jeremy Loeb and Helen Chickering from part-time to full-time reporters.

Under its new umbrella company, Blue Ridge Public Radio switched on its six new frequencies, including Asheville at 107.9 FM, about a month back — playing BBC World News while testing out bugs on the new system — but the new station won't officially launch until March 6.

The 13 WCQS frequencies will remain the same — so, in Asheville, for example, there's no need to turn your dial from 88.1 FM.

To find BPR News, though, listeners can tune to 107.9 FM in Asheville, 101.5 FM in Brevard, 99.1 FM in Bryson City, 103.1 FM in Hendersonville, 90.5 FM in Mars Hill and 98.3 FM in Waynesville-Hazelwood.

The website, coming soon to BPR.org, will have livestreams of both Blue Ridge Public Radio stations, which will both be broadcast from the downtown Asheville location. BPR unveiled its new logo at the station's latest event, which sold out the Diana Wortham Theatre earlier this month. The logo is a simple and clean design, featuring a microphone colored in a Blue Ridge Mountain gradient, with BPR sweeping in on the left side.

For more on WCQS and to stay tuned to its expansion, head to wcqs.org.

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