Mission Statement
The Mission of WGCU Public Media is to provide media content and services that foster personal growth, celebrate human diversity and motivate community engagement enriching the lives of our citizens and strengthening the social, democratic, and cultural health of our region.
WGCU History
WGCU Public Media and its predecessor WSFP-TV/FM have served Southwest Florida with the finest in public television and radio programming for over 25 years. Originally a satellite operation licensed to the University of South Florida, WGCU Public Media became an independent entity in 1996 when the broadcast licenses were transferred to Florida Gulf Coast University, a new public university that was being built to serve the Southwest Florida region. The stations’ call letters were changed to WGCU-TV/FM, and a new state-of-the-art broadcast facility was built as part of the new university’s campus.
Since that time we have dramatically strengthened and expanded the physical infrastructure, the financial base and the media services that now comprise WGCU Public Media:
- expanded our service by providing up to four distinct digital television programming streams -- including a full time High Definition channel
- provided the region with the first full-day public radio News and Information programming service
- launched a new 24 hour per day Classical Music programming service on HD radio
- organized staff to reflect an integrated media model for production and dissemination and programming rather than a traditional television and radio model
- founded a monthly member magazine, funded from paid ads, that has the largest paid circulation of any regional magazine (15,000)
- developed an award winning website, wgcu.org, that incorporates digital archives of all locally produced TV and FM programs, streaming FM service, access to national sites, and social media tools
- produced over 160 documentary-style local television programs, many of which have won national awards and have been accepted for national distribution through the American Public Television Service
- earned numerous national and regional awards for our radio news
- one of the only public broadcasting operations to eliminate videotape as our dissemination source. We download, store, and transmit exclusively in digital formats
- increased our annual revenue support from community businesses and organizations by 324%, and our annual grants funding by 166%
WGCU Public Media is considered a highly valued regional asset and public service. WGCU-TV is consistently ranked among the five most watched stations nationally and WGCU-FM is consistently ranked among the top five out of 40 most listened to stations in our market.
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