Crescent City Radio

Crescent City Radio is an internet radio station based in New Orleans serving Metropolitan New Orleans and southern Mississippi as well as globally through its internet presence as a Freeform radio station. The station broadcasts a diverse offering of music along with locally produced entertainment and talk programs. Music genres typically aired include urban contemporary, mainstream urban, adult contemporary, swamp pop, gospel, and Latin CHR. The station is managed and operated by the Music Industry Studies Program of the College of Music and Fine Arts at Loyola University New Orleans.

The origins of Crescent City Radio and student-run radio at Loyola University begin with WVSU-AM, meaning the Voice of the Student Union, broadcasting from the balcony in Marquette Theater of Marquette Hall around 1959 according to The Wolf (yearbook). The station was managed and operated by the Department of Communications as part of the student media group, Loyola Student Media, which today manages The Maroon, Wolf Magazine, and The Maroon Online.

At the end of the 1965–66 school year in Spring 1966, WVSU-AM changed its call letters to WOLF-AM to reflect the university's mascot, the Wolf Pack. The station moved to the basement of the Danna Student Center beneath the Orleans Room's kitchen. The station continued as an AM carrier-current station transmitting on 640 kHz. to all of Loyola University's and Dominican College's residential halls.

At the start of the 1968–69 school year in fall 1968, WOLF-AM changed its call letters to WLDC-AM naming it after the Loyola Department of Communications. The call letters were changed from orders of the Federal Communications Commission because a commercial station was using the WOLF-AM call letters. The station would broadcast within the residential halls at the campuses of Loyola University and Dominican College, currently Loyola's Broadway campus. WLDC-AM would become affiliated with the American Contemporary Radio Network and air ABC Contemporary News broadcasts five minutes before the hour, with sports and features. Local news was aired 25 minutes past the hour. During the late 1960s, the radio program "Pulse" aired from 9:00 p.m. to midnight on Sundays which included popular music and interviews on local and campus-wide news.

On November 28, 1971, WLDC-AM returns on the air under the moniker "Renaissance Radio" with double its previous reception power and a new format that included Top 40, jazz, soul, progressive, and classical. News was previously taken from wire services, but with the relaunch, there were now four daily newscasts with on campus news and sports along with local news. All news content was gathered and written by station staff. The station also played throughout the Danna Center daily from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. and from 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. In February 1972, Renaissance Radio WLDC-AM, began broadcasting evening re-runs of radio serials including The Adventures of Superman, The Weird Circle, The Shadow, Buck Rogers, The Strange Dr. Weird, The Whistler, and I Love a Mystery. Other programs that aired starting in 1972 were Howard Cosell and the WLDC interview program Sessions on Sundays at 9:00 p.m. In February 1972, WLDC-AM begins broadcasting to a third college in the New Orleans area, Xavier University of Louisiana for which the station began to play more music from black artists. WLDC-AM went the air in 1977.

On February 4, 1980, WLDC-AM came back on the air. WLDC-AM aired a progressive radio format with news bulletins from ABC Radio Network's American Contemporary Network service from the American Information Network along with cultural news bulletins produced by WLDC-AM's news operation. In 1986, the university's new Communications/Music Complex is dedicated and WLDC-AM and WLDC-TV move to its new studios on the 4th floor. The entire floor is equipped with several professional studios for the television station, editing rooms, a newsroom, control rooms and recording booths for WLDC-AM. This would be the third place to house the radio station. By 1993, closed-circuit WLDC-TV Channel 8 was no longer broadcasting the audio of WLDC-AM and Marriott Corporation, which managed the Danna Center, did not allow for WLDC-AM to broadcast over its PA system. During the 1990s, student interest was drastically lower and the future was uncertain. In 1996, WLDC-AM, still under the School of Mass Communication, goes off the air for the final time.

WLDC-AM throughout its existence continuously received criticism for its limited and poor quality reception. A listenable signal was available to only certain locations at Loyola University, notably in the dormitories, and it was criticized for its never being able to become a broadcast station through a license with the Federal Communications Commission which would have allowed for WLDC-AM to be heard within a broadcasting radius over the air instead of through carrier-current. Since Loyola also owned WWL-AM and FM until 1989, this would have run up against the fact that it was then against FCC regulations for one owner to have two or more broadcast radio stations on the same band in the same market. (This rule was subsequently rescinded; station owners in many markets now own several stations on both AM and FM bands.) Near the final demise of WLDC-AM, the lack of audience because of its limited transmission and its failed attempts to solicit a radio license because of an already crowded radio market in New Orleans caused a lack of interest between the student body and the communications department.

In 2005, Loyola's Music Industry Studies program presented a proposal to the University Communications Committee to approve the creation of a college radio station at Loyola University New Orleans as an internet radio station.