Crescent City Radio

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Crescent City Radio is an internet radio station based in New Orleans. It serves the Metropolitan New Orleans area and southern Mississippi, and it can be heard worldwide online. The station operates as a Freeform format, offering a wide mix of music plus locally produced entertainment and talk programs. Most of the shows are in English, with some Spanish-language programs. Music styles include urban contemporary, mainstream urban, adult contemporary, swamp pop, gospel, and Latin-influenced pop, along with various Louisiana and regional genres.

The station is run by Loyola University New Orleans, through the Music Industry Studies program in the College of Music and Fine Arts. Crescent City Radio traces its roots to Loyola’s student radio tradition dating back to 1959, when WVSU-AM (The Voice of the Student Union) began on campus. The call letters changed to WOLF-AM in 1966 and then WLDC-AM in 1968, and the station broadcast inside Loyola’s residence halls on 640 kHz using carrier current. Over the years it experimented with Top 40, jazz, news, and other formats, including a late-night show called Pulse and a 1971 relaunch as “Renaissance Radio” with more power and a broader mix of music and news. WLDC-AM went off the air for the final time in 1996.

In 2005 Loyola launched plans for a college radio station on the internet. Crescent City Radio went online in spring 2008, using the former WLDC-AM studios in Loyola’s Communications/Music Complex. Today it is independent of Loyola Student Media and is managed by the Music Industry Studies program. The station often features live performances from its connected recording studio, with English-language programming dominating and some Spanish-language shows as well. Crescent City Radio embraces a New Orleans vibe, adopting the Crescent City name and motto “Music for your mind.”