About WGCU

Mission Statement

• To engage the minds and enhance the lives of the people of Southwest Florida
• To create a well-informed and appropriately involved citizenry
• To provide vital and vibrant information to people who want to know more…do more…be more.
• To motivate our diverse Southwest Florida citizens to become engaged in community activities, in improving the quality of life for self and others, and in strengthening the social, democratic, and cultural health of our region.

WGCU History

WGCU Public Media…a comprehensive media enterprise, 20 years in the making!

From 1983 until 1996, this region’s public television and radio licenses were held and managed by a state university 200 miles away in Tampa, Florida.

Finally, in 1996, the broadcast licenses were transferred to Florida Gulf Coast University, a new public university that was being built to serve Southwest Florida’s Gulf and Everglades 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.

Over the last 13 years we have dramatically strengthened the physical infrastructure, the financial base and the media services that now comprise WGCU Public Media:

• 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 dissemination through the American Public Television Service.
• earned numerous national and regional awards for our radio news
• successfully converted from analog to digital and high definition television
• one of the only public broadcasting operations to eliminate videotape as our dissemination source. We download, store, and transmit exclusively in digital formats
• recently completed installation of an HD radio transmitter and plan to transfer our classical music programming to a 24-hour HD radio channel and change our main analog services (90.1/91.7 FM) to all news and public affairs.
• increased our annual revenue support from community businesses and organizations by 324% (from $330,506 to $1,073,268) and our annual membership support by 168% (from $1,106,370 to $1,858,873), and our annual grants funding by 166% (from $1,161,761 to $1,936,106).

WGCU Public Media is considered a highly valued regional asset and public service. The television audience is consistently ranked among the five most watched stations nationally and the radio station is consistently ranked among the top five out of 40 most listened to stations in our market.

Download WGCU Annual EEO Report

Download Form 388 Quarter 2 2008

Download Form 388 Quarter 1 2008