Wednesday morning, John Martino, a representative of Independent Weekly, entered WKNC 88.1 FM’s suite on the third floor of the Witherspoon Student Center. There he met with Kyle Robb, the former general manager of WKNC during the 2008-2009 year, to present the radio station with an award for being named a finalist in the annual “Best of the Triangle” reader survey.

While on the air during his radio program, Robb interviewed Martino, who commended WKNC for their great effort and for going up against some of the Triangle’s heavyweights like G105, 96 Rock, and QDR.

Independent Weekly has awarded WKNC with Best Radio Station award back in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Before that, Independent Weekly awarded WKNC with Best College Radio in 2004 and 2005, as well as Best Radio for Music in 2005.

This year WUNC 91.5 FM, the NPR-affiliated station from University of North Carolina at Cha¬pel Hill, earned the top award while WKNC was a finalist alongside with G105 and Mix 101.5.

Along with the honor of being a finalist for the Best Radio Station in the Triangle, Kelly Reid, who graduated with a creative writing degree back in December 2008, won a finalist award in Best Radio DJ alongside Kitty Kinnin of 100.7 The River, and Salt & Demetri the Greek of 96rock. Independent Weekly awarded Bob and the Show¬gram of G105 with the top award.

When asked about WKNC receiving the honors of being a finalist, Kyle Robb, a chemistry alum, said, “We are disappointed that we didn’t win but in the grand scheme of things we are satisfied that our fans came out and voted.”

Jamie Lynn Gibert, WKNC’s station adviser, attributed some of the fault for WKNC not being awarded the top award to the fact that WKNC had its transmitter’s power reduced to 10 percent.

She said, “It’s unfortunate that we reduced our audience during the voting period because of the transmitter issues but we are back to 25,000 watts and rockin’ the Triangle.”

The current general manger, Mike Alston, a se¬nior in civil engineering, was disappointed for not winning the award for Best Radio Station for this past year. He said, “We obviously don’t have the resources as other radio stations, but we pride ourselves in our listener base.”

Alston invites all listeners to visit wknc.org and send any and all feedback to him or his staff. Lis¬teners can also follow WKNC on twitter or they can request songs on AIM: wkncrequests or call the request lines.