WWOZ, New Orleans best radio station–according to its multiple wins at OffBeat‘s Best of The Beat Awards–is expanding its presence by adding an HD radio station, to be called WWOZ-2. The new station should be operational as of April 1, according to Dwayne Breshears, ‘OZ’s long-time Program Director.

“WWOZ-2 will give us the opportunity to include a lot of the music that we haven’t been able to in the past,” said Breshears. “It will be 24 hours of New Orleans music. We want to also try to focus on music that hasn’t had a permanent spot in our programming, like bounce, hip-hop, and dare I say it–rock,” he said. Breshears said he “goes to a lot of conferences where we’re always reminded to keep growing our market support with a younger demographic. This will be a great way to reach a younger demographic and keep the support of  ‘OZ  thriving.”

It will also expand the station’s reach to include all forms of New Orleans music, outside of the programming that’s been in place for over 33 years. We applaud ‘OZ for taking this step to include the broad spectrum of New Orleans talent its programming.

An HD format has been available at the University of New Orleans-owned WWNO, which has two HD stations for jazz and classical music. The WWNO main station’s format was converted to a mostly-talk format about four years ago.

HD stations require a special receiver terrestrially, but the streams can be accessed by mobile devices and on computers.