Vocalo Radio 91.1Vocalo Radio 91.1

Chicago Public Radio split 89.5 WBEW off from its news simulcast in June 2007 and handed the signal to Vocalo, an experiment aimed at a younger and more racially diverse audience than NPR was reaching, with early hosts building shows out of audio that listeners had uploaded themselves. The playlist hardened into hip-hop, R&B and dance music by 2010, took the name Chicago's Urban Alternative in 2014, and survived a 2024 shutdown announcement the parent company reversed weeks later under pressure from its own union.

The rotation sits where contemporary R&B meets hip-hop, giving Chicago names the same weight as national ones, with a deep bench of soul, funk, house and Latin records behind both. Rocío Santos and Jésus Echeverría present Domingos En Vocalo, and The Vocalo Hotline turns its listeners' requests and dedications into a mixtape the city phones in itself.