WLRN is South Florida’s NPR affiliate, serving over 500,000 weekly listeners and viewers. In 2024, WLRN sought to reinvent the station’s identity post-pandemic. Commerce House of Dallas, TX was contracted for a will rebranding campaign and they in turn engaged me to handle the audio portion of the campaign. The brief was wide open, simply that the signature sounds needed to be “timeless” and universally appealing to the WLRN community. Simple does not mean easy. WLRN’s audience hails from a variety of cultures and geographies and trying to distinctly represent each would be impossible.

The solution was to tie the entire sound to the experience of radio, not any clear musical reference or instrumentation. The resulting track “Tune In” captured the experience of flicking on the radio and becoming totally absorbed by a program. The piece concludes with a 3-note motif - a small step up and then a metaphorical leap into the future. Finally, we hear dozens of actual community members recite the callsign of their beloved public radio station backed by flowing arpeggiated tones reminiscent of our defining natural feature: the beach.