It took two decades, but Cal State San Marcos finally has its own radio station.

CSUSM College Radio went live in January and offers music and other content streamed over the Internet 24 hours a day.

Listeners do not have to be CSUSM students, faculty or staff members to tune into the fledgling station's broadcasts, which can be found at www.ustream.tv/channel/csusm-college-radio.

So far, live programming is limited to a morning show that runs from 9 to 11 a.m. daily. News, current events, and popular music are some of the topics covered during the show.

The rest of the time, people listening to the station through their computers hear recorded music that was compiled in advance and listener requests.

Students Rosario Vizcaino and Ryan McElroy founded the station. Vizcaino, a CSUSM senior majoring in computer science, is CSUSM College Radio's president and handles most of the station's operations through his personal laptop computer and the university's server.

He also hosts the morning show.

On Thursday, Vizcaino said the station is about to add two more live shows to its lineup. Additional live programming will air as the radio develops, he said.

"The whole idea for the station is to broadcast live all the time," Vizcaino said. "So right now, I'm recruiting students so they can have their own shows."

Vizcaino and McElroy were not the first to consider starting a radio station at the university. A professor in CSUSM's mass communications department included the idea in a proposed syllabus for one of her classes in 2006.

The project eventually was dropped. The professor behind the initial proposal could not be reached Thursday, but university spokeswoman Margaret Lutz said she thought funding problems might have been part of the reason.

Vizcaino, who was involved with an on-campus radio station at Imperial Valley College before he transferred to CSUSM, said he decided to create a radio station at the university after he learned it didn't have one.

After the idea was rejected as a class project, he enlisted McElroy's help and the two took the proposal to the Student Life and Leadership department, which oversees on-campus clubs and organizations.

Department leaders embraced the radio station, so the two students obtained a domain name, set up a Web page for CSUSM College Radio and set it up on Ustream, a relatively new live-streaming service.

Licensing issues delayed the station's broadcasts for a couple of months, but Vizcaino said he and McElroy eventually learned the station could operate under two licenses already issued to the university. CSUSM officials also approved use of the university's logo.

Filling air time is the next challenge. Vizcaino said doing so is getting easier as more students learn that the radio station exists.

Student Marcos Echeverria recently offered to host a show highlighting a wide variety of music from 3 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Another student, Tiffany Balucanag, will soon go on the air with an '80s and '90s music show from 11 a.m. to noon Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

"As we recruit more students that have more interest in the radio station, we hope to cover more aspects of the school," Vizcaino said, adding that technology has made live broadcasts easy. "If somebody's covering a game, they can be at the game or in the broadcast booth, broadcasting the game. ... You can also use your cell phone to broadcast."

Go to http://www.csusm.info to see CSUSM College Radio's Web site.

Call staff writer Andrea Moss at 760-739-6654.