AIR-WAVE NEIGHBORS
Community radio making a difference
by Charlie Bernstein

Joe Steinberger of Rockland, Me., recently performed a minor miracle. He started a 24-hour, full-service radio station for less than $10,000. Taking to the air on Valentine’s Day 2002, WRFR-LP is, as of this writing, the newest member of the community radio family, a phenomenon that, in the U.S., spans more than 50 years.

"I saw an article somewhere about the FCC offering this new type of license and went to their website. They decided they’d go forward with these new licenses, and Maine was one of the first states they were doing it in."

The new licenses, for low-power radio stations which reach no more than seven miles, were, at least for a short while, easy to acquire. Steinberger talked to other people, drummed up some interest – and some donations – and got one.

Early on, he heard it called "micro-radio." "I thought: This isn’t micro. It’s local. We don’t think of it as a micro-station or Rockland as a micro-city. And it’s really not alternative radio. We’re simply local – both a physical and a radio neighborhood. Most people who receive the station are in walking distance."

Micro or not, the "LP" ("low power") in its call letters identifes the station’s special radio niche – a niche that enables it to serve exactly one community, and well. By charter, WRFR is not designed to be alternative or cutting-edge or politically positioned. It’s a place where any local citizen who has something to say can say it. As such, its weak signal is, paradoxically, its strength.

At WRFR, Sunday morning starts with gospel, with local singers and pastors. Steinberger co-hosts a weekday local news/discussion/call-in show with regular visits by local legislators. And Friday nights feature a punk program put together by a high-school student, followed by a hip-hop show. WRFR’s music programming, in fact – and this is typical of community radio – is wildly eclectic. "The modern trend is all-the-same," Steinberg explains. "But we’re finding that what people actually like is that they’re listening to Bob Dylan one minute and African music the next."

But is the station meeting a need?

"There’s a [commercial] station here doing an all-sports thing," Steinberg says. "It’s almost entirely nationally programmed. But back in the 1950s and 1960s it was a very local station. So now a lot of the old-timers are saying WRFR is great, it’s what radio was, a center of the community. You’re talking about neighborhood. It’s a way to be part of a community, and we’re really losing that."

Just two weeks into operation, the station had received over 100 volunteer applications (there are no paid staff positions), and 30 people were already on-air.

KPFA-FM: volunteers with political motivation

Broadcasting a continent away, KPFA Berkeley, Calif., is the opposite of WRFR in almost every way. The oldest community radio station in the U.S., KPFA was founded by pacifist writer Lewis Hill in 1949. True to those roots, it has a proudly radical tradition, quite unlike to WRFR’s determined apoliticalism. The station is located in a fast-paced big city, not a chatty small town, and is part of a larger network, Pacifica Radio. It has a paid staff of about 20. And most listeners do not live in walking distance. The station is big, reaching the entire Bay Area, with much of its content filtering out to a third of California via other stations.

What the two stations have in common is their strong community roots.

Hali Hammer is one of the volunteers who help out at KPFA, especially during pledge drives. A singer-songwriter, she started volunteering during the Gulf War, "basically because the only thing keeping my sanity was the radio station. I decided to come down and help out, and I’ve been here ever since."

For Hammer, the in-depth news and information KPFA supplies seems vital to her community’s well-being. "Volunteers here have political motivation," she says. "We want to make sure the world doesn’t deteriorate into a worse state than it’s in now. We care about the community, and want to be informed and make sure that other people are, as well. I’ve traveled all over the world and anywhere else you go you can get news about other countries, but here in the U.S. you get nothing but pap. KPFA gives you things you just don’t hear on mainstream radio."

Mary Berg is what many community stations call "unpaid staff." An audio tech and book editor in her work life, she hosts a music program and a news show each week, and is on the station’s program council and local board. Berg has been active in the station’s struggle to maintain its local integrity in the face of Pacifica’s efforts to "dumb down" the station’s sound to give it more mass appeal as a way to increase the number of listeners and revenues.

Over the past 10 years, Pacifica imposed what Berg calls a gag rule on its five stations from Los Angeles to New York. Stations were asked to eliminate unprofessional-sounding volunteers and to double audience, revenues, or both. The stations resisted. At KPFA the conflict came to a head in 1999, when Pacifica locked the station’s doors and fired the staff.

"The firing was a really stupid move to make," Berg says. "The lockout galvanized people."

Thousands of community members of every description marched to save the station. "Housewives would come down from the Berkeley hills to camp out," Berg recalls. "You’d see people huddling to come to consensus about what to do when the police came."

The lockout lasted three weeks. Pacifica backed down there, as it has elsewhere. Staff have been reinstated and sweeping changes have been made. There is a new optimism and a new cooperation – but there is also a $4.8 million debt to deal with.

Berg’s talk is rapid-fire, a verbal barrage of ideas, data, opinions, history and asides. Her music program, however, is anything but. She goes on the air Sunday at 5 a.m. with one of the rare community radio programs to offer classical music.

"I play music and don’t talk very much. Some people who don’t like organized religion say it’s their church. I think we need to show our communion, our commonality. If we don’t, we’re done for. We’re dependent on one another, so in music I tend to play Jewish and Arabic music, or African and Irish. I do it without saying anything. The music relates. It’s a musical statement, not a verbal statement."

Positive signs for independent radio journalism?

These days, the freedom to broadcast statements of either sort is considerably at risk. The New York Times reports that the federal courts are aggressively dismantling existing broadcast media regulations, with the support of the FCC, White House and much of Congress. Scott Harris, executive producer of the weekly independent radio news show, "Between the Lines," has serious concerns. "Voices of activists, from labor to environmental groups worldwide, are eliminated from corporate journalism. And when they are there, they’re reduced to soundbite journalism. Commercial radio doesn’t have the time to explain things. Noam Chomsky telling you in 20 seconds why the U.S. war against terrorism is misguided just doesn’t make it."

Harris, who has been in community radio since college in the 1970s, produces and distributes his in-depth news and analysis program for free to about 20 stations around the country – and online as well. He also sees positive signs for independent radio journalism. The World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, he says, proved to be a watershed for the field.

"And because there’s so much more activism on campuses these days," he says, "it swells the ranks of interest in independent radio programming among younger people. Refugees from the 1960s probably always liked that stuff, but now there’s a new phase of activism."

He even sees corporate consolidation as fueling independent media, in the sense that by removing probing journalism from its programming, corporate media is creating a need for it.

The challenge is in keeping air space where independent voices can be heard. According to National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) director Carolyn Pierson, deregulation has crowded the dial in urban areas to the point where no more community stations can be licensed. New community stations are going on the air only in rural areas, especially Latino and Native American communities. That means that low-power stations are the future of community radio. Six licenses have been issued so far and Pierson expects about 1,000 to be issued in all.

In the 1920s, many American radio stations were run by unions, civic groups, colleges, and churches. But by 1930, the Federal Radio Commission (now the FCC) had, in "the public interest," reallocated most of those frequencies to for-profit companies. Against widespread citizen outcry, the commercial radio lobby defended and solidified those gains, winning passage of the Communications Act of 1934. That law had been the basis for most broadcast regulation until passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which dismantled most of the ownership controls under the old law. An enduring Newt Gingrich legacy (but ultimately embraced by leaders of both major parties), it allows, among other things, almost unlimited ownership of radio stations by one company. A result has been the airwaves ascendance of Clear Channel Communications, which now owns nearly 1,200 U.S. stations – about a tenth of them – including over half the nation’s most-listened-to Top 40 and rock stations. It produces such programs as The Doctor Laura Program and The Rush Limbaugh Show and owns about 100 concert venues – the cause of recent anti-trust action.

Clear Channel’s stated mission is "to broadcast the best programming to the broadest audience providing the best value to advertisers." This programming has included, among other things, on-air animal killings and a "Push for Rush and Bush." Miami University broadcasting professor Bruce Daschel calls Clear Channel "the company that made radio unlistenable."

WOJB-FM: making a difference for the good

WOJB-FM, Hayward, Wis., doesn’t bring in that kind of money. But if Clear Channel is an effective advertising vehicle, WOJB is effective at something that matters to its volunteers and listeners more: serving its community.

More than a decade ago, then-program director David Keller wrote: "WOJB is a lot like other community radio stations – broke. We are among the working poor. So why are we smiling? Maybe because sometimes we actually do something here that makes a difference, for the good."

The community in question is the home of the Lac Courte Oreilles (la-coot-o-RAY) band of Ojibwe people. The general manager, Camille Lacapa, started there as a temporary secretary soon after the station went on the air in April of 1982 with a mission to provide a Native perspective on community issues.

When Lacapa arrived, a major controversy was raging around a pair of Obijwe brothers who had begun spear hunting, a Native tradition. They were in violation of state laws, but existing treaties exempted traditional practices.

Many local non-Natives, however, incensed at the activities of what they called "timber niggers," had begun using the hunting furor as a pretext for agitating against the Ojibwe.

"So we started having panel discussions with Native and non-Native people, and educated people on the treaties," says Lacapa. "We provided opportunities for anti-Indian organizations to be part of a panel discussion and let listeners form their own conclusions. We just let people speak their minds."

According to Lacapa, listeners appreciated being able to hear both sides speak for themselves. Most decided not to support hate-preaching groups, and the tension was defused.

WOJB serves five reservations, reaching between them and far beyond as well. Its signal covers the northern part of the state and large parts of rural Michigan and Minnesota. As a result, it has more white listeners and volunteers than Indian.

Don’t expect a lot of Native American songs, chants and drumming if you tune in. (And if you have internet access, you can.) Says Lacapa: "We play everything except classical music: Bluegrass, Native American, rock, classic country, jazz, blues. People like our music mix and coverage of local events. We do the strangest things. This week we have the Berkabiner ski race. It’s 25 K. We’re there at the start and stay until the last person finishes."

The Berkabiner is the only major cross-country ski race in the country. And WOJB covers other kinds of marathons, as well. When power transmission lines cutting through the reservation were proposed to serve towns farther south, the station carried the public hearings in their entirety – sometimes for 16-hour stretches. Lacapa knows of instances when, upon hearing the broadcasts, drivers actually detoured to the hearings to testify.

Another purpose of the station is to revive the Ojibwe language. "Over the years we’ve had people come in who would play music and tell stories. Now we’re starting out with the Ojibwe phrase of the day, with English translation," Lacapa says.

It’s another way of maintaining focus on the station’s original purpose. "The station is important because we’ve helped erase stereotyping. Some people have called the station to ask if it’s safe to bring their kids to the reservation, like for pow-wows. I want to laugh, but they’re sincere and they want to know. It’s a great place to bring people. I’ve had people come and thank me afterward for telling them it was okay."

Behind the ‘Cotton Curtain’

If you live around Atlanta, Ga., WRFG-FM (Radio Free Georgia) is "Your Station for Progressive Information." Like WOJB, it acts as a sort of station-of-record on important current events – it was, for instance, one of the few radio stations to air the Iran-Contra hearings in their entirety.

The station went on the air in 1973 as an intentional alternative to the mass media. Ebon Dooley, who manages the station, has been there from the start. Today, with about 50,000 listeners, WRFG is an established hub of community activity.

In Atlanta, says Dooley, "We were first to do jazz, reggae, bluegrass, underground, hiphop." But not the last. The station’s music mix seems to have infected the region. "Stations can imitate us as far as music is concerned," Dooley shrugs, "but they have a hard time matching our public-affairs programming."

In this category fall the station’s top-of-the-hour news broadcasts, topical call-in shows and continuous news from 4 to 7 p.m.

The station is even a citizen-lobbying vehicle. "We do a poor people’s day," says Dooley. "Low-income people gather from around the state to lobby the legislature, and we act as the media outlet for that whole thing. We do a day of education and a day of covering the lobbying. We have several organizations that take part. It’s led by the Georgia Coalition on Hunger. We also have a very large coalition working for a local liveable wage."

WRFG’s roots are in Atlanta’s African-American community. Today’s listeners represent a broader spectrum of identities, but Dooley notes a common characteristic: a thirst for information beyond regular sources. "When people want to know something, they call the station. The other thing is our emphasis on multicultural music and entertainment. The old style was thinking in terms of black and white. Atlanta has transcended that, and the immigrant community has adopted our station. We broadcast regularly in English and Spanish. We’ll have some French, Swahili."

As the economy tightens, as our sense of security becomes less absolute, as media consolidate and as our ability to experience our communities diminishes, we increasingly value connectedness. As mainstream radio withdraws further from where we live, people are creating their own airwave neighborhoods – independent sources of news, opinion and entertainment.

And they’re not just creating them. When push comes to shove, they’re standing up for them.

The challenges are enormous, but so is the payoff. And people from all walks of life, from tradition-steeped Rockland, Me., to counter-cultural Berkeley, Calif., are using radio to fashion communication in their own communities’ image.

Freelance writer and community radio fan Charlie Bernstein lives and listens in Augusta, Me.