Threats to Non-Commercial Radio Threaten All of Us
I love radio.
I’ve always loved radio, ever since I was a kid growing up in the Washington DC area.
My first radio station was WINX (yes, winks) in Rockville, MD. WINX was essentially a teeny bopper radio station, which I eventually outgrew though my radio maturation was perhaps a bit stilted.
I remember going to a Bar Mitzvah party. There was a DJ who played “Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me).” Everyone sang along with the chorus, but I didn’t even know the song. Feeling that life was passing me by, I finally said goodbye to WINX and started listening to WPGC, which was more of a Top 40 station, famous for an on-air cash giveaway when they would send a vehicle out looking for cars sporting a WPGC bumper sticker. They’d describe the vehicle on the air, and if the driver waved, they’d get a hundred bucks.
I’d listen with my transistor radio. I’d listen eventually with a clock radio that my parents gave me as a birthday present. I’d listen to the FM and AM bands. Not just music, but football games, Ken Beatrice, one of the early sports talk radio hosts, and even nighttime broadcasts of the New York Mets, at the time, my favorite baseball team.
Yes, I could hear broadcasts all the way from New York because AM radio signals travel further at night due to how the Earth's ionosphere interacts with radio waves. During the day, the sun's radiation creates a layer in the ionosphere that absorbs AM signals. At night, this layer dissipates, allowing AM signals to be reflected back to Earth from higher layers in the ionosphere, enabling them to travel much greater distances.
One neighbor was a Cincinnati Reds fan. Many a summer night, we’d sit on a front porch and listen to Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brennaman. My favorite memory was the Reds down by a run in the ninth with the go-ahead run on base and one out. They brought in a pinch hitter who promptly hit into a game-ending double play. Hilarious.
My radio habits evolved further in high school. I dumped WPGC in favor of DC 101 and WAVA, both Album Oriented Rock (AOR) stations. Granted, AOR was a format, but not a terribly strict format, featuring cuts from albums rather than singles. Sometimes, they were deep cuts. Sometimes DJs would play a whole album side or even the whole album.
I remember a rep from WAVA speaking to my high school journalism class. He talked about the format, but mainly I remember him talking about how the station is not called Way-Vah but should be spelled out when speaking the name.
I once met a DC101 DJ who was doing a promotional even at Records Lords, a record store in Cabin John Shopping Center owned by Seth Hurwitz, who would eventually open the famous DC music venue 9:30 Club. That day, I bought an album, my first bong and got a free DC101 T-shirt.
By this time, I was driving and of course listening to the car radio because driving and music just simply go together. Maybe I was driving on Falls Road, smoking a joint, when the DJ played Dire Straits or “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time.
Great moments.
Eventually, WHFS “Homegrown Radio” became my go-to radio station. WHFS, sadly no more, was a commercial and mostly rock station, but differed greatly from WAVA and DC101. It was more free-form, and shows varied greatly depending on who the DJ was.
Then I went away to college, but I was still an avid radio listener and found two stations, WIBA FM and WMAD, the latter being a straight-up rock and roll station. While MAD was a bit low-brow, WIBA at that time was about as good as it would get for a commercial progressive music radio station, even including a show called Radio Free Madison.
WIBA used to be a truly great radio station. And I was among many people here who turned the radio on one day shortly after Reagan took office to find that the station suddenly operating under a tight format, as it is to this day.
The reaction of shock, anger and sadness was universal. No one like the format change, but we didn’t get a say; this was all just crammed down our throats.
The radio landscape was changing. Traditionally, radio wasn’t terribly profitable. Stations were usually locally owned, sometimes mom-and-pop operations. The industry was not terribly attractive to conglomerates.
Enter the formats, which meant that a content programmer was not required, and a format could be used to program multiple radio stations.
Also, the Fairness Doctrine mandated that radio stations air public affairs programming that presented a diversity of views, not an inexpensive requirement. But in 1987, Reagan’s FCC voted to abolish the Fairness Doctrine, opening the floodgates of media consolidation and tight programming formats.
Around the time of the WIBA disaster, something amazing happened.
I discovered community radio, specifically WORT FM 89.9.
First, I want to be clear about what community radio is. It’s non-commercial radio, largely listener supported. Such stations receive some money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but not to the extent that public radio (and television) stations do. Community radio stations are largely supported by listeners.
And as full disclosure, I’m married to one of the full-time staff members of WORT.
This wonderful community radio station totally opened my eyes to what radio can be and what it can mean. I started listening on Saturday afternoons, with Reggae at 2pm, a new music show called New Needles at 4 p.m. and I Like it Like That, an oldies show hosted by Rockin’ John McDonald, who is still on the air spinning the oldies.
There was rock and rhythm in the afternoon. Jazz in the evenings. There was a three-hour morning, community-oriented talk show that was broadcast Monday-Friday live from a local diner. True story, Lily Tomlin was booked as a guest on the show. She showed up dressed as a waitress. She waited on customers and didn’t break character during the interview.
Great stuff. Back then I used to think of WORT as a lot like WHFS, but better because it doesn’t have commercials. But there’s more to it than that. The shows are hosted by volunteers, a whole bunch of them. The musical genres range from rock, jazz and classical to country, bluegrass and folk, world music and even show tunes. There’s African, Latin jazz, Latin Rock. There’s even a Hmong show.
The DJs are not told what to play as long as they stick to the basic format of the show.
And as I’ve written about previously, most of the DJs are wonderfully obsessed people, obsessed with the music they love.
Today when I listen to the radio, it’s mostly WORT with some sports talk radio when I’m in the car and maybe an occasional splash of commercial radio. My listening media is the car radio, of course, live and archived streaming through the WORT website and a TRANSISTOR RADIO that WORT recently offered as a pledge-drive premium.
As a very longtime listener, I can say with a great deal of confidence that the radio station, which is in its 50th year, is as good as it’s ever been. Along with wonderfully eclectic musical offerings, the station produces in-house a Monday–Thursday hour-long news show along with Monday–Friday morning interview shows and a noontime call-in talk show.
Last month I attended a picnic where station alumni were invited. It was a joyous occasion to celebrate 50 years of broadcasting.
But there was a pall draped over the event that no one could see, but everyone could feel. And everyone knew that there is a great risk that the station may not see another 50 years on the air.
Congress had just passed the recission bill that, among other things, defunds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
But first, I want to be clear about what recission actually is. Recission is a legal way to claw back funds allocated by Congress, as opposed to what DOGE has been doing and what Giant Baby Man has been doing. Funds allocated by Congress must be spent by the executive branch—simple stuff. The executive branch cannot unilaterally refuse to fund what it was ordered to fund by Congress.
However, while recission is legal, it is far from democratic.
Budgets generally require compromise and bipartisanship, especially to pass the potential 60 vote threshold in the Senate. Recission requires a mere simple majority in the Senate, so you can have a budget that was passed in a way to meet the Senate threshold, but then the party with a majority of one can reverse what had been previously passed.
Recission should be rare because it is so extreme. It should not be taken lightly, and there should be a damn good reason for doing it.
In this case, Congress used this tool because they wanted to defund NPR, something some Republicans had wanted to do for a long time.
GBM wanted NPR defunded likely because they don’t kowtow to him and maybe because Sesame Street one time spoofed him. The rapist got what he wanted because he bullied his Congressional enablers into giving him his way mainly because he’s thin-skinned and vindictive and has a tiny dick, as documented by E. Jean Caroll, Stormy Daniels and South Park.
Why? Perceived liberal bias? Maybe, though some of these folks think anything that isn’t Fox or Newsmax propaganda is far left extreme bias.
I’m sure to some, NPR may appear to have a liberal bias, but to be fair, virtually any non-corporate media is going to appear to have liberal bias. A great example is that when the VA abruptly ended a mortgage program designed to help veterans in danger of losing their homes secure low-interest mortgages, NPR was the first major media outlet to report on this change. The VA didn’t even bother issuing a press release let alone a policy paper to let loan servicers know how loan modifications were supposed to work.
All this hatred of NPR will result in a ton of pain for ordinary people all over the country.
Fact: NPR receives one percent of its funding from the CPB.
Fact: Seventy percent of CPB funding goes to fund 1400 locally owned, non-commercial television and radio stations across the country.
I doubt the rapist knows these facts but I’m sure he doesn’t care. However, I’d bet any amount of money that the Heritage Foundation ghouls behind Project 2025 know exactly what they’re doing.
What are we in danger of losing?
PBS and NPR air a great deal of educational programming. They air news and public affairs that actually is mandated to be fair and unbiased. They also air high-quality drama and comedy as well as music.
Locally, much the same thing. CPB funded non-commercial radio and television stations air more than twice as much locally produced programming as their commercial counterparts. The result is programming in rural areas, in Indigenous communities that is of and by the people who live in those communities. These stations are more than likely the only locally owned stations in these areas.
Some of these radio stations may be Low Power FM (LPFM) stations that are hyper-localized and truly serve their communities because they are largely volunteer-based and feature people from the community.
Such stations air content that is useful to the community because these stations are the community.
Here in Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television have already cut staff and cut programming, such as Zorba Paster on Your Health, a call-in radio show where callers get to ask questions of a long-time physician. It is also worth noting that in many parts of the state, WPR radio stations are the only outlets where one can hear classical music.
Urban non-commercial radio stations may be better equipped to handle the cuts but likely will have to cut some programming. The smaller, rural stations may be forced to cut staff. Some may not be able to survive.
Why does this matter? Why is it important to be able to hear a local news show where there’s a weekly segment reviewing the upcoming city and county government meetings?
Aside from being able to listen to better music…
Aside from being able to hear locally produced news and public affairs programming…
Aside from programming in general in the public interest…
The whys are too numerous to catalogue in this space but do consider this one piece of information. Local non-commercial radio stations serve a hugely outsized role during times of natural disaster. They are not automated. Staffing reflects operational needs rather than profit maximization.
There’s a hurricane or flooding or tornados, what do you do if the power goes out and Internet access is down?
You turn on a battery-operated radio. And the live, local voice you will hear giving you potentially life-saving information will come from your local non-commercial radio station.
Again, recission is inherently undemocratic and should only be used in rare and urgent circumstances. It should not be used to satisfy the whims of a thin-skinned bully with no regard whatsoever for all the people it will hurt.
But as Patti Smith sings, people do have the power. It is now time for all of us to step up and support our local non-commercial radio and television stations. If you have the means, send a donation. Or maybe volunteer. A few hours here and there could go a long way to help with staffing needs.
Non-commercial media belongs to all of us. Let’s not let them take it away, certainly not without a fight.
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