radio

From Ariel Zangla-Girard in The Daily Freeman yesterday:

Community radio station WGXC will “go live” Sept. 26, but whether it will broadcast on the FM dial depends on whether it can raise the remaining funds it needs to match a $71,486 grant. To date, the station has raised about 65 percent of the funds needed to match the grant, said staff volunteer Sara Kendall. She said the station also needs to raise an additional $20,000 for other start-up costs, including labor and supplies. Kendall said WGXC is working hard to raise money and is focusing on selling underwriting to local businesses. The $71,486 grant was given to the station by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration through their Public Telecommunications Facilities Program. The grant will fund half of the equipment needed to put the station on air on 90.7 FM. WGXC will be a 3,300-watt non-commercial community radio station with shows about local issues such as agriculture, history, the arts and education. It will reach most of Greene and Columbia counties. In addition to fund raising, the station is gearing up for a planned “Radio Barnraising.” In collaboration with Prometheus Radio Project, the barn raising will bring experts from around the country to train area residents in all aspects of radio production, according to a press release from WGXC…. The barn raising will take place from Sept. 24 to Sept. 26 in Hudson. Galen Joseph-Hunter, executive director of free103point9, said Sept. 26 is the date WGXC will go live with a full program schedule. She said whether the station is on the FM dial or online will depend on fund raising. If WGXC, which is a project of free103point9, raises the needed funds it will go live on the FM dial, Joseph-Hunter said. To register for the barn raising go to www.prometheusradio.org/WGXC_barnraising. For more information about WGXC and its fund raising, visit www.wgxc.org. Read the entire story in The Daily Freeman.

In time for Amy Goodman’s appearance Friday for WBCR in Great Barrington, the Rural Intelligence blog has a story by Dan Shaw about WBCR, WHDD (91.9-FM, in Ct.), and WGXC. The WGXC section:

By working with both established and new media, community radio stations fill a void left by newspapers that have disappeared or slashed their reporting staffs to the bare bones. “We are in a media ghetto between New York City and Albany,” says Tom Roe, program director of WGXC, which is devoted to serving Columbia County and its neighbor across the river, Greene County. “Citizen journalism is a key part of our mission, and we have a training program,” says Roe, who describes himself as a radio artist. “We have correspondents and a Town Recorder project that allows people to record important town meetings. We put it up as raw information. Victor Mendolia recorded the Hudson Common Council meeting the other night when they discussed the future of the waterfront.” These radio stations have one foot in the small-town past and one in the high-tech future. “We are trying to do 1940s radio with 2010 technology,” says Roe, who sees community radio as bringing together artists, journalists and amateurs. “Orson Welles and John Cage are two of the giant figures in radio,” says Roe, who points out that five years from now most people will have Internet radio and be able to listen to anything anywhere.

Prometheus Radio Project teams with WGXC to hold our 12th community radio barnraising later this year! Radio barnraisings are weekend-long radio-building and movement-building events. Individuals from the local community and participatory media folks from around the country come together to share ideas, experiences, and skills in the launching of a community radio station.

The overwhelming majority of the airwaves have been reserved for a powerful few who take advantage of the complicated technical and political system of media regulation. This inequity in our media system is a reflection of larger structural inequalities in our society. Prometheus’s mission is to build participatory radio as a tool for social justice organizing and a voice for community expression. We work for media justice, seeking to diversify control of the media as a necessary step towards a more equitable distribution of power and resources. We value radio because it is easy to produce, free to consume, and accessible to more people across the world than any other mass media, and we work to help grassroots organizations build communications infrastructure to strengthen their communities and movements.

Prometheus has supported hundreds of community organizations to apply for non-commercial low power FM (LPFM) radio licenses, as well as full power non-commercial license (full power stations). We have also helped build stations, either through providing resources and support or through radio barnraisings, where hundreds of volunteers gather to build a radio station of the course of a few days. These radio barnraisings have helped groups build their base while training a new generation of media organizers across the country. Prometheus has held barnraisings all over the county with eleven groups over the past eight years. These stations have encompassed everything from farmworker unions to civil rights organizations to rural arts groups.

WGXC: Hands-On Radio is a community-run media project in New York’s Greene and Columbia counties. Over 78,000 potential listeners will be able to receive WGXC’s FM signal on 90.7-FM once the station gets on the air with the Prometheus Barnraising in the last week of September. WGXC will be much more than just a radio station, with regular exhibitions and events, ongoing media trainings for our community’s youth and adults, a news blog, and a local calendar of events, community meetings, and resources. The station will serve a media-deprived area between Albany and New York City, a mostly rural area deeply rooted in agriculture and small industry with small urban centers, and home to a thriving music and arts community. WGXC will be the first radio station of its kind in the area created by and for people who live in the community. With local newspapers and independent media outlets rapidly disappearing from the area, this station offers a important opportunity for journalists and community members to get the training needed to produce high quality local news, as well as the outlet for that information to air.

WGXC will serve as an on-air arena where different and conflicting points of view can come together to share perspectives, acting as a local “trading post” for historic, creative, playful, and informative content. WGXC will provide the tools to make voices heard, and become a vehicle to build understanding. The station will be uniquely decentralized with three main studios spread out across the listening range, allowing broader access and participation from residents of both counties. Partnerships are already forming with schools, music venues, and town halls to live feed from various locations, furthering the scope of the station.

WGXC’s mission is to cultivate and to preserve the unique character of our area, the voices, and conversations of Greene and Columbia county residents, especially those that are rarely heard. “Hands-on Radio” captures the essence of this project. WGXC’s participatory environment will bring to life the idea that media is not something that is fed to us, but something we create with our own hands, hearts, and minds.

MAY 1 IS DEADLINE FOR WGXC PROGRAM APPLICATIONS

Interview show: Politicians, officials, volunteers, activists.

Music: international psychedelic music from 1969.

Arts Talk: Hudson Valley arts.

“Incident Report”: soundworks, talks, interviews.

“Imprint” regional music show.

Music: local music.

Music: alternative, electronic, chill.

Kaleidoscopic quilt of sonic ear and mind candy.

Music: Irish.

Music: hair metal bands.

Health and wellness.

Music: “The Tiki Bar”: Cocktails, tropical drinks, entertainment, always a relaxing island atmosphere.

Local real estate.

Interview show: authors, artists, activists, unnoticed.

Talk/music with local guests from the arts.

History, art, literature.

Music: jazz improv.

Teen radio, interviews, etc.

Children’s/family comedy show

Business and finance.

Music: local and national independent bands.

Music: House, international, ’70s + ’80s new wave.

Music: Dance, electro, techno, turntablism.

“Living with the Land”: regional farming and forestry historical and current.

“The Capitol Pressroom”: state government news.

Music: “Sunday Afternoon” with local, national, and international music.

Found sounds, field recordings, music from the Hudson Valley.

Children’s reading program, music, and more.

Music: Live recordings from the Red Dot Open Mic (Wednesdays), and other local and regional music and recordings.

“The WGXC Flea” on-air flea market.

Music: Local and national country music.

Music: music and political conversation.

Music: jazz, from big band to fusion.

Etiquette and social skills.

Music: Local music.

Music: Jazz.

Music: Live from Club Helsinki.

Music: “Sound Forms” new music composers from around the world.

Music: interview/intentional and transformational music.

Music: “Battlefield Earth:” all types of music.

On companion animals and farm animals.

Music: Latin American.

Psychic show.

Experimental, free-format series: interview and oral history, audio collage, etc.

“Greenhorn Radio:” Hudson Valley-based show for under-40 farmers.

Talk show on alternative healing or spiritual/psychic.

Interview show: arts and culture.

Music: “Excursions with Lunar Moss:” experimental pop and rock.

E-mail applications by May 1 to info@wgxc.org or mail them to WGXC, 5662 Rt. 23, Acra, NY 12405.