Ausable Valley Grange Hall announces WAVG-LP, a hyperlocal talk and music station
By Tim Rowland
In 1923, three years after the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company’s first commercial broadcast on KDKA in Pittsburgh, farmers in Keeseville voted to buy one of these so-called radio contraptions for their Ausable Valley Grange Hall.
One hundred years later, the radio is long gone, but the Grange is still active, and its members are looking to start a station of their own, one consistent with the Grange’s mission of community connection.
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“At first we just thought it would be a cool idea,” said Nico Brossar, a cheesemaker at North Country Creamery. Then they crossed paths with John Sokol, who thought it was a cool idea too — and knew the ropes from having spent 40 years in the radio business.
Getting started
Last month, the Federal Communications Commission approved an application for WAVG-LP, a hyperlocal station that will broadcast over the air at 100.5 FM in the immediate Keeseville area, but will also stream online.
The station will be a mix of talk and music — Brossar said she’s ready to talk cheesemaking, but also envisions topics that might include gardening, astrology and renewable energy.
It will rely on volunteer talent, and programming will be driven by who shows up with the gift of gab.
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“You look for the storytellers first. We’re looking for people who already have outsized personalities — you find the right person and it’s gold,” said Sokol, whose career included years as a radio coach, and will be able to help new broadcasters polish their schtick.
While she’s now in agriculture, Brossar has a technical background as well. She was in video production in Queens before the pandemic convinced her to seek a more fulfilling lifestyle. Audio and video production share similarities, so the technical aspects of the station will be second nature.
Providing a platform
The studio will likely be in the Keeseville Civic Center, which is being developed out of a former school building.
It will be a platform for local bands and “music you don’t hear every day,” along with community news, talk and information, Sokol said. “The format has to fit the community and be attractive to the community.”
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Grange President Sue Loomans said the station will shine a spotlight on people and organizations in the community that are otherwise overlooked, and be a source of connection in an age of division.
“We want to lift up other organizations in town, and find things that we can agree on,” she said.
From the days when most every community had a local station with a local cast of characters that listeners could relate with, radio today, Sokol said, largely consists of canned programming and playlists assembled in some far-away studio.
WAVG will go in the opposite direction, with names that are familiar in the community, and perhaps students from local schools. While the focus will be on Keeseville, Sokol said the station has potential to be an Adirondack voice for communities within the Blue Line.
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And while technology has depersonalized community radio, it has also made it easier to start a station from scratch. Birds’ nests of wires have been replaced with plug-and-play technology, and equipment that is relatively cheap — but not free.
To that end, the station is raising money through local fund drives for the $10,000 to $15,000 needed for equipment. The station will be noncommercial, but will have sponsors once it’s up and running.
Community-based radio “may be a throwback, but it’s a perfect fit for a town like this,” Sokol said.
Information on how to help, contribute or offer suggestions is available at ausablevalleygrange.org or by emailing [email protected].
Photo at top: Nico Brossar, John Sokol and Sue Loomans, who are working to get a community radio station in Keeseville off the ground. Photo by Tim Rowland
Tim Rowland’s story about Ausable Valley Grange Hall’s attempt to rejuvenate community-based radio is interesting to those of us who remember listening to local broadcasts from our own homegrown radio stations.
Jim and Keela Rogers, for example, broadcast programs of local interest from their studios in Saranac Lake, including Bob Kampf’s folksy daily weather reports, and the station’s very popular contribution to recycling called “Tradeo on the Radio”.
Many other local radio stations operating in and around the Adirondack region earlier were widely listened to, and helped bring communities closer together in good times and bad,.
Local radio’s influence in keeping communities healthy and vibrant, was much like that of local homegrown newspapers in the days before corporate media consolidations became sought after to increase profits and spread the political opinions favored by wealthy owners.
Sadly, all these media acquisitions have turned into a race to the bottom for all of rural America, including Adirondack residents and visitors, seeking trustworthy sites reporting fact-based news and information.
Let’s all offer best wishes to WAVG-LP, hyperlocal talk and music station. May it be to be a welcome oasis in our Adirondack media desert.