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The WKWI and WIGO team pictured in front of the Half Shell Stage in Kilmarnock. From left: Amy Dawson, Maeghaen Eley, Ron Jeffries, General Manager Dennis Burchill, Nancy Travers, Deanna Chadwick and Steve Grainer.
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The principals behind WRAR and WNNT pictured near their homebase in Tappahannock. From left: Tom Davis, Terry Brooks and Rich Morgan.
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Frederick Johnson and station owner Robin Cunningham co-host “Tuesdays with Frederick and Robin”.
Technology marches ahead, but the essence of radio remains communication. A man or a woman with a microphone plays music, shares news and weather and provides company for an audience that can’t be seen.
Nowhere is that job more essential to daily life than in rural areas such as the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula. Here, the management, talent and sales teams live where they work and are active in their communities. In fact, some would even say they’re local stars.
Dennis Burchill of adult contemporary station WKWI and country station WIGO feels fortunate tohave a talented staff of locals who understands the lifestyle and concerns of their 35- to 65-year-old demographic.
“Our lives are different here,” Burchill says from the broadcast studio in Kilmarnock. “This area isn’t important to the Richmond and Newport News markets, so it’s left to us to share church, community and school announcements.”
Burchill came to the stations via Harrisonburg, where he’d worked for 20 years for a five-station group. But he was tired of competing with big corporate radio. “When this became available, I jumped on it. It was a chance to get back to the reason I got into radio: to address the community’s needs.”
Those needs were extensive during Hurricane Irene when the station had four people on the air continuously 24 hours a day for four days delivering all talk and information. The winds from the storm were so severe that at one point Burchill observed something terrifying: the station’s tower leaning so far over that the guide wires were slack on one side.
The deejays took calls from all over the region, although as the storm progressed, they backed off phone calls in order to air emergencyannouncements about trees down and detours.
“We had one guy call and tell us he’d spent over 30 hours sitting inhis pick-up truck in his driveway because he had no electricity inhis house,” Burchill recalls. “Overa whole day listening to us! Wereceived a citation from the townof Kilmarnock thanking us for what we did during Irene.”
But awards are hardly the reason the station’s employees come to work every day.
“We’re committed. Truly, this is a trust that’s been given to us and that’s something we take veryseriously,” he says. “We’re constantly scrambling to give the community what it needs from us, but this is a very fun business.”
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Over in Tappahannock, hot adult contemporary station WRAR and country station WNNT are owned by a group of locals—Rich Morgan, Tom Davis and Terry Brooks—who bought the stations in 2006.
“The previous owner wanted to retire and not just sell to anybody,” explains Morgan about why he and his fellow station employees decided to purchase the stations. Two years after the purchase, they moved the studio and offices to their present location on Prince Street in Tappahannock near the banks of the Rappahannock.
The station reached the eightcounties of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula and received an award from the National Associationof Broadcasters for their superb coverage of Hurricane Isabel in 2003, a feat they managed using a generator because the station also lost power.
WNNT is host to the longest-running radio program in the Northern Neck, Swap Shop. “People call in and say, “I’ve got some goats and a lawnmower for sale,” Davis explains with a chuckle. “Local radio is so personal. We take pride in making an announcement or sharing an event.”
During Isabel, the station was live throughout the entire event, alerting listeners to such pertinent information as where a fresh shipment of ice could be found and provided a lifeline for those with nothing more than a portable radio to connect them to what was happening.
When a tornado hit Tappahannock barely two miles from the station in February 2016, the two stations began simulcasting and taking calls from a panicked community. For a while, Brooks was screening calls, but things got so hectic that Morgan told her just to put everyone through to the studio.
“From then on, it was all six studio lines blinking continuously until all the warnings had expired,” Morgan recalls.
The group sees the station’s strength as being able to zoom in on their area to become a hub of information. With only weekly newspapers and no local TV station, radio is the sole daily media. Having live announcers and no syndicated programs means they consider themselves a true community-oriented radio station.
“When we’re out in the community, people look at us like we’re a celebrity,”Davis says. “But we’re just regularguys with a different occupation that puts us in the ears of the community every day.”
Launched in July 2016, WWND— known as WINDY—is a volunteer run, low power community radio station focusing on classic hits from the ‘50s to the ‘80s broadcasting from the bluffs of the Rappahannock River in White Stone.
“Community radio offers a third model of radio broadcasting inaddition to commercial and public broadcasting,” explains Frederick Johnson, co-host and creator of the “Tuesdays with Frederick and Robin” show that airs at 4 p.m. “We broadcast content that is popular and meaningful to a local audience, but is oftenoverlooked by commercial or mass-media broadcasters.”
Community radio stations areoperated, owned and influenced bythe communities they serve and all shows are local and run by membersof the community.
That community knows no agelimits, as when the station partnered with Chesapeake Academy to host a weekly radio education class giving students the opportunity to learn about broadcasting. The students were taught how radio works and then produced and aired “Today in History” moments as well as “Spanish Lessons.” Additionally, the young broadcasters planned and produced live on-air talk shows about topics of local interest.
“We are continuously trying to evolve and improve our programming and would like our listeners to reach out to us with their ideas,” says station owner and president Robin Cunningham.
“All of WINDY’s volunteers work tirelessly to create a true community radio station.”