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Keeping it Country

Beckwith named Media Personality of the Year

Larry Beckwith, Ananur, Jo Lindsay

Ananur Forma, Larry Beckwith, and Jo Lindsay.

by Dagney C. Ernest, for the Herald Gazette.

Image by Dagney C. Ernest courtesy Herald Gazette, all rights reserved.

Larry Beckwith shows off his Media Personality of the Year award in the on-air studio of WRFR-LP, Rockland. With him is sales manager Ananur Forma, left, and volunteer coordinator/office manager Jo Lindsay, both of whom also host shows on the volunteer radio station. Story and Photo by Dagney C. Ernest

 

Larry Beckwith is used to invitations; in his 60 years-plus radio career, thousands of people have invited him into their homes via the airwaves. So when he was told he should be at the 2009 Maine Country Music Association awards show Oct. 18 in Mechanics Falls, it was no surprise — until, that is, the MCMA announced that he is their Media Personality of the Year.

"When they read off the award, I was ready to fall over," he said. "It's quite a prestigious award and I'm very proud of it."

Beckwith has worked for a lot bigger concerns than WRFR-LP, Rockland's low-power community radio station at 93.3 FM that also broadcasts in Camden at 99.3 FM. He is one of the nonprofit station's original DJs, having been on the air since it began broadcasting on Valentine's Day, 2002.

"Back in the 1950s, I worked on a much bigger scale, all around the country. And in 1987, I was the manager of WREM in Monticello, put it on the air," he said of the AM station (now WXME) in Aroostook County.

Beckwith said the Media Personality award is based on "what you do with it" rather than number of listeners, although he has more of those than one might assume for a low-powered radio station. Because programming is streamed live online on wrfr.org, Beckwith has fans all around the country and beyond.

"They call me up when I'm on the air, and I put them right on," he said.

When WRFR began, Beckwith was at the microphone seven days a week. He has cut back his hours due to health issues, but still produces several shows a week. Country music is his love, and his shows explore the different ways that American genre is expressed. His "Sunday Country Wake Up," a weekly version of what used to be a daily show, is on air from 6 to 7 a.m. It is followed by "The Hallelujah Train" from 7 to 11 a.m., a show of gospel music.

"It's especially popular with shut-ins who can't go to church," said Beckwith.

He has begun a new show on Tuesdays, "Hillbilly Rock," that features the early country/rock sounds from the 1950s into the early 1960s from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. And his long-running "The Dinner Bell" is on the air Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

"It's old, traditional country music, going back to the '20s. I do live interviews to give local talent a showcase and recorded phone interviews with people like Leroy Van Dyke, whom I know from when I worked down there," said Beckwith.

Indeed, his many years in the country music business has given Beckwith access to a lot of big name performers.

"I have a pocketful of unlisted numbers," he said.

Beckwith also has relied on his own pocket for the music he plays, although some labels send him CDs — or try to.

"I'm a born-again Christian and there are some things I don’t play. If it's got bad language, drugs or sex, I tell them to keep it," he said.

Beckwith is committed to promoting local and regional talent in his shows, and he does not believe in segregating those performers to a specific show or segment. Instead, he mixes the local artists in with the national.

"I believe in pushing your own. I don’t like just playing strictly Maine artists at a certain time — that's like putting them in the back of the bus," he said.

Taken all together, his shows offer a range of performers and time periods, via music and interviews, a mix that draws both listeners and the attention of organizations such as the Maine Country Music Association, which operates the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame.

"It gives something different. WRFR is made up of something different. There's nothing for the local people anymore [on commercial radio] — I don’t like what the FCC has done to music," he said.

Although he is passionate about it, Beckwith said radio is more like a hobby for him now.

"When I'm gone, I don’t know who I'm going to push it on," he joked.


Knox County Home Energy Committee

The Knox County Home Energy Committee recently appeared on WRFR. Representative Ed Mazurek and Commissioner Anne Beebe-Center and many people have been working hard on fuel and weatherization issues, but more help is always needed.

You can call Anne Beebe-Center at 207-594-2060 or Ed Mazurek at 207-594-5647 to get involved, or for more information.

Click Here to listen to the interview!

There is a lot of wonderful information in this interview if you need help, want to help, or know someone who does need help.

Also, please remember to dial #211 if you need help, or to visit www.211.org

211 is the number, and you will find a general clearing house of information concerning many kinds of needs, all in one place. Supported by the State of Maine and many volunteer and ecumenical organizations, 211 is a great first wave resource for helping match resources to people in need, quickly.

Thanks to a grant from the Unity Foundation...We've got a new website and some great new public affairs programming!

WRFR thanks Unity Foundation for the generous grant that funded this website and our new program, "At You Service" with Cathy, a forum for local non-profit organizations to discuss their services and how to best take advantage of them. We appreciate the ability to expand our outreach efforts, and archive programs for future access.

Phil Seitz Interviewed in The Village Soup

Veteran show host, volunteer Phil Seitz made a big splash in the January 8th issue of The Village Soup. Phil was interviewed by Emily Sapienza with subjects ranging from Phil's massive cd and album collection to what drew Phil to volunteer at WRFR. If you wish to read this excellent article, you can find it in volume 6 #2 of the Soup or browse over to VillageSoup.

Amnesty International Interview

September 19: Amnesty International’s Mary Ellen Crowley discussed "Portraits of Guantanamo": A Visual Study of The Detainees and Conditions at Guantanamo Bay Detainment Camp, featuring the work of 50+ local artists, which was on exhibit at Lincoln Street Center September 28-October 6, 2007.

June 21, 2007: Low Power Radio Gets Push in Congress

On June 21, 2007, Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced the Local Community Radio Act. H.R. 2808 and S. 1675.

The bill would eliminate the 3rd adjacent restriction for LP-FM stations. The Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act of 2005 prevents the FCC from licensing LP-FMs on third adjacent frequencies, the so called third adjacent channel.

The National Association of Broadcasters convinced the Senate to pass this legislation in 2005, touting claims of interference that have since been proven false.

The National Association of Broadcasters argues that stations on the third adjacent channel cause interference with full-power commercial stations. H.R. 2808 and S. 1675 would lift these restrictions. click here for the full article.

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WRFR Begins Rebroadcasts of Bay Chamber Concerts!

May 6 2006 was the big day it began, and it will continue! WRFR will expand its local programming by providing weekly broadcasts of selected Bay Chamber Concert recordings. The series will feature classic Bay Chamber Concert performances, occasional live interviews, as well as, highlight artists and events in BCC's upcoming season. Program host is Chuck Marecic. The program will air Sundays 7-9 pm.

WRFR and Maine Radio Poets Project Poetry Event

On Sunday 1 April 2007 at 7 pm, WRFR-LP 93.3 and 99.3 fm, in conjunction with the Maine Radio Poets Project (MRPP) and the Wolf Moon Journal, will host a special program of contemporary Maine poetry. This program will kick off WRFR’s twice daily (7 am and 12 am) poetry broadcast by Maine poets. On air guests for this event, hosted by WRFR programmer and MRPP producer, Chuck Marecic, will include Laurie Graves, publisher of Wolf Moon Press, and several WMP poets, including Sherry Hanson, David Moreau, and Claire Hersom.

The public is invited to attend this unique radio poetry event at the WRFR broadcast studio. For more information, please call 594-0721 or email maineradiopoetsproject@gmail.com. WRFR is located at 20 Gay Street, Rockland.

Background: The purpose of the Maine Radio Poets Project (MRPP) is to vocalize the poetry of Maine poets, to provide audio access to poetry for WRFR listeners, and to promote poetry as a performing art in Maine. The idea is to develop an ever-growing database of poetry readings by Maine poets that will become a part of the computer generated programming at WRFR. The immediate goal of MRPP is to broadcast poems daily on WRFR-LP.

WRFR Is Streaming On The Web!

As of Tuesday, April 12, 2005 all systems are working properly and WRFR's programs are available worldwide on the internet. A link on WRFR's homepage will get you to our MP3 streaming audio. The stream is up and running thanks to the hard work of WRFR volunteer Dean Buckley.

99.3 Added in Camden

The Community School's translator station is now bringing WRFR into Rockport and Camden on 99.3 FM. The translator station was completed in June of 2004. Welcome Community School, and Camden-Rockport to the WRFR team!

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John McCain Speaks About WRFR

"There are some wonderful LPFM stations that are up and running. A recent article published in The Nation called these stations "beacons of grassroots democracy."

The article discussed WRFR in Rockland, Maine: "Shunning the canned programming approach of Rockland's two Clear Channel stations, WRFR offers an array of local talent, tastes and interests, and was recently named Maine station of the year by a state music association. Although country music, a Maine favorite, is heavily represented, hardly any WRFR deejay restricts himself to a single era, genre or Top-40 play list."

Started by a local city council member who was concerned about the lack of media outlets in his town, today WRFR has over half the city listening." For the full text of Senator McCain's speech, click here.

WRFR Named Station of the Year

Both the Pine Tree State County Music Association and the Downeast Country Music Association have named WRFR the Radio Station of the Year for 2003. Show hosts Larry Beckwith and Roseanna Rogers have also been recognized as the best DJ's.

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WRFR covered in The Nation, 10/17/2003

The November 17, 2003 issue of The Nation magazine carried the story of "The Rockland Radio Revolution." WRFR is described as one of the most successful LPFM stations in the country, and proof to America that local radio can build community. Here is the text of the story:

The Rockland Radio Revolution

by Kevin Y. Kim

Three years ago, Joe Steinberger decided to do something about the dearth of local media in his town. A city councilor and lawyer with a longtime commitment to public service, Steinberger was astounded by how closely his fellow Rockland, Maine, residents followed the council's three-hour meetings, which were televised and endlessly rerun on a local cable channel. "The camera was fixed, the video not at all slick, and our voices muffled, but people still watched," Steinberger marvels. After initial efforts to give voters livelier coverage failed, he learned about a Federal Communications Commission initiative then being debated in Washington: low-power FM radio (LPFM).

In an age of increasingly consolidated media, in which commercial broadcasters blast thousands of watts over dozens of miles, LPFM stations are 100-watt operations, each with an effective radius of 3.5 miles. They are noncommercial by definition and vibrantly local by nature. Costing as little as $6,000 to build, they are beacons of grassroots democracy, offering a response to A.J. Liebling's decades-old observation that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. "As soon as I read about LPFM, I knew it was a great opportunity for Rockland citizens to take more active roles in our community," Steinberger says. When, a few months later, he read that the FCC had opened its first application window for Maine and nine other states, Steinberger went into action. With only two weeks to file, he spent hours researching the FCC's guidelines and applied on behalf of the Penobscot School, a local center for international exchange he co-founded in 1986.

Today, with thirty-five volunteer deejays, the sponsorship of thirty-four local businesses (monthly operating costs are only $500) and more than half the city listening, WRFR is Rockland's only completely locally programmed station and one of the most active LPFM stations in the country. Shunning the canned programming approach of Rockland's two Clear Channel stations, WRFR offers an array of local talent, tastes and interests, and was recently named Maine station of the year by a state music association. Although country music, a Maine favorite, is heavily represented, hardly any WRFR deejay restricts himself to a single era, genre or Top-40 playlist. On Sundays, Frank Kramer's Crossworks plays an unpredictable mix of Central African rumba, John Mellencamp and Native American rain chants. On Saturdays, a 14-year-old girl guides her audience through Suzanne Vega, Enya and Christian rock hits, while on Friday nights David Dyer, a University of Maine student, plays whatever he or his listeners have pined for all week from the personal collection of 600 CDs he lugs to the station. "I try to make my listeners happy while making myself happy," Dyer says. "It's like a three-hour therapy session from the hard week. Everyone loves being able to hear songs they want, instead of hardly or never hearing them on most stations." Even Rockland's police department loves it--several cops regularly visit Dyer to request a m»lange of electronica, progressive rock and 1980s pop that helps them get through the inevitable lulls of Rockland's night beat.

Just five years ago, the FCC would have outlawed WRFR as a "pirate" broadcaster. Steinberger might have faced a $10,000 fine, federal impoundment and even jail time, threats hundreds of pirates braved through the 1980s and '90s--all for running community stations in breach of government regulations heavily tilted toward commercial radio. Of the nation's 13,700 radio stations, more than 80 percent are commercial. Due to the wave of mergers sanctioned by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, American radio's top twenty-five owners now control more than 25 percent of all commercial stations and command more than two-thirds of all ad revenue and listeners nationwide. Clear Channel alone mushroomed from forty stations in 1996 to more than 1,200 today. It's become notorious for a centralized model of broadcasting that includes voice-tracking--recording the same out-of-town deejay for multiple locations, customizing each program to create the illusion of locally produced content.

In January 2000, then-FCC chairman William Kennard reversed twenty years of neglect of noncommercial community radio by authorizing LPFM. But after heavy lobbying by the National Association of Broadcasters and-- to the dismay of advocates everywhere--National Public Radio, Congress enacted LPFM rules in December 2000 reducing the potential number of LPFM frequencies by 75 percent. Central to NAB's dubious argument was that LPFM would create an "ocean of interference" with existing stations. "Policy-makers didn't adequately balance engineering concerns with broader policy concerns," says Cheryl Leanza, who has led the fight for LPFM as deputy director of a Washington-based public interest law firm. "It was as if the tiniest loss in technical terms outweighed the greatest gain for democracy and diversity." The losses were greatest for large cities, where Congress's NAB- inspired intervention effectively snatched scarce dial space from dozens of potential stations.

Many LPFM advocates still believe fear of competition was the true impetus behind NPR's and NAB's positions. "Interference was the only thing they could raise as an issue," says Dylan Wrynn, a k a Pete TriDish, technical director of the Prometheus Radio Project, an organization dedicated to LPFM. TriDish's theory is supported by a Congressionally mandated study that, ironically, NAB and NPR demanded three years ago. Released by the FCC in July, the in-depth report by MITRE--one of the industry's premier engineering firms--agreed with past studies by FCC engineers and LPFM advocates in finding both the 2000 rules and additional studies unnecessary. The NAB's "oceans" of interference have turned out to be puddles reaching a fraction of LPFM's already small coverage area.

Unsurprisingly, the NAB has skewered MITRE's methodology, denying that it meets statutory requirements the association itself helped craft. An NAB spokesman said that even "negligible" interference is "objectionable in [NAB's] view." Says Michael Bracy, a DC-based media lobbyist, "[NAB and NPR] called for this study, defined its parameters, and now say it wasn't well designed--meantime, the clock is running out on LPFM, and taxpayer dollars are being spent." NPR calls LPFM service "complementary" with public radio but remains concerned about interference. NPR now advocates a yearlong trial run of twenty test stations before revising LPFM rules. "You'd get enough of a snapshot of different markets to have a much better basis to proceed on a wider-scale implementation," says Mike Starling, NPR's vice president for engineering. While Bracy hopes NPR's proposal leads to a workable compromise, TriDish calls it a "disingenuous stalling tactic" that facilitates other stations' ongoing pre-emption of LPFM frequencies.

The FCC, which just finished collecting public comments on MITRE's report, is poised to make a new LPFM proposal this fall. If the FCC and Congress do the right thing and roll back the onerous 2000 rules, the number of LPFM stations could jump from about 220 now to well over 1,000, the FCC's previous projection for 2004. But given the larger debate over media ownership rules, substantive changes might take many months. "No one who favors media diversity believes LPFM to be a substitute for broader media reforms," Leanza says. "But the fact that we have to fight for something so small, innocuous and obviously good is unfortunately indicative of the policy debate we're facing today in Washington."

In the meantime, Steinberger knows WRFR is lucky to be in Rockland. The closest station is less than two miles away but well beyond WRFR's frequency. Not one of his several hundred neighbors has complained about interference. And WRFR's diverse, innovative programming stands as the best proof of LPFM's fundamental value. Local bands drop by every week to perform live or chat with WRFR deejays. When President Bush made his staged landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Alan Lowe, one of WRFR's jazz experts, ranted about the "draft-dodger strutting like he was some big warrior" before playing James Brown's "Funky President" for those who missed his point. The daily reports of Ron Huber, a local environmentalist, provide some of the state's only in-depth coverage of Maine's fast-disappearing commercial fishing communities. Just as unique is Morning Train, WRFR's weekday call-in show, which draws state legislators and local officials into intimate conversations and raucous policy debates with Rockland's 7,600 residents.

Lowe's views and Huber's activism are not shared by everyone at WRFR. "The perspective here isn't right or left, but local, open and all-inclusive,"Steinberger says. "It's about knowing, respecting and listening to your neighbors-- and everything special we do comes out of that."

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