A West Virginia station is 'poster child' to counter Masterpiece Theatre image
WVMR Program Director Doug VanGundy
Originally published in Current, Jan. 16, 1995
By Jacqueline Conciatore
God bless country folk. They might be public broadcasting's saviors--this is the hope. After all, who can take issue with stations like WVMR in Dunsmore, W.Va?
No brie-and-white-wine fundraising soirees at this station. We're talking the kind of fare you get at church basement socials--sandwiches, cakes, cookies, coffee. The tiny station provides the only local broadcast service in Pocahontas County, serving as a community center, with all-important weather and road condition reports, local news and public affairs programming, school sports coverage, and (though you may have heard this already, it's true) notices of funerals and lost dogs.
In a December letter to CPB President Richard Carlson, WVMR General Manager Gibbs Kinderman offered his station up as ammunition--a douse of cold water in the face of arguments that public broadcasting is elitist. He cited an article in which the industry was called a "plaything of the liberal elite who use [it] to air values that drive ordinary folks up the wall.'' He asked Carlson: "Would it be useful to you--for PR purposes--to have an example of a CPB-supported station which has a diametrically opposed image and constituency--a public radio station of, by and for 'ordinary folk?' ''
Carlson began steering journalists in WVMR's direction. Nightline included the station in a report on congressional threats to public broadcasting. A Copley News Service reporter wrote an article on the station, while Leonard Garment and George Will both mentioned it in dueling op-eds. And late last week, Kinderman got calls from Gannett and Newsweek reporters.
The Nightline segment flashed scenes of WVMR Program Director Doug VanGundy playing his fiddle on the air, and 74-year-old Virginia Sheets reading a children's story to the station's littlest listeners. Overnight, the station had become what one industry figure jokingly called "public broadcasting's poster child.''
A station of the people
WVMR makes good copy because it tells a story about public broadcasting that is "as far from the the stereotype as you can get,''says CPB spokesman Michael Schoenfeld. The station has an older, blue-collar listenership that makes a median station contribution of $25. Its audience is conservative politically and culturally--the station's most popular syndicated program comes from Christian family counselor Dr. James Dodson.
Broadcasting from dawn to dusk, WVMR manages to operate on $120,000 a year, with the help of many volunteers. These volunteers include an 84-year-old preacher, high school students, a school teacher, the operator of a home cleaning service, and a soil conservation technician.
The station's format is "country plus.'' Programs include Sheets' Senior Power Hour, in which she has older folks come in and tell the stories of their lives, plays music and shares entertaining or informative bits culled from magazines and newspapers. For her children's story hour, she often reads from Laura Ingalls Wilder books, making the program one of WVMR's most popular, Kinderman says. Sixteen-year-old James McNeel has a classic rock show called Classic Jams with James, and the station still carries the first voice listeners ever heard, when she signed on July 9, 1981. Today Annabelle Schaffner hosts a gospel program, Sunday Morning with Annabelle.
One of the most important services WVMR provides is weather and road condition reports, Kinderman says. At 5000 watts, the station serves a mountainous area about 30 miles wide and 90 miles long, in which residents are scattered widely. "We don't have a helicopter. We just call people who live in key parts of the county, like Carlos Jones who lives at the base of Cheat Mountain. It's 20 miles to the next populated area. We find out from him if traffic is making it.''
Fourteen-year-old Danny Mars, the station's youngest deejay, powers up the station with the help of his dad when the weather is too bad for Kinderman to make it in. To get there themselves, they use skis donated by an area chalet.
Kinderman believes the station helps foster a sense of community in Pocahontas County. "A lot of people say, 'I couldn't be on the radio, because I don't talk right.' The answer we always give them is, 'This radio station's supposed to sound like you.' One purpose of a community station is to reflect and reinforce the community's image of itself. Most broadcast media are somebody's fantasies or images or dreams, put into everyone's house around the country. Our idea is, 'This is Pocahontas County and this is what the people are like here.' ''
Not so atypical
CPB's Schoenfeld and other industry experts say there are hundreds of small CPB-supported stations across the country that offer a similar contrast to common perceptions of public broadcasting. There are about 25 Indian stations in 10 states, for example--many on reservations where radio is the sole telecommunications service.
"CPB [in] supporting this remote station in a rural community, is encouraging diversity'' within the system, Kinderman says. "Our station is not like a station in a small remote community in the Rockies. Or like a station in a remote community in Alaska, or on an Indian reservation. And none of them are like mainline jazz and NPR stations.''
Though every form of public station would suffer if CPB loses funding, small rural stations would be hardest hit. The corporation's 1993 revenue profiles show that 104 radio stations with operating budgets of less than $600,000 get about 17 percent of their revenue from CPB. The largest stations, by comparison--those with budgets of $1.75 million and over--get 13 percent of revenues from CPB. The difference is more drastic in public television, where the largest stations--those with operating budgets over $10 million--get about 12 percent of their revenue from CPB, while the smallest, with budgets of less than $3 million, rely on CPB for about 21 percent.
The tiniest stations depend even more on CPB. Take WVMR: one-third of its income comes from the corporation.
Loss of government funding would not put the station under, Kinderman says, though it would mean more reliance on volunteer staff members, which would threaten the station's local news and public affairs programming. "It's hard to ask a volunteer to go to a county commission meeting that lasts three hours to produce a three-minute story.'' Currently the station has one paid reporter. There are three full-time staff members, including Kinderman, and three part-time.
WVMR's daily noontime newsmagazine and morning and evening news broadcasts provide Pocahontas County its only daily local news. The county's newspaper comes out weekly. CPB's contribution to WVMR "is, I feel, a real legitimate use of a small amount of tax money to help a fairly impoverished small rural community get the kinds of communication services that are available more readily in larger areas,'' Kinderman says.
WVMR's audience members do not appear to be riled up over the prospect of their station losing government funding. They have other things to worry about, such as a 20 percent unemployment rate, Kinderman says. But program host Sheets demonstrated a ready stoicism when asked about possible cuts. "It's one of these things that you take it as it comes,'' she said. Despite its economic condition, the community would reach deeper into its pockets to meet station needs if it had to, she believes. "I think the people realize how important the station is,'' she said. "I don't think they'll let it go.''
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