Creating a progressive voice for Northeast PA
By Fritz Mayer/The River Reporter
NORTHEAST PA — If all goes as planned, in February 2011, there will be a new radio station available to listeners in the region. A non-profit organization called Community Radio Collective, Inc. (CRC) is launching a campaign to help raise an additional $15,000 to $40,000 to make station WFTE-FM a reality. About $180,000 has already been raised from foundations and what the station calls “committed individuals.”
Jake Rosen, the chairman of CRC, envisions that the station will fill a void that he says currently exists in the area, between Stroudsburg and Binghamton, NY. In a post that can be found at www.nepartisan.com/?p=2127, Rosen explains that there are 21 AM and 37 FM stations on the dial serving that region, but that many of them provide essentially the same programming.
He wrote: “There are 32 stations broadcasting one or another kind of commercially successful music, four which air only sports, four broadcasting only right-wing talk shows, three doing non-stop religious education. There are two public radio stations. The Scranton station’s programming is 80% music, a small percentage of which is of local origination…. The Binghamton station’s programs consist 67% of music, a small percentage of which is of local origination, 23% nationally syndicated news and 10% nationally syndicated entertainment.
The organizers of the station have written, “The radio programming currently available to all the communities in our area fails to serve their educational and cultural needs. We intend to overcome this.”
Rosen said that the station will also have a focus on local investigative reporting, as well as programming that supports education for both adults and children. He says the station will also attempt to provide coverage of some of the industries which are regionally significant, such as dairy, quarrying and lumber.
The radio station will be modeled on WJFF in Jeffersonville, NY, which is run primarily with volunteers, and with three full-time staff people. The transmitter will be located in Hamlin and should be available to listeners in Honesdale, depending on the effect of the mountains.
Rosen expects to receive a lot of support from people in the area. He said, “If you’re a progressive person out in this area, which has a reputation for being conservative and Republican, you might think you’re the only one. But I believe that when the radio station goes on the air, people will discover that there is a very large progressive community here.”
The station will be found on the FM dial at 90.3 and 105.7. Go to www.wfte.org for more information.
