by Tom Borthwick/NEPArtisan

A community radio station, WFTE, will be launching in February. This will be a non-profit station and so will have a different slant than talk radio stations like WILK, for example, whose ultimate goal is profit and fiscal solvency.

I’ll be bringing you more information at it becomes available.

WFTE (90.3 FM and 105.7 FM) will be a full power, educational/nonprofit radio station broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 3,000 watts. Our signal will reach a population of about 300,000. We will serve communities in five Pennsylvania counties (Wayne, Pike, Monroe, Luzerne and Lackawanna and possibly parts of Susquehanna) including the greater Scranton area (the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania) and other old anthracite mining communities such as Wilkes-Barre and Pittston. This area is nearly 90% white, with a recent and continuing Hispanic influx which may now total 9% overall, and about 3% African-American. Nearly 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. In the over 18 age group there is a net male outflow, with only 83 males for every 100 females.

The station is owned and operated by Community Radio Collective, Inc., a Pennsylvania nonprofit formed in February 2008 and granted tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status by the IRS. CRC is managed and governed by its Board of Directors.

WFTE’s license requires it to be broadcasting not later than February 10, 2011 or the license expires. If it is on air by February 10, 2011, the license continues indefinitely.

All information regarding WFTE is publicly available at the FCC website: www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?call=WFTE

WFTE’s educational purpose and programming criteria are defined by its mission statement:

WFTE is dedicated to the progressive values of social justice, economic justice, human rights, multiculturalism, environmentalism, freedom of expression, and democracy. WFTE shall aim to create and provide high quality, innovative and community-oriented programming serving communities, information, and ideas that are ignored, suppressed, overlooked, or underserved by the mainstream media. WFTE shall operate at the highest levels of professionalism and integrity, seeking on-going participation from the communities being served.

Obviously there is a wide variety of creative programming and many formats possible to implement this vision—political, cultural, investigative, talk are examples. The Board wants to ensure that there also will be Spanish-language programming in prime time.

The Board sees WFTE’s mission as sparking the development of a sorely needed progressive movement in Northeast Pennsylvania by creating a volunteer organization which will operate a radio station dedicated to serving the struggles for social, economic, and environmental justice.

Our plan is to organize a network of station supporters in every possible community within reach of the WFTE signal. By “community” we mean both functional and geographic categories (e.g., workers, high school or college students, Spanish speakers, gas drilling endangered, environmentalists, etc).

But communities don’t exist simply because they can be defined. To really exist, communities must be self-conscious and organized. So we intend to organize a network of active committees, coordinated by the WFTE Board.

From the station’s perspective, this network will be its volunteer, listener, local money contributor base. From the community’s perspective, this network will be the activist coordinator of the region’s emergent progressive majority.

In a sense, the station will create the community of which it is the expression.

To date the Board has organized the corporation and achieved IRS tax exempt status for it, commissioned the necessary engineering and legal work, secured the FCC license, found the site and entered into a land lease for the main transmission tower, purchased a translator (W289AU—which will rebroadcast the station’s 90.3 FM signal at 105.7 FM), secured FCC authorization to operate the translator, entered into a tower lease for the translator, developed a web presence, organized an Advisory Board, wrote many grant proposals (securing funding from, among others, Consumers Union, Microsoft, the Sparkplug Foundation and the Media Justice Fund.)

So far the effort has required about $40,000, which the Board has raised and spent. To get on the air we need another $15,000. This will be used to clear the site, erect the tower and control shed and bring power to them, do the antenna pattern study, fabrication and installation, purchase and install the transmitter, processor, exciter and other necessary components, and buy the minimum necessary equipment for the broadcast studio. To complete payment for the translator we need an additional $20,000. This adds up to $35,000. Throw in some fudge factor and the total is $40,000. This is quite a small sum for what we are creating and the impact it can have.

Here are the current Board members and some background about them:

Robert Apter, Union Rep for UAW Local 6000, Organizer for UAW Region 9A and Office Manager for UAW Local 79.

Devi Constantine, Faculty member in the Division of Communication Arts and Humanities at Keystone College and a farmer (Spring Hills Farm in Dalton, an organic farm producing maple sugar, blueberries, alfalfa and Christmas trees.)

Dr. Josephine Gear, CRC Secretary-Treasurer, Officer and Executive Board member of AICA-USA, the United States section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), formerly on the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and the Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris and the Binghamton University Art Museum, Advisory Board Member of Iraq Heritage Watch, and professor in New York University’s Graduate Program in Museum Studies.

Rev. Paul Gere, war vet, VFW post founding member, retired President of the Pennsylvania Chaplains Association, minister at the Merli Veterans’ Center in downtown Scranton and the Lackawanna County Prison, active in movements against war and racism, for social justice, and for prison reform, his family settled in what is now Susquehanna County in the 1790s.

Fred Jerome, author, science writer, Senior Consultant to the Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University, member of the Selection Committee for the Knight International Journalism Fellows Program (funded by the Knight Foundation and the Gates Foundation), member of the faculty of the journalism schools at Columbia University and New York University, he established the Media Resource Center which interfaced thousands of journalists with scientists to improve science journalism.

Alan McGowan, long-time Executive Director of the Scientists Institute for Public Information and Director of Science Programs at the Eugene Lang College of New School University.

Jacob Rosen, CRC founder and Board Chairman, has had a varied business career ranging from membership on a national stock exchange to heading a stock brokerage company, a small telephone company and a real estate development company. He established an independent book shop and book distribution company, and was publisher of a small independent political magazine in the days of printing. He was a Board member of a theater company specializing in running theater workshops for public schools, and a member of the History faculty of the New School for Social Research at New School University. He has been active in the civil rights movement, anti-war movements and movements for social justice.