WIOX on its launch day in August. Photo by Julia Reischel.
Big radio news across the Catskills today.
In Delaware and Schoharie counties, full-power WIOX station has won a $129,712 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). The funds have been a long time in coming. WIOX's managing consultant, Joseph Piasek, said that the station had expected to receive funds from the grant almost a year ago, well before its on-air launch in August.
"The fact that we got on the air without it is a testament to all the hard work that so many people have done in providing equipment, using Band-Aids and gum, and borrowing stuff," Piasek told the Watershed Post this morning. "The station is such a community effort that it actually launched without funding. Now, we can try to replace some of the Band-Aids and gum with some bells and whistles."
WIOX will use the funds to improve its technical systems, to beef up its signal in places where there is interference, and to establish remote studios that will allow hosts to broadcast their shows from outside the studio.
"We'll be experimenting with remote broadcasting," Piasek said. "[The grant] will allow us to cover the baseball games and events at schools."
Meanwhile, in Columbia and Greene counties, proto-full-power FM station WGXC is getting closer to its on-air debut. The station held a groundbreaking for its radio tower in Cairo on Tuesday, it reports on its blog, and expects to be broadcasting on 90.7 FM "sometime in January." But you don't have to wait until January to hear WGXC's original programming -- the station began airing new shows on its webstream this week:
WGXC programmers have begun been airing radio shows: so far John Cleater’s “1969,” and Norman Douglas and Andrew Amerlinckx’s “Difficult Histories.” … WGXC’s online radio webstream still contains recordings of past WGXC events, local town meetings, and recordings of local musicians, but, increasingly, also includes the same live programs listeners will soon hear on 90.7-FM. Hosts are learning how to use the studio equipment with their first shows just on the internet. Now, when you tune in WGXC Online Radio at www.wgxc.org, more and more you will hear live programs from WGXC hosts as they figure out how to make radio.
