The region’s public radio affiliate began as a 10-watt station at the old Springfield Trade High School.
Reporter-producer Anne Mostue reads a news story in the Peggy and David Starr of New England Public Radio studio on Hampden Street in Springfield.The year-long celebration of New England Public Radio’s 50th anniversary was stunned into silence temporarily in May when longtime reporter and news host Bob Paquette died suddenly at age 55. The station had just kicked off its golden anniversary three weeks earlier.
And, while people at WFCR-FM and WNNZ-AM still feel the tremendous loss, they have rallied like a family to fill the void left by Paquette’s untimely passing. This sense of teamwork, says station manager Martin Miller, exemplifies what public radio is all about. It also would have made Paquette happy, he adds.
“One of hardest things we’ve ever dealt with here was death of Bob Paquette,” Miller said recently. “It was a personal loss to me and a loss to everyone at the station, and a loss to the community. We are still coming out if it, but everyone has really pulled together. I think Bob would be proud of that.”
New England Public Radio can be proud of numerous achievements over its 50-plus years since starting as a tiny 10-watt station on the Springfield Trade High School campus.
Martin MillerDubbed WFCR (which then just stood for Four College Radio – Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith colleges, and the University of Massachusetts; Hampshire College didn’t exist until 1966) the fledgling station transmitted just 36 hours each week, with less than one hour being dedicated to locally produced material.
Local programming is one aspect of the station that certainly has changed and one that is a point of pride with Helen Barrington, program director for WFCR and WNNZ.
“One of the comments we hear the most is from people who want to hear more local voices on the radio,” Barrington said. “But, a lot of people don’t know that producing local news is the most expensive and labor intensive process we do. So we consider programs like ‘Morning Edition Plus’ a great achievement, and we are happy to be able to respond to those needs from the community.”
Although this year-long celebration (which began May 6 – the 50th anniversary of the first signal being transmitted by WFCR) is one for New England Public Radio, Public Radio in its current form didn’t formally exist until 1967 when Congress established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Another fact that may surprise modern-day listeners is that WFCR didn’t have a music director until 1966. Up until then, the station was a mix of scholarly shows from the colleges and programming relayed from other educational stations thought the Northeast, with some music blended in.
Amazingly, for more than 30 of the 45 years the station has had a music director, it has been the current one, John Montanari, who started with the station in 1978.
“I either found a home, or nobody else will have me,” Montanari said with a chuckle.
While other stations have cut back on musical programming that centers on classical and jazz, WFCR remains committed. Montanari says the main reason the station can do this is the listener.
“The answer always come down to the listener. There are a lot of great people in this area who are curious and intelligent. It’s a wonderful place to do public radio,” he said. “We have always had a demand for the music we play. If there wasn’t an audience, we wouldn’t have a reason to play it. After all, if a viola gets bowed in a forest, does anyone hear it?”
Three years after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was established, National Public Radio was created. The first NPR programs aired in 1971, and WFCR was among the first public radio stations to carry NPR programming, beginning with “All Things Considered.”
Today, NPR produces and distributes programming that reaches more than 26 million listeners weekly via more than 900 stations nationwide broadcasting NPR programming.
One of these syndicated NPR programs is “State of the Re:Union,” which features former WFCR employee Tina Antolini. Antolini had two different stints at the station, first as an intern during her last semester of college at Hampshire, in the fall of 2004, then again as a reporter in 2006. Antolini served in numerous capacities: reporter, “All Things Considered” host, fill-in “Morning Edition” host when Paquette was battling cancer, and “Focus Western New England” host and producer.
Antolini says she learned an array of skills during her time at the station.
“As I was a relatively untested reporter when I arrived, WFCR gave me the chance to prove myself as a public radio producer and host. Covering such a broad and diverse geographic area, I learned investigative dexterity, how to go from covering a Springfield political campaign one day to trailing maple sugarers in the hilltown woods the next,” she said. “I learned how to be a nimble interviewer through the parade of New England residents WFCR had on the airwaves, from transgender activists to polka musicians to workers manufacturing guns at Smith & Wesson. And I learned exactly how many words I can fit into 2.5 minutes of newscast without stepping on Robert Siegel’s toes.”
The news aspect of New England Public Radio got a huge boost in 1996, when WFCR became the first public radio station in the nation to broadcast public radio content on a commercial station, via a lease with 1430 AM-WTTT, later named WPNI. The service provided news and information programming as an alternative to WFCR’s classical music during the day.
This was further boosted when, in 2007, WFCR moved the news programming to the 50,000-watt AM 640 WNNZ. The WNNZ line-up features total news and information programs from NPR, PRI, American Public Media, the BBC World Service and other content providers.
Providing such a wide range of programming is both a challenge and its own reward, Miller said.
“The most demanding part of my job is coming to the understanding that this is a large region that is interested in both cultural programming and news. So it’s a challenge to find a way to provide all of that,” he said. “But while it’s challenging, it’s also the most fulfilling.”