These are Dave Myers remarks from the 2006 Annual Meeting.

Hello and good afternoon – it’s great to be here with you.  With this meeting, we continue a WOMR tradition, and I’ll do my best to follow Bob Seay’s tradition of keeping my remarks fairly brief.  Today, we are celebrating WOMR’s recent achievements, as well as renewing our commitments as DJ’s, participating in our station’s governance, reaffirming our mission, and looking ahead to next year.  I’m also here to celebrate community radio, specifically this community radio station, and I’m thrilled and honored to be serving WOMR.   

WOMR Board President Tina Lynde has discussed this year’s accomplishments, so I will focus on what we’re working on currently, and what we can look forward to.

We are putting a backup system in place, which will enable us to continue broadcasting during emergencies, disasters and power outages.  As I see it, the plan of establishing this backup system will have two phases:

• In phase 1, we will install backup power and transmission capability at the Schoolhouse.  This will include a 24 kilowatt generator, which can power the whole building and even allow us to provide shelter to the immediate community in the event of a major disaster.  Phase 1 also calls for a 250-watt antenna array atop the Schoolhouse which should cover the “outer” Outer Cape reasonably well, in the event our transmitter on Mount Gilboa isn’t working.  This antenna will replace the expensive Verizon broadcast lines that function as our secondary transmission link to Mount Gilboa.
• In phase 2, we will bring backup power to Mount Gilboa, by installing a 40 kilowatt generator and clearing the necessary regulatory hurdles at the site.
• Other things we’re working on: we’ve begun producing a weekly Local News program, airing every Friday from 12:30 to 1 in the afternoon, courtesy of Hamilton “Tony” Kahn, longtime WOMR participant and former Editor of the Provincetown Banner.  I want to thank Tony and our intrepid Operations Manager John Braden for diving in and getting this project off the ground.
• The station is also enhancing community access through our new studio setup – which will allow every DJ to easily put up to two callers on the air simultaneously, with a good-quality phone connection.  I look forward to seeing – and hearing – more live call-in shows and local community programming as a result of this setup.
• The new studios also include a unit that easily facilitates live remote broadcasts, so next year we can present high-quality live feeds from events such as the Wellfleet Oyster Festival and our own Provincetown Jazz Festival. 
• We’re also looking right now at our 2007 benefit events, and I invite your ideas, participation and follow through as we plan and produce these projects.
• We’re looking tentatively into bringing back the Music, Food and Wine Festival, or some form of it – possibly at the Melody Tent, but also perhaps back at Cape Cod Community College, or even on the Wharf in Provincetown.
• And I have shared with the Programming Committee some ideas for expanding on the local, community-based programming we already do, so we can build on our existing strengths and increase our relevance in the community at the same time.
• I see my own mission here as…f
• First familiarizing myself with the elements that already make WOMR vital and relevant,
• working with all of you to amplify and build on – these elements
• and bringing what I’ve learned about community radio to bear on our common endeavor here.

Radio is the magic medium.  All you need is a crystal and a little wire to make a receiver.  Radios are inexpensive, they use very little electricity, and unlike computers and the internet, their manufacture generates almost no waste and doesn’t depend on a sophisticated infrastructure to function.

Radio is the original interactive medium, with call-in shows, invitations to make requests, and – in the case of community radio – a volunteer-based structure that invites everyone’s participation.  We can sometimes forget that the people own the airwaves.  That premise underlies all of our country’s original communications laws – if not those passed in the last decade.  In this way, the community radio station is an entity that has been entrusted to manage a public resource, similar to a water district or public utility.  We talk about “your” show or “my” show, and of course it is “your” show in the sense that you bring your creativity and care to it, but I believe that a community radio show is also a part of what we sometimes call “the commons” – a resource that in some senses belongs to us all. 

This view of radio has played a fundamental role in the development of Northern California’s well-known community radio station KMUD – where I served as Operations Manager, Development Director and Volunteer Coordinator – and it has left an indelible imprint on me.  What I’ve learned from my work there is that if you’re there for the community, the community will be there for you.  When you invite the public to participate and be a part of what is happening on the radio, you cultivate and inspire broad and deep community support.  KMUD’s inclusive format features:

• a half-hour local news program that airs every weekday.
• a daily feature called “All Sides Now” that invites listeners to call in or walk in and record their opinion, commentary, or thoughts on any issue.    
• a one-hour call-in talk show every weeknight on local, national, or international issues.
• live remotes from local events like electoral debates, community forums and music festivals.
• A free nightly Classified Ads segment which attracts people from all walks of the community, some of whom otherwise might not listen to the station, but use it as a resource to find their lost pet, sell their car, find housing or advertise a job opening.
• A nightly Community Calendar that gives at least one sentence of air time to every event taking place that day, whether  it’s an art opening, a band playing at a local club, a nature walk or a yoga class.
• KMUD’s dedicated airing and reading of public service announcements about events taking place in the local community.  These announcements are put into the same format as underwriting announcements, and DJ’s read two of them per hour during every music show.

The local news, class ads, community calendar and call-in talk shows air as a 2 ½ - hour block every weeknight that is engineered entirely by a crew of volunteers.  These are the most dependable and interested programmers, who have to be as reliable as the paid staff, and most of whom also do their own music shows.

WOMR practices community service too, through the remarkable diversity of our music, through the dedication our DJ’s bring to their programs, and through the high level of commitment our volunteers bring to our benefit events and many other station activities.  There is the wonderful way that WOMR DJ’s support and promote each other’s shows on the air that indicates a great sense of community.  And of course there is the loyalty to localism in our mission, part of which is “to encourage participation by members of Cape communities in the management of the station and in the production of radio programs,” and part of which is “to provide air time and facilities to community members and groups, and to provide program coverage of local news, educational and social events.”  Our Town Crier feature emanates from the heart of this mission.  It is a fundamental service.  For many local non-profits, it may be the only publicity their event gets.  So, I encourage those of you who are DJ’s to use the Town Crier book when you do your show – we’ve made it more user-friendly, and it represents the promise we have made through our mission to the community organizations here where we live that serve us all. 

Community radio is an embodiment of what some call the “gift economy.”  Anyone is welcome to participate, you can enjoy the station’s “product” without paying a penny, and in turn listeners support the station financially, though they could receive its content for free.  There is a candor in community radio about the funding relationship and where the money comes from that sets us apart from commercial media.     

This goes back to the founding of Pacifica Radio and the “listener-supported” model of radio envisioned by Pacifica’s founder Lew Hill, who set out to create a media outlet that offered viewpoints other than the big media viewpoint, which was and still is driven primarily by the profit motive.  Hill’s pacifist politics fashioned Berkeley’s KPFA on the service motive – like a school or a hospital – and fueled it with a spirit of inquiry and a commitment to social justice.  Expanding to include stations in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Houston, the Pacifica network now includes dozens of affiliates – including WOMR.  Pacifica programming is carried on over 400 media outlets.

By definition, and by their individual missions, the Pacifica stations and other independent media organizations share with WOMR a strong orientation towards localism.  Low power FM stations are of course the ultimate embodiment of localism, with signals that sometimes only reach a few square miles, but almost always carry some Pacifica programs, and this is where the local connects to the global: interfacing with other independent media helps us to better understand the forces that affect our lives – changes in the economy, the wars our country fights, and how the rest of the world sees us.  It also gives us a window into other grassroots efforts – what people are doing to fight economic exploitation, or how a community is resisting environmental degradation.  These connections give us hope and insight into what we can do on our local level to empower ourselves.

Jim Hightower pointed out that, if you were to add up all of the listeners, viewers and readers of all of the independent, grass roots media organizations, the total would be as large as or even larger than any commercial network.  This is why WOMR’s mission is supported by participating and partaking in independent, grass-roots programming on the national level: shows like Democracy Now!, CounterSpin, Making Contact, This Way Out, WINGS, Free Speech Radio News, Alternative Radio and Time of Useful Consciousness.  These programs and others of this model help us to understand how our local efforts fit into the bigger picture, and remind us how our actions can make the world a better place. 

Having said all of that, I envision WOMR continuing to do the things we do well – playing great and diverse music and staying dedicated to our mission – while being open to the ways in which we can revitalize that mission.  In other words, let us embrace and nurture our traditions, but let us also not be afraid of new traditions, and change that finds new ways to support and build on our mission.  I see us reaching out to younger listeners and programmers, inviting them to participate.  Most importantly, I see us finding new ways to let our community know that WOMR is a relevant community resource, available to all.  The more useful we are, and the more service we provide to the community, the more support and new energy we will receive in turn.  These elements will enrich us, and help us to thrive and grow. 

Thank you for inviting me to join the WOMR adventure.  I look forward to the next chapter.