WVVY: Island sound
By Jack Shea
Published: November 13, 2008
WVVY is organic radio, just the way the founders planned it.
Local roots may be the biggest reason that WVVY 93.7 FM, Martha's Vineyard's first community-run radio station, will celebrate its first year on air early next month.
The half dozen people who spent almost nine years creating the station did it with the belief that an organic approach would work; that mandating freedom and allowing the community to create the programming would serve it best.
The programming schedule reflects that it's working. Ten months ago, chasms of unfilled programming dominated the schedule and both DJs and programs were being recruited. Today 75 to 80 percent of the time slots offer slices of Martha's Vineyard's cultural vista. More than 40 Island DJs, many with eclectic, sometimes germinal and offbeat opinions, have taken to the air with their musical and creative passions.
Photos by Ralph Stewart
"This is authentic radio, the way it used to be 40 or 50 years ago," Bob Lee said this week. Mr. Lee is a founding father and the program director of the almost 94-watt 24/7 station.
The labor pains were difficult. WVVY chairman Maria Danielson worked relentlessly late last year to raise a reported $10,000 to construct an antenna tower, and to begin transmitting before expiration of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) charter that enables start-up community radio stations. WVVY went live December 6, 2007.
Ms. Danielson and the founders were literally racing the clock. The station had to be on air before year-end or its FCC license would expire. "If you asked me in mid-October last year whether there was going to be a radio station, I would have said there is no way," treasurer Jim Glavin recalled this week. "But a bunch of people just came out of woodwork. Some gave a little. Some gave a lot. It was all needed and the total was into five figures."
Since its birth the station has survived on love and passion, rather than cash transfusions common to startup commercial and even public radio stations. Growth continues to be organic, relying on the authenticity of fledgling programs like musician, songwriter and producer Willie Mason's Grandma's Basement to attract programs and listeners.
"Willie plays music he loves, and that he wants you to love," Mr. Lee said. Mr. Mason recruited West Tisbury's Tom Osmers to help him fill his Friday afternoon slot with a fish and farm report, a merger that provides listeners with a chance to hear a piece of music recently uncovered by Mr. Mason, followed by a weekly chat between Mr. Osmers and his friend Ernie, a mink farmer in Machias, Maine. Interspersed with updates of happenings on the land and waters around Martha's Vineyard, it sounds like a throwback. "I remember programs like that in New Bedford 40 years ago when fishing was king there," Mr. Lee said.
Asked for programming he would recommend to a first-time listener to measure the station's diversity, Mr. Lee was hesitant to single out shows but cited as examples Americana music programming such as bluegrass influenced music on Tuesday evening from Greg Marcella with Avalon and the intermingling of folk, R&B and other genre on American music represented on Black Out Thursdays at 6 pm.
Photo by David Welch
This week, WVVY-FM 93.7 premiers two new hourly radio programs hosted by actress and author Tessa Dahl, an outspoken, globe-trotting survivor of a fully-lived life that has helped form her fearless and very direct personal style.
Using her own life lessons, Ms. Dahl, in a controlled and perfectly correct British accent, hosts "Intimate View," an interview show on Tuesday afternoons at 1 pm, with Island celebrities and regular folks.
"Intimate View" began with the first of three recorded interviews between Ms. Dahl and her mother, actress Patricia Neal, 82, a film icon and a doyenne of Island culture for decades.
On Thursday afternoon, "Tell Tessa" begins in the same time slot. Ms. Dahl and sidekick P.J. Woodford of Che's Lounge will offer advice on everything, as Ms. Dahl says, "...from drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll, to why you can't catch fish, if that's what's bothering you."
Ms. Dahl adds, "We will begin interviews with these questions: what was the most important things you lost in your live; how did you lose them; and what did you learn from it."
Future interviews include: Kate and Livingston Taylor, Dr. Gerry Yukevich, Margo Datz, and Jamie Hamlin.
"There are all sorts of innocents out there who don't know they're in my sights," Ms. Dahl says, laughing.
"Why am I doing this? Because it's time. I feel equipped to give back to this community that has given me so much and helped me so much. I feel safe here," she says, adding that WVVY's approach fits her goals. "I love the people at WVVY and what they do."
Mr. Lee also mentioned Saturday night's "For Lovers Only," a two-hour segment presented by D.C. Rose, an officer in the Dukes County Sheriff's Department, as an example of diverse programming created by Islanders. "D.C.'s got a great voice and he presents a good example of our DJs because they are into their subject matter," he said.
Remote feeds are usual fare at WVVY. "Our studio is about the size of a broom closet," said Mr. Lee. "Thank God for technology. Most of the programs you hear come to you direct from the living rooms of our DJs," he said, laughing. He noted that Grace Clark, will be hosting "Grace's Place" on Wednesday afternoons via remote MP3 feeds from Antarctica, where she is researching with an environmental group.
Still, Antarctica to Aquinnah is pretty heavy work for a tiny radio station whose signal is sometimes difficult to get in Edgartown. "Listen to it on the Internet through our website - wvvy.org. Just click "listen," or use Shoutcast.com, our web sound administrator," Mr. Lee advised.
The station has done live performances from the Katharine Cornell Theatre and from Che's Lounge and this week premiers two shows by the same host, Tessa Dahl.
But if WVVY has found its creative course, the station still searches for a safe economic harbor. "It's still pretty much hand to mouth," said Mr. Jim Glavin this week. "I continue to be floored by the generosity of this Island, but we are perennially poor."
WVVY folks don't use terms like "brand" and "demographics," but Mr. Glavin sees a corollary between the emergent WVVY voice and its first fundraiser, The Aquinnah Music Festival, held in September at the Gay Head Cliffs.
The event was big, featuring acts from Aquinnah to L.A., and drawing an audience of 600 - but the event did not make money.
"Since last summer, my passion is the festival," said Mr. Glavin. "We did it to raise money for the station but that festival could go anywhere. It's got its own life. The energy that created the station created the festival."
Will there be a second annual Aquinnah Music Festival? "Ask me in a couple of months," Mr. Glavin said, adding the station's directors are preparing presentations to potential underwriting angels that could provide WVVY with a body to match the size of its heart.
Jack Shea is a regular contributor to The Martha's Vineyard Times.
