WXPI brings much needed Community Radio to Lycoming County in North Central PA!

You may have heard of the City of Williamsport, in rural North Central Pennsylvania, as the site of the Little League World Series. That’s our town’s one claim to fame. If you’ve ever seen that annual event on TV, you might think that our community is mired in tradition, arch-conservative, and all-white, and that everyone here listens to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for news and to country or so-called Christian music for entertainment. After all, we’re located in what’s been called the Alabama of Pennsylvania. In reality, our city is a lot more diverse. Williampsort is about 20% African-American, with about seven thousand students in two local colleges, a Democratic majority in voter registrations, and Jewish, Buddhist and Muslim congregations. But you’d never know any of that by listening to the radio.

In 2008 The Williamsport Guardian—an alternative bi-monthly newspaper published since 2005—obtained a construction permit from the FCC to build a full power radio station. Williamsport Community Radio is scheduled to be on the air by June 2011, at 88.5 FM, with programming that’s unique in North Central Pennsylvania. It will be volunteer-powered, listener-supported, non-profit, progressive and educational.

Williamsport Community Radio is dedicated to the progressive values of community, peace, justice, democracy, human rights, respect for all people and the environment, social change, and freedom of expression. Ambitious but worthy ideals and ones we don’t hear much about in the mainstream media. For instance, the Marcellus Shale gas fracking is a major concern for lots of local people, but the local mainstream media (controlled by the Chamber of Commerce) talks only about the jobs created by this radical process and ignores the environmental dangers posed by the arrival of Halliburton and the other gas-drilling corporations. We’re a diverse group of local residents united in our desire to hear more diversity on the radio: new perspectives, alternative news, local music, different types of music. The options for diversity are huge, since there’s so little on the region’s airwaves.

We have a lot of work to do in the next year to make sure that we’re up and running before the FCC turns us into pumpkins. We face obstacles presented by local mainstream media and other members of the Chamber of Commerce that are threatened by the likes of us. We’ll be bumping a station currently transmitting on 88.5, a translator from a so-called Christian station in Pensacola, Florida, that carries hate-filled, supposed news. But we have a dedicated group of volunteers—activists and musicians, seniors and students, architects and electricians—and we’re determined to make WXPI a reality.

For more information about the station, email wxpiradio@gmail.com or call 570-974-3101. And check out our starter website, www.wxpiradio.com or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.