WMCB radio show featured in Valley Advocate

Tom Sturm of the Valley Advocate

visits DJ Jeff Valluzzi

Behind the Beat:

Toasting the Top of the Dial

Greenfield's WMCB brings music and more to the northern Valley.

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Thursday, June 18, 2009
By Tom Sturm

Tom Sturm Photo

Much as the print medium has evolved in the last several years, the medium of radio has, after hauling its mass out of the swamp of iron-clad commercial airwaves, begun to grow legs and tentacles of all shapes and sizes. What people choose to listen to comes from ever more numerous sources—podcasts, low-wattage community radio stations and, increasingly, "smart" shuffle-services like Pandora.

To some extent, the "50,000 watt flame-thrower" stations are being edged out by smaller, more local content providers or pummeled by the worldwide reach of Internet radio. Some approaches are even combining both in a one-two punch of local/global saturation, at the same time quaint and insidiously clever.

Such is the case with Greenfield's WMCB (107.9LP), though it weighs in at a relatively scrawny 100 watts and only barely dribbles its signal out to the border of the next town over. A stepchild of Greenfield Community Television and still in its infancy, the station already has a full slate of content provided by a small army of volunteers and maintains diverse programming that essentially allows anyone who's up for the effort to shape their ideas into reality. Shows range from music to poetry to commentary on local politics and community issues, and are produced on increasingly state-of-the-art equipment; audio elements at the station include shared and hand-me-down items from GCTV's classic Homegrown broadcast, currently produced by sound and video engineer Travis Roy.

DJ Jeff Valluzzi has brought much to the Pioneer Valley in the way of music; indeed, one could even say it was music that brought him to the area in the first place. Valluzzi rolled into town years ago with his New Hampshire homeboys Barry Daggett and Matt Dube (who often fills this space with words for the Advocate) and a guy named Shisty, calling themselves Pop*A*Wheelie—a band name whose eminently type-able asterisks betrayed his affinity for visual art as well as music. Pop*A*Wheelie rocked the Valley primarily from the late '90s to mid-2000s (the album The Shape of Fuzz is a local rock must-have), and the group still gets together now and again to make a joyful noise. After a stint at Boston's MassArt, Valuzzi, a talented painter and portraitist, returned to the Valley, got married and moved to its northern fringe.

Recently Valluzzi enthusiastically related that he had a show at WMCB (an acronym for Western Mass. Community Broadcasting). After various scheduling failures (hey, people travel a lot in the summer), I managed to set up a day to sit in on his show, The Indie Rock Boom Box, and even got to play guest DJ.

The Boom Box is a great mixture of old and new, with enough local music thrown in to qualify as a Valley music support mechanism, and has a host whose knowledge of musical catalogues is extensive, diverse (within his self-imposed format), and always open to suggestion. Now on his 23rd weekly show, his only wish is that the program could also be podcast on the Internet so his efforts could be appreciated farther afield, if even only in the "lower" Pioneer Valley, where most of his friends live. With any luck, his prayers may be answered; according to GCTV station manager Scott MacPherson, Internet podcasting is high on the list of priorities for MCB, and may well become a reality in the next few months.

"It's a different music license to broadcast an Internet program," MacPherson explained, "so it's been a little tricky. We'll work it out, though."

The station also hopes to start approaching sponsors and underwriters in the near future to help pay for some of the expenses incurred in production and broadcasting.

In the meantime, anyone within about 10 miles of Greenfield center can tune in to 107.9 and hear the station's broad variety of programming, including The Indie Rock Boom Box on Fridays from 9 to 11 p.m. (after Democracy Now). Local videophiles can also check out the other cool stuff going on at parent entity GCTV on their website at www.gctv.org.

We're going on line.

Thanks to generous underwriting support by Franklin Community Co-operative, WMCB will be able to afford to broadcast on the infamous world wide web. We also have underwriting support from the Greenfield Local Cultural Council. Expect to see and hear spots for both in the near future.
We have been on the air now for over a year and I am continually gratified by the quality of the programs we have been attracting from local residents. I personally would love to hear feedback from anyone who listens to WMCB. I also want to stress that we encourage the participation of any member of our community who has a desire to produce a radio show. If you have any questions or feedback, you can email me at wmcbfm@gmail.com.

Drew

Ad hoc meeting notes

The ad hoc committee which is responsible for operating WMCB met Sunday evening at the home of member Daria Fisk.
In attendance were Daria, Michael Pollitt, Tom MaClean, Andy Mathey, Drew Hutchison, and new members Jackie Rose and Marian Kelnor.

We prioritized several projects, and handed out assignments.

Andy Mathey is taking over as trainer for live DJs.

Jackie is working on DJ development.

Daria and Marian are working on collecting dues, and getting volunteers connected to tasks. In addition, Daria is taking over on organizing files, while Andy Mathey is going to build or obtain a system similar to cubby holes for inter-station communication .

Drew is going to head up fundraising, and will update the web site more frequently. In a related venture, Drew is linking our site to blogspots of DJs.
Any DJ can send a link to WMCBfm@gmail.com. Drew is happy to help any DJ create their own blogspot.

Next meeting of the ad hoc committee will be at the home of Jackie Rose, on Sunday April 26, 6-7pm. A general meeting will be held immediately after, followed in turn by a fab pot luck.

Questions or comments should be directed to Drew via wmcbfm@gmail.com.

Coming soon to a blogspot near you.

WMCB is looking forward to offering play lists and news and info for each show heard on the station. Blogger is a great tool which allows those with minimal experience to create a page dedicated to their radio program. We can link each of these to the WMCB main page. I will be available to train station members in this endeavor, and can be reached at wmcbfm@gmail.com.

Mea Culpa

It has been a very long time since anyone has posted on this site, and for that, I offer my humble apologies. WMCB 107.9 lp in Greenfield has been operational for a while, and offers a veritable plethora of original community programming.
The ad hoc committee which oversees operation of the station has been recently reconfigured, and I anticipate greater volunteer coordination in the months ahead.

I have been discussing with Scott the use of blog spots for each producer to market their show, in addition to documenting play lists.

Scott is also going to order some t-shirts, which will be handed out to paid up members.

We continue to have new producers join, or express interest.

queries can be sent to wmcbfm@gmail.com.

More later,

Drew

WMCB-LP: A Work in Progress!!

Although this Blog may not reflect it, WMCB-LP is still alive and kicking!

We are up and running, airing our share of locally produced live programming and one of the best automated playlists of local music in the Pioneer Valley, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Through the incredible efforts of a small handful of volunteers--and the hard work of GCTV's Technical Director, Scott MacPherson-- we've managed to meet the FCC's deadline for getting on the air, to train the first group of "live" broadcasters, and create a beginning schedule of programs produced live from downtown Greenfield.

Now, here's the rub. It is obvious that the work to be done to reach our goal of providing a real broadcast alternative to the mainstream media is much more than can be done by the efforts of just a few people. It can only be done with a larger group of folks dedicated to making a difference.

A couple of months ago, we posted links to the WMCB-LP Handbook and Training Manuals on this Blog site in the FAQ page. At that point, the Ad Hoc Steering Commitee had envisioned WMCB as a membership organization fueled, in part, by the membership fees and volunteer commitment of its members. We are now at the point where this needs to become a reality.

In the near future, we will be generating a general emailing to all the folks on our list with an attached membership form. At this point, we hope that folks will step up to plate and officially become members of WMCB-LP by filling out the form and returning it to us with the appropriate membership fees. ($25/year for iindividuals, $40/year for households/groups)--and an indication of what skills and abilities they can bring to us in fulfilling their volunteer commitment (2 hours a month).If you're reading this, and aren't on our cuurent list, please email us at wmcbfm@gmail.comJust Put ADD in the subject window--and we'll take it from there!

So, if you're someone who is interested in more than listening to the radio, if you want to help make it happen, now's the time.

As the say in the Radio World, "Stay tuned! There's more to follow."

meeting place changed for July 3rd

The steering committee for WMCB will hold our meeting at 6:30pm at Greenfields Market on July 3rd. The public is invited to attend.

Lance Smith named operations coordinator

Steering committee member Lance Smith has been named "operations coordinator" by Chairperson Drew Hutchison. Lance has experience in community radio and TV, and has volunteered to take on an increased role in daily operations.

Meeting location changed

Many members were unable to attend the WMCB meeting on 6-19-08 because the door to the building at 393 Main St was inadvertently locked shortly after 6:30pm. To avoid this issue for the time being, the next meeting will be held on July 3 6:30pm at the Winterland Club on Hope St.

Fortunately, we were able to hold a productive meeting, especially in regards to fund raising. Tom Roulston has joined Penny Ricketts as co-chair of the fund raising subcommittee. He has a wealth of experience in operating a non-profit theater company in the Boston area for more years than I have fingers and toes.

It was decided that we needed to create a membership form which would allow us to streamline our data collection, and communication with members. Members already in our data base should expect to receive an email in the future regarding this issue.

Training is proceeding in the studio, though we are experiencing a bottle neck in preproduction. Lance Smith is working on this problem.

Jim Hannigan has been unable to work on sound proofing the studio recently due to health issues, but he reports that he is much improved, and will be moving full steam ahead.

As expected, some members are dropping out due to time constraints, while we continue to pickup new recruits every week. Members have not yet been asked to pay their yearly dues, and we are still working on a system to tabulate volunteer hours and activities.

In essence, we are still finding our way, and I would like to express my gratitude to all of you who have been working to make community radio a vibrant reality in Greenfield.

Drew

Steering Committee Meeting June 19

The steering committee of WMCB will hold a meeting at 6:30pm in the GCTV main studio at 393 Main St Greenfield MA on Thursday, June 19th. As always, the public is encouraged to attend. The agenda will include reports from each subcommittee.