The WIDE-LP story

WIDE-LP 99.1 FM is "Neighbor Radio" in the Orchard Ridge Neighborhood of Madison WI
An FCC licensed low power radio station has been broadcasting in the Orchard Ridge neighborhood of southwest Madison since late September of 2008, and at its full 100 watts of power since April 2009. The transmitter and broadcast computer are located in the garage of Bob and Barb Park's residence at 5610 Hammersley Road, near Whitney Way. During the day the broadcast antenna can be seen above their garage roof, and after dark a string of lights shaped to display the station's broadcast frequency, 99.1 FM, can be seen lit up under the eve by their garage door. This noncommercial volunteer operated station can be heard on car radios at distances of up to several miles from the transmitter location, and in homes within a mile or so of the transmitter on FM radios equipped with antennas. (One listener on the south end of Whitney Way in Fitchburg could not get the station at first, but after putting up her antenna wire said the station came in "loud and clear".) Background In 2001 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accepted applications for Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations around the country. According to the LPFM rules as mandated by congress and implemented by the FCC the central Madison area had only one available frequency. Seven organizations applied for this frequency. These organizations fell into two groups, nonprofit organizations and Christian church organizations. In order to facilitate cooperation among these groups, the nonprofits and Christian organizations formed representative groups. The Christian organizations formed the group now called SoulWIDE Radio and the nonprofits formed CityWIDE Radio, Inc. All of the original applicants requested that the FCC allow these two organizations to share the single frequency by dividing the broadcast day between the two groups. The two organizations also created a daughter organization, Madison Mainstream Radio (MMR), to own and operate the transmitter and antenna. This organization does not create any of the programs broadcast by the station but limits itself to tasks that are common to the two organizations, including holding the license and call letters (WIDE-LP) issued by the FCC. The board of MMR is nominated by the two parent organizations (SoulWIDE and CityWIDE) and the funding for MMR comes from the two parent organizations. Final approval to begin broadcasting came from the FCC at the beginning of October in 2007, but transmitter equipment still needed to be purchased or borrowed. We used rented equipment for a 2 week period of test broadcasting from a house on Gregory St. in west Madison in late Oct. 2007. FCC regulations limit potential locations for our transmitter and broadcast antenna to a narrow north and south corridor through west Madison because of the distance we must maintain from full power stations using the same frequency in Dodgeville and Milwaukee. Two possible antenna locations that looked promising at first did not pan out. Faced with an FCC deadline for starting regular broadcasting under the 2007 approval, we decided to go with the Orchard Ridge location. By May of 2008 we had obtained a power source to allow us to stay on the air during a power outage, an FCC required unit enabling the broadcasting of messages sent via the emergency broadcast system, and some borrowed or donated second hand equipment that we hoped would allow us to start broadcasting from the Park garage. However, equipment difficulties delayed the actual start of regular 24/7 broadcasting until September 2008, and the equipment we began using then only allowed us to broadcast at about 50 watts of effective radiated power (ERP). Photos have been posted of some of the efforts leading up to the initiation of broadcasting from Hammersley Road. The purchase of a refurbished transmitter on ebay and the loan of another piece of equipment from the student radio station on campus finally enabled us to reach our allowed limit of 100 watts ERP in April 2009. What we broadcast The station currently has no studio and no live programming. Live announcements can be made from a microphone atop the equipment rack in the garage, but normally everything that goes out over the air is controlled by the broadcast computer, which is just an ordinary desktop pc. An Internet connection allows programming changes to be done remotely. The air time is divided 50/50 between CityWIDE and SoulWIDE, with SoulWIDE's time running from 10 pm to 10 am during the week and CityWIDE's time running from 10 am to 10 pm. The weekends are divided differently, with CityWIDE having a 36 hour block of time from 10 am on Friday until 10 pm on Saturday, and SoulWIDE having the 36 hours from 10 pm Saturday until 10 am Monday. SoulWIDE broadcasts music from a Christian perspective, and CityWIDE broadcasts a mix of music and talk programming. The CityWIDE website at http://citywidelpfm.org links both to the SoulWIDE website and to a WIDE Schedule page that shows the weekly broadcast schedule for the station as a whole. Much more detail about the CityWIDE talk programming is available through the page reached via the Talk Shows link. All the talk shows are listed there, and for those half and hour or more long the links lead to tables giving the topics of past and future programs, and the links in the tables allow listening to the programs online. Goals The goals of CityWIDE Radio are to provide information not readily available elsewhere on the radio dial and to respond to the needs and interests of listeners in the neighborhoods where we are heard. Neighborhood News at Noon makes time available each Saturday for news and events specific to southwest Madison, and there are always opportunities for local volunteers to get involved in programming decisions, etc., through the CityWIDE Radio Council. CityWIDE volunteers can be reached through the Contact Us link in the left column of the website or through the phone numbers or email addresses given in the right column of the website. Though music on SoulWIDE's broadcast is lyrically consistent with a Christian worldview, it is not a conventional Christian Contemporary music mix. SoulWIDE plays a wide range of genres and emphasizes local and independent artists, though not to the exclusion of artists on major labels. In the News CityWIDE Radio was featured in the Nov. 18, 2011 cover story on community radio in the Isthmus news weekly. The story is available online here and the cover here. A correction was published on p. 4 of the Dec. 2 issue giving the correct times when SoulWIDE is on the air. In addition, the first contribution under Letters on that page pointed out the subtitle error on the Nov. 18 cover, where "low-frequency" should have been "low-power". The full email requesting corrections was as follows: The most serious error in last week's cover story about community radio was in the following sentence just above the last heading: "With a few exceptions, an entity known as soulWIDE plays Christian music from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., followed by 12 hours of public affairs and specialty programming." WIDE-LP would appreciate it if Isthmus would print a correction and clarification. SoulWIDE's Christian music airs from 10 pm to 10 am weekdays, not the other way around. The weekend schedule is different. Our station operates as a partnership between CityWIDE Radio and SoulWIDE Radio, and each partner get half of the air time each week. On the weekend CityWIDE gets a 36 hour block of time from 10 am Friday morning until 10 pm Saturday night, and SoulWIDE gets the 36 hour block of time from 10 pm Saturday night until 10 am Monday morning. SoulWIDE programs only music and CityWIDE programs a mix of music and talk shows. The weekly schedule is shown online at http://madisonwi.us/WIDE-LP/schedule/index.htm. The cover also erred in the subtitle. It should have been "low-power radio", not "low-frequency radio". Two other errors are worth noting. The statement that there is "programming on Tibetan monks" is incorrect. There has never been any such programming on the station. The free lance reporter apparently misunderstood mention of attendance at early Radio Council meetings by representatives of the Tibetan refugee community in Madison, followed by webcasting of some programs they did on the Internet for a time, independent of WIDE. Finally, while one of the partners involved in running the station is "religion based", the other partner has never been "an organization of atheists". The other partner, now operating under the name CityWIDE Radio, has been a coaliton of secular nonprofit community groups.

WIDE-LP 99.1 FM is "Neighbor Radio" in the Orchard Ridge Neighborhood
of Madison WI

An FCC licensed low power radio station has been broadcasting in the Orchard Ridge neighborhood of southwest Madison since late September of 2008, and at its full 100 watts of power since April 2009. The transmitter and broadcast computer are located in the garage of Bob and Barb Park's residence at 5610 Hammersley Road, near Whitney Way. During the day the broadcast antenna can be seen above their garage roof, and after dark a string of lights shaped to display the station's broadcast frequency, 99.1 FM, can be seen lit up under the eve by their garage door. This noncommercial volunteer operated station can be heard on car radios at distances of up to several miles from the transmitter location, and in homes within a mile or so of the transmitter on FM radios equipped with antennas. (One listener on the south end of Whitney Way in Fitchburg could not get the station at first, but after putting up her antenna wire said the station came in "loud and clear".)

Background
In 2001 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accepted applications for Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations around the country. According to the LPFM rules as mandated by congress and implemented by the FCC the central Madison area had only one available frequency. Seven organizations applied for this frequency. These organizations fell into two groups, nonprofit organizations and Christian church organizations. In order to facilitate cooperation among these groups, the nonprofits and Christian organizations formed representative groups. The Christian organizations formed the group now called SoulWIDE Radio and the nonprofits formed CityWIDE Radio, Inc. All of the original applicants requested that the FCC allow these two organizations to share the single frequency by dividing the broadcast day between the two groups.

The two organizations also created a daughter organization, Madison Mainstream Radio (MMR), to own and operate the transmitter and antenna. This organization does not create any of the programs broadcast by the station but limits itself to tasks that are common to the two organizations, including holding the license and call letters (WIDE-LP) issued by the FCC. The board of MMR is nominated by the two parent organizations (SoulWIDE and CityWIDE) and the funding for MMR comes from the two parent organizations.

Final approval to begin broadcasting came from the FCC at the beginning of October in 2007, but transmitter equipment still needed to be purchased or borrowed. We used rented equipment for a 2 week period of test broadcasting from a house on Gregory St. in west Madison in late Oct. 2007. FCC regulations limit potential locations for our transmitter and broadcast antenna to a narrow north and south corridor through west Madison because of the distance we must maintain from full power stations using the same frequency in Dodgeville and Milwaukee. Two possible antenna locations that looked promising at first did not pan out. Faced with an FCC deadline for starting regular broadcasting under the 2007 approval, we decided to go with the Orchard Ridge location. By May of 2008 we had obtained a power source to allow us to stay on the air during a power outage, an FCC required unit enabling the broadcasting of messages sent via the emergency broadcast system, and some borrowed or donated second hand equipment that we hoped would allow us to start broadcasting from the Park garage. However, equipment difficulties delayed the actual start of regular 24/7 broadcasting until September 2008, and the equipment we began using then only allowed us to broadcast at about 50 watts of effective radiated power (ERP). Photos have been posted of some of the efforts leading up to the initiation of broadcasting from Hammersley Road. The purchase of a refurbished transmitter on ebay and the loan of another piece of equipment from the student radio station on campus finally enabled us to reach our allowed limit of 100 watts ERP in April 2009.

What we broadcast
The station currently has no studio and no live programming. Live announcements can be made from a microphone atop the equipment rack in the garage, but normally everything that goes out over the air is controlled by the broadcast computer, which is just an ordinary desktop pc. An Internet connection allows programming changes to be done remotely. The air time is divided 50/50 between CityWIDE and SoulWIDE, with SoulWIDE's time running from 10 pm to 10 am during the week and CityWIDE's time running from 10 am to 10 pm. The weekends are divided differently, with CityWIDE having a 36 hour block of time from 10 am on Friday until 10 pm on Saturday, and SoulWIDE having the 36 hours from 10 pm Saturday until 10 am Monday. SoulWIDE broadcasts music from a Christian perspective, and CityWIDE broadcasts a mix of music and talk programming. The CityWIDE website at http://citywidelpfm.org links both to the SoulWIDE website and to a WIDE Schedule page that shows the weekly broadcast schedule for the station as a whole. Much more detail about the CityWIDE talk programming is available through the page reached via the Talk Shows link. All the talk shows are listed there, and for those half and hour or more long the links lead to tables giving the topics of past and future programs, and the links in the tables allow listening to the programs online.

Goals
The goals of CityWIDE Radio are to provide information not readily available elsewhere on the radio dial and to respond to the needs and interests of listeners in the neighborhoods where we are heard. Neighborhood News at Noon makes time available each Saturday for news and events specific to southwest Madison, and there are always opportunities for local volunteers to get involved in programming decisions, etc., through the CityWIDE Radio Council. CityWIDE volunteers can be reached through the Contact Us link in the left column of the website or through the phone numbers or email addresses given in the right column of the website.

Though music on SoulWIDE's broadcast is lyrically consistent with a Christian worldview, it is not a conventional Christian Contemporary music mix. SoulWIDE plays a wide range of genres and emphasizes local and independent artists, though not to the exclusion of artists on major labels.

In the News
CityWIDE Radio was featured in the Nov. 18, 2011 cover story on community radio in the Isthmus news weekly. The story is available online here and the cover here. A correction was published on p. 4 of the Dec. 2 issue giving the correct times when SoulWIDE is on the air. In addition, the first contribution under Letters on that page pointed out the subtitle error on the Nov. 18 cover, where "low-frequency" should have been "low-power". The full email requesting corrections was as follows:
The most serious error in last week's cover story about community radio was in the following sentence just above the last heading:
"With a few exceptions, an entity known as soulWIDE plays Christian music from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., followed by 12 hours of public affairs and specialty programming."
WIDE-LP would appreciate it if Isthmus would print a correction and clarification. SoulWIDE's Christian music airs from 10 pm to 10 am weekdays, not the other way around. The weekend schedule is different. Our station operates as a partnership between CityWIDE Radio and SoulWIDE Radio, and each partner get half of the air time each week. On the weekend CityWIDE gets a 36 hour block of time from 10 am Friday morning until 10 pm Saturday night, and SoulWIDE gets the 36 hour block of time from 10 pm Saturday night until 10 am Monday morning. SoulWIDE programs only music and CityWIDE programs a mix of music and talk shows. The weekly schedule is shown online at http://madisonwi.us/WIDE-LP/schedule/index.htm.
The cover also erred in the subtitle. It should have been "low-power radio", not "low-frequency radio".

Two other errors are worth noting. The statement that there is "programming on Tibetan monks" is incorrect. There has never been any such programming on the station. The free lance reporter apparently misunderstood mention of attendance at early Radio Council meetings by representatives of the Tibetan refugee community in Madison, followed by webcasting of some programs they did on the Internet for a time, independent of WIDE. Finally, while one of the partners involved in running the station is "religion based", the other partner has never been "an organization of atheists". The other partner, now operating under the name CityWIDE Radio, has been a coaliton of secular nonprofit community groups.

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