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Apr 4

IF THIS WERE AN ORDINARY RADIO STATION…

This is Your Life, WAFR

Advertisement for WAFR’s second annual fundraising marathon from Durham’s Carolina Times newspaper, 1973

WAFR and WVSP were no ordinary radio stations. Amid a media landscape that was overwhelmingly commercial, both stations were non-commercial.  They depended on neither advertising revenue nor funding from any established institution like a college or university.

Raising the funds needed for a non-commercial broadcasting was far from easy, however.  These stations survived for years on a mix of modest federal funding, grants, and listener donations from regular fundraising campaigns.  But WAFR and WVSP both eventually folded largely due to the overwhelming and constant challenges of raising adequate funds for maintaining station operations.

But as long as they were on the air, both stations never let their audiences forget that they were listening to non-commercial radio, as the audio clip from WAFR’s 1975 fundraising marathon demonstrates.

(Don’t see the audio player? Try Safari or Firefox. Or use the QR code below.)

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WAFR and WVSP embodied a participatory vision of media based in local communities.  At both stations, volunteers without any prior experience in media could complete the necessary FCC-mandated training that allowed them to host their own shows on the air.  Volunteers accounted for a large majority of broadcasting hours at both stations.

The excerpt below from the April 1978 issue WVSP’s Dialogue invites listeners not only to underwrite programming, but to share recordings of meetings and lectures and even submit audio interviews of people on the street to the station, all to be played over the air.


Here is What You can Do Cropped, Dialogue, April 1978

Feb 20

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WAFR RADIO–DURHAM

In 1971, several young African Americans in Durham, North Carolina founded WAFR–the nation’s first ever public, community-based black radio station.  WAFR catered to Durham’s black listeners with politically engaged, Black Power programming that included jazz, funk, African music, selected local and national news, and even an African American take on Sesame Street’s Children’s Radio Workshop, called the Community Radio Workshop, whose staff is seen in the photograph above. Key WAFR staffers included Robert Spruill, Obataiye Akinwole, Ralph Williams, Donald Baker, and Kwame and Mary McDonald. Although the station ceased broadcasting after just five years, it left an indelible influence on activist media in North Carolina for years to come.

In the coming year-and-a-half, the Media and the Movement site will share interviews, photographs, audio recordings, and commentary on the media outlets and activists that our project examines.  Our preliminary work with WAFR of Durham, North Carolina and WVSP of Warrenton, North Carolina (both of which inspired the larger Media and the Movement project) gives us a perfect starting point for this undertaking.

Staff of the Children’s Radio Workshop, an African American interpretation of Sesame Street, gather in WAFR’s offices in Durham, NC.

Staff of the Children’s Radio Workshop, an African American interpretation of Sesame Street, gather in WAFR’s offices in Durham, NC.