7#49;39: : : : : :.X:::: : :::x:;$ ;D;k*;: ;k;\;k;k;%;k;k;k;k;k;kStrong Signals North Carolina's WNCW is One of the Most Popular "Local" Radio Stations in Town by Jack Neely It was a rumor hereabouts for yearsthere was an unusually diverse radio station out of Carolina that you could pick up just outside Knoxvilles electromagnetic clutter, on Chapman Highway and some other places when the conditions were just right. A station like wed always wished for that mixed classic bluegrass with bebop and new rock n roll with crypto-folk. For most Knoxvillians, it remained just a rumor, like the outlaw X stations in Mexico. It was not quite a year ago that our scan buttons began to stop unexpectedly at a new spot on the dial: 96.7. We began listening to music we never expected to hear on the radio in the middle of the day, such as John Coltrane, Iris Dement, James Brown, Bill Monroe. Thats because this North Carolina radio station found out that people in Knoxville were listening to their signal. They leased a ten-watt translator tower on Sharps Ridge in North Knoxville and began calling our city part of their proper radio family. Now many consider this out-of-state interloper Knoxvilles best local radio station. Making Waves WNCW is in Spindale, N.C. Spindales not just barely over the border, within some theoretical Knoxville metropolitan area. Spindales almost as far from here as Nashville. Depending on the condition of the interstate, it can easily take you longer to get there. In fact, its a over an hour southeast of Asheville, where the mountains start to flatten out on the Atlantic Ocean side. Spindales much closer to Charlotte than it is to Knoxville. The accents already changing there, and so is the weather. Spindale isnt well known. But if it were, it would be known as the home of Isothermal Community College. They named the college for the nice weather there, where the temperature allegedly doesnt top 80 or dip under 40. The school is a couple of miles away from downtown, a placid suburban-style community college on the banks of a pond called Lake Imogene, where white ducks and geese while away their idle hours. The college trains about 1,500 students, many of whom look like, and probably are, rural teenagers. Its a commuter campus, with big parking lots. Theres no artsy college-town feel about the place. But the campus, like it or not, is home to one of Americas most talked-about alternative radio stations. WNCW has no big sign, no big tower. You might have to ask more than one student where to find it. Its in a one-story back wing off one of the more remote buildings on campus, a fluorescent, strictly utilitarian place built in the 1980s to serve Isothermals new vocational radio program. The walls are cinderblock, painted white. It could easily pass for a radiologists office. That is, until you get to the busy back part of the building, which is not quite so sterile, with postcards and posters of Tom Waits and Natalie Merchant. Like most radio stations, WNCWs studios look like theyre in the process of being ransacked, with piles of CDs, a sofa out in the hall, a desk just outside of an office. And music, whatevers on the radio. But these office workers get to decide whats on the radio. This afternoon, its Wars rowdy funk classic, Cisco Kid. The man who does a lot of the deciding is Dan Reed, a big guy in his 30s who could probably do a convincing Rush Limbaugh impression if he were so inclined. Hes new, from Cincinnati, where hed been music director at the river-crossing alternative station WNKU. Hed heard good things about WNCW for years. He says WNCW is famous nationwide as one of the country's four or five best stations in the Adult Album Alternative format. Its contemporary-sounding radio that encompasses a world of music, he says. Its geared toward an older audience, with a wide range: 25-54, sometimes skewed even beyond that. A lot of people say this station reminds them of what AOR was in the 70s. Youd hear John Coltrane on AOR, youd hear good countryand all album tracks. Then the powers that be started tightening things up, and they started playing Loverboy, Survivor, Night Ranger. Its no wonder people want an alternativewho can listen to that crap? Reed had never heard WNCWs signal until this past summer, in Knoxville of all places. Reed has ancestral links to Knoxville and even Jellico, but he was here just because he was driving along the interstate to North Carolina to interview for the job. The guy who hired him was station manager Burr Beard. Originally from Pittsburgh, he worked on an eclectic-programming station up there. He doesnt look old enough to have gotten his masters at Chapel Hill in the early 80s, but when he did he heard about a new radio instruction program at Isothermal, and signed up. WNCW started about ten years ago as a project by the Board of Trustees of the modest community college, purely as a project to enhance Isothermals proposed radio and TV curriculum. Isothermal president Ben Fountain was determined to provide rural North Carolina with a forum for indigenous, rural music. Burr Beard added his broader interests to the mix. After a journey to D.C. to get NPR approval, and considerable red tape, WNCW went on the air in October, 1989. Indigenous music was one of WNCWs original missions, and its still an important part of the programming, especially on the Spindale-originated Crossroads shows. Crossroads is something like a philosophy there; DJs talk about it like architects talk about postmodernism. Its an especially eclectic mix that weaves in a good share of regional music. To Burr Beard, Crossroads creates a sense of tension, a challenge to respond or react. Like Robert Johnson, Down at the Crossroads. DeLane Davis, a North Carolina native whos the stations development director, has a somewhat less daunting description of the eclectic mix. If you dont like the song thats playing, she says, wait. Youll like the next one. The original listenership was described by acronym in the call letterswestern North Carolina. In response to demand from a larger community, WNCW began installing transmitters to better serve surrounding communities. Early last year, they began reaching beyond those boundaries, first to Charlotte in the east. Soon the readers of Charlottes alternative paper were picking WNCW as their favorite local station. Then, crossing state lines, WNCW reached out to the west, and Knoxville. Local Tunes Knoxville renaissance man Dwight Magnuson is a veteran engineer with a masters in nuclear engineering who became more interested in a the older technology of radio. Its the same stuff, applied differently, he says. Its math and physics. Neutrons or electricity, it doesnt make any difference. He procured a couple of radio towers on Sharps Ridge and began working with local radio stations to enhance their signals in Knoxville. A couple years ago, one of his clients was the proposed Knoxville community station WDVX. Working with them, he heard about an ideal community radio station, WNCW. Magnuson found he could tune it in as he approached town in his 84 GMC pickup on Chapman Highway from his home in Seymour. I thought it was great, he says. They offered such a variety, for every tastejazz or rockabilly or Motown. I even heard some classical music, once, a long time ago. As the WDVX project fizzled, Magnuson heard WNCW was interested in expanding into the Knoxville market. He offered his lofty ten-watt translator. With the capable help of Channel 10 engineer Don Burggraf, Magnuson brought Spindales eclectic mix to Knoxville. Magnuson listens to WNCW in his one-room walkup on the east side of Market Square in downtown Knoxville as he scrutinizes topographical maps covering the southern Appalachian region. His radio is a 1960s Heathkit transistor model. Nearby is another radio receiver, a walkie-talkie that crackles occasionally. Hes intrigued with the notion of a new medium for regional music. A long time ago, radio really reflected the character of the region, he says. The way radio stations are today, the musics determined by computers and surveys that identify the 18-26 market for males. Hes interrupted by the walkie-talkie, which breaks through with a loud but unintelligible voice. Magnuson apologizes and turns it down. Im a firefighter, he says, as if its the most ordinary thing in the world for a guy with two engineering degrees on his wall to do a little firefighting in his spare time. If theres a fire in Seymour today, this nuclear engineer in downtown Knoxville needs to know about it. After 25 years as a professional engineer, Magnusons ambition is now to be an emergency medical technician. Hes back in college to get a degree in nursing. Its an outlet for good musicians who dont meet the commercial criteria, musicians who dont get airplay on commercial stations, and certainly dont get airplay on classical stations, he says. He talks of WNCW as if its the spiritual heir to the East Tennessee stations which launched the careers of early country stars. Tuning In Despite Magnusons best efforts, WNCW is not easy to pick up in all of Knoxville, especially in suburban homes. The signal is concentrated in the central city, downtown, campus, maybe a couple of miles beyond, but on a good day in a car you can pick it up clearly well outside that circumscribed listening area. Its easier to get in cars, Beard says, because a moving vehicle can tune in a spotty signal more smoothly. Youll probably need to stretch out your antenna more than you do for most local stations. Magnuson recommends a ten-dollar Yagi antenna, available at Radio Shack. Just be sure to aim it at Sharps Ridge (thats north of downtown and UT). But even without a special antenna, Magnuson says hes picked WNCW up clearly as far away as Douglas Lake. Remember, the signals only ten watts, hardly more than a typical AM station in the 1920s. For the immediate future, that will have to do; WNCWs not planning any expansion or enhancement in the immediate future. Cutbacks in federal funding are one concern, of course. But one that may be even bigger for Knoxvilles share of the pie is the electromagnetic traffic that already crowds the lower part of Knoxvilles FM dial. The FCC licenses public stations mostly at frequencies at the left end of the FM band. But here theres already one powerful signal (WUOT), another lesser one (WUTK)and a channel 6. The FCC is especially conservative about licensing public stations in markets where theres a channel 6. Any other channels finebut if theres a 6, it makes for interference in the nether regions of the FM band. Even WUOT has to rely on an expensive and complicated system to circumvent the Greystone beast. Still, WNCWs been gratified to get support from the Knoxville area in terms of call-in requests (all long distance, of course, at the callers expense), pledges, and even fund-raising help. Several Knoxvillians made the drive over to Spindale to help with the stations last fund drive. Beard is determined to prevail in spite of threats to federal funding. If it comes down to it, he believes, the stations fans are so loyal and vigorous that WNCW could survive even a Helms-case scenario. Spindale may be the focal point of a new community thats hardly been acknowledged before. Since 1790, theres been an artificial boundary (supplementing the natural one) along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, the spine of the Appalachians. Though culturally and topographically we have more in common with western North Carolina than we do with Middle Tennessee, were just not used to thinking past that line. However, thanks to WNCW, were now hearing about events in nightclubs weve never heard of in Asheville, Charlotte, and Greenville. And for the first time ever, people in central and western North Carolina are hearing about Knoxville musical and cultural events. WNCW co-sponsored Knoxvilles first-ever Old City Folk Festival in August, which attracted attendees from North Carolina. Their mother transmitter on airy Mount Mitchell has engendered a new way of looking at culture. Usually, the cities are the central market, says Beard. Most media markets emanate from the inside out, drawing the hinterlands into the city. Were outside in. But were trying to go to people where they are, not asking them to come here. At the beginning, Beard admits, we didnt know this community concept would exist. We just knew we had a hell of a reach. Magnuson thinks thats only natural, and overdue. On his topographical maps, the southern Appalachian Mountains are much more obvious than state lines or metro areas or congressional districts. Maybe the signals coming through. The folks at Spindale say that during their last pledge drive, early this month, they got more commitments from Knoxville than theyd ever had before. And the other day, Magnuson says, an attorney friend of mine said, Dwight, youve got to listen to this new station uz ;߂D.rĂ܂vnnnnnnnnnnnnnnw{ӂx4v‚Ԃ#$ #lろ%A-1AutoDetailersAirportMazdaburCarWasheCleanMachineRMasterCareCarService>MichaelTire1TireStore[PepBoys^PitCrew10MinuteOilChangeYTireAmericaX-pertTuneILU#$494< @@`aop5?  s 7 pZ[\hiB &!7#v$$$$'+Z-G.02?33494  3949%0T39PT@Pk@P@4<49HH(FG(HH(d'`=/R@H-:LaserWriter 8 New York(((EE%wncw Jophus Scone Jophus Scone