Please Keep WCAI Right Where It Is
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From PRX and Transom, I'm Rob Rosenthal and this is Sound School. I'm in the parking lot at WCAI where I... things falling out of my car. I'm at the parking lot of WCAI, a public radio station in Woods Hole, and I'm going inside to track this episode of Sound School. And you should know that

The radio station is located in this incredible old building built in the 1800s. An old captain's house. Here is my key. Headed in. Oh my God, that door is so loud. It must be the loudest door in public radio. And that door is right next to two studios. And sometimes you can be in the studios and hear that door slam. But I guess that's one of the pitfalls of radio.

There we go. Studio doors closed. One of the pitfalls of working in a house. But the loud door aside, this location is pretty sweet. Kind of dreamy, really. So I'm in one of the studios at CAI where the talk shows are recorded. And I am so grateful that I have permission to track and hear. Even if from time to time I do hear the Martha's Vineyard Ferry or some damn tourist drive-by on a loud motorcycle. Let me get out my...

computer for my script. Longtime listeners to Sound School have often heard me say that Woods Hole is the radio center of the universe. And I kind of say that with a wink, but I also mean it.

There's the radio station, of course. There's Atlantic Public Media here in Woods Hole, and they produce the Moth Radio Hour, among other things. Transom is here too. In fact, the office for APM and Transom are right upstairs. I used to teach the Transom Story Workshop here in Woods Hole, down in an old fire station that was repurposed into a community building. I mean, for a small village of about 900 people year-round, Woods Hole punches above its weight when it comes to making radio.

But for a while, I stopped saying Woods Hole is the radio center of the universe. No particular reason. I just felt like it was time to move on from it.

However, maybe a keen listener or two noticed that I said it again recently, right at the top of the last episode. I did so because of some news. WCAI may need to move out of this building. In fact, as I tell you this, it's not may, but will move from this building unless the owner changes their mind. Back on October 25th, the staff at WCAI was told the building had been sold. The owner hadn't even told them it was for sale.

So the station had no say in the matter. The decision was just sort of dropped down from on high. And station staffers are miffed. So am I. Who's the owner, you ask? Well, it's WGBH, a public radio station in Boston that owns and manages WCAI and this building. GBH had the foresight and the commitment to help Atlantic Public Media launch CAI back in 2000. And they've been a supportive partner ever since. So talk about a punch in the face.

Now look, it could be said that a building is just a building. Good radio can be made anywhere.

To paraphrase a friend, have you seen the ramshackle public radio stations around the country? And I have seen some of them, so there's truth in that. But at the same time, a building stands for something, or at least this building stands for something, and I have a lot to say about it. I think it's a unique perspective, and I hope you'll hear me out because I believe no matter where you live and what kind of studio you work from, whether it's a ramshackle public radio station, a state-of-the-art podcast center, a closet,

or an old captain's house, there's a reason we do what we do, and I believe the place you do it matters. Listen. Back in the late 90s, I had a chat with a guy named Dennis Curley. At the time, Dennis owned a commercial radio station way up in Caribou, Maine, far northern Maine. The station was called WXCU. He told me that he advised his on-air announcers to picture themselves talking to neighbors over a backyard fence.

love that image. Seems to me like the perfect metaphor for how to think of audience for a radio station and a podcast too. The reason I was talking to Dennis is because I was doing some research for a class I was enrolled in. It was a year-long seminar at the University of Southern Maine called Sustainable Communities.

I could nerd out so hard about this class and the idea of a sustainable community, but I'll spare you that. Just take me out for a beer sometime and I'll regale you. But for now, because of what's going down at WCAI, I was reminded of a couple of things I learned in that class. Ideas that inform a lot of my thinking about radio and podcasting and just telling stories in general. I promise I'll keep it brief, but it's a little bit heady. So hang on.

A sustainable community is one that's, and this is probably an oversimplification, but a sustainable community is economically vibrant, ecologically healthy, and socially just. The thinking is, if you can get those three elements working in tandem, a community was on its way to being sustainable.

So I was in this class, and the whole time I kept thinking about radio, because, you know, it's in my bones. I couldn't help but wonder, what would radio look like if its mission was to contribute to building a sustainable community? What would radio sound like? You ain't gonna mess with them. Look at them. Look at that tail. And they're not messing with that swan, are they? Darlene from Mashpee, photographing a territorial swan. Look at that.

Yeah. He is pissed. That's what you're out here for. You ever see anything like that? Nobody is going to own this salt marsh but that bird. Nobody. You're listening to WCAI, local public radio for the Cape, Coast, and Islands. Online at capeandislands.org. Amazing.

So let me break down this idea of sustainable community even further. Stand by. Here comes some more nerdiness. One way a radio station might nurture a sustainable community is by contributing to social capital. The more connected we are to one another, the better we know the people we live with in a community, the more likely we'll be civically engaged. And civic engagement promotes the health of a community, makes it more sustainable.

A radio station can also cultivate a sense of place. The more in touch we are with where we live, like the better we understand the history and the ecosystem and the culture, the more likely we are to protect and preserve it. Which brings us back to that question, what programming could promote social capital and sense of place? What would that sound like? I'm Vicki Merrick. The Local Food Report's up now with Elspeth Hay. And this time, a Mashpee Wampanoag youth group works to protect a beloved fish.

17-year-old Isaiah Peters is worried about local herring. I went to get some herring. I got around like 15 of them and I was gutting them and then I realized halfway through that most of them, their roe, their eggs were just miscolored and like polluted. The roe was a pasty grayish pink color, not the vibrant range of whites, oranges and reds that Peters had seen in healthy fish. So it's like you can't even eat those fish after that because like they're so mutated and polluted that it's like you're

You're going to get sick if you eat it. So that's just a big sign of like what our ecosystem is facing right now. Peters took a picture and sent it to the tribe's Natural Resource Commission. Herring have been a dietary mainstay for Wampanoag people in spring. I have not heard anyone at WCAI or any public radio station really use this language, social capital, sense of place, sustainable community.

But I hear those values on air throughout the broadcast day at WCAI, with features like the local food report or the ongoing series of essays from naturalists called A Cape Cod Notebook. Here on this mile of sand that is West Dennis Beach, can't you just feel that breeze? That stretch between lifeguard chairs number seven and nine, that's sacred ground for me. It's where my extended family meets for one special weekend in summer. We all get together down there.

where my sons long ago chased seagulls and steered their skimboards across that tideline, and where my mom and dad sat there in their final years. Yes, it's true. Much of the programming on the station is produced elsewhere. Like most NPR affiliates, CAI is a pass-through for Morning Edition, All Things Considered, This American Life, Fresh Air, Snap Judgment, you name it. But peppered throughout are

are voices of local residents and reporters, like the daily talk show, The Point. Welcome to The Point. I'm Indy Todd. New England weather is not for the faint-hearted. Through the course of the year, we might have blizzards, nor'easters, tropical storms. Listeners hear local news stories produced by a handful of CAI reporters. Every five days, Lisa Kingston, a critical care nurse, drives to the Onset Pier to collect samples in the murky waters of Buzzards Bay. The

This is our oxygen bottle and this is our salinity bottle. In the summer, CAI produces the fishing news. And since Cape Cod is located smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic Flyway, a kind of highway for migrating birds, it totally makes sense the station airs a weekly bird report.

Yes, a weekly bird report. Literally, as I was sitting down to write this week's piece, a message came across the Cape Cod Birders texting app from one of the hardest working birders in show business, Mary Kelleher of Mashpee.

It included a photo of a small grayish bird. And speaking of local programming that makes sense, just a couple of blocks away from WCAI are two world-class ocean science organizations, the Marine Biological Laboratories and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Another Science Minute. These are some of the jars collected right on the crest of the underwater mountain range. Senior scientist Lauren Mullineaux at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

And there's a process to do the actual examination. Since I'm on a roll here pointing out all the things that WCAI does to sound local, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention sonic IDs. Short, 30 to 60 second audio portraits of people and place sprinkled here and there during breaks and programming.

Atlantic Public Media and WCAI invented them. In fact, several of these programs I've mentioned are produced as a collaboration between APM and CAI. That means the door here at the station is open to local independent producers.

So you take the Sonic IDs and all the other Cape-based programming I've mentioned and add regular updates of local news headlines and weather, and what you get is a radio station that sounds like home. Look, I grew up on Cape Cod. I went away for a while, 30 years to be exact. And even though CAI wasn't around when I was young, I instantly recognized it when I returned. It sounded familiar. Like, oh, I know.

I know these people. I mean, I regret a lot of things. I regret that I was a criminal when I was younger. How's that one? I regret that I'm a drug addict. How about that one? And I regret that I was mean to my mother a few times. That's a big regret as well. That's Joe from Hyannis. Well, look it. This guy, you know, just pulls right out in front of everybody like it was no big deal. I regret that he's that stupid. You're listening to WCAI.

To put it in broadcast jargon, WCAI is committed to localism. It's a tenet among broadcasters to serve their local community with programming tailored to the people who live within the footprint of the signal.

The philosophy of localism was much more prominent decades ago. It's waned over the years as more and more stations are owned by fewer and fewer people. Corporations, really, not people. And not by accident, during this time, radio programming has become much more homogenized, especially at commercial radio stations. A station in Ohio sounds pretty much the same as one in Idaho. And look, to be clear, this is true for a lot of public radio stations, too.

So I think WCAI's deep and long-term commitment to localism stands out. In fact, it's baked into the DNA of the station. Back in 2000, when CAI first signed on the air and the signal replaced the static at 90.1 FM, Jay Allison, the station's founder, said the very first word. Listen.

Jay went on to articulate a vision for WCAI. Our purpose is community service, a sane and respectful place to talk, an ear on the rest of the world, a crossroads in our daily paths where we can meet and gather and even create change. That is perhaps a lofty goal for a mere radio signal, but a radio signal has the singular ability to proclaim all our separate identities while it also spans our boundaries to bring us together.

And so it's fitting that a station with a mission like that would be housed in a home, right next to the Woods Hole Library and the Woods Hole Historical Society. An old home, solid, with good bones. And a home, by its very nature, suggests connection, suggests place. A home is rooted, familial.

That's why the news about the sale of CAI's building, CAI's home, was so devastating. So, Sam, this announcement seems to have come as a pretty big surprise to the station staff on Cape Cod. What is GBH saying about the reasons behind this sale?

Yeah. So they kind of released a statement to me saying that the station is operating at a deficit, much like many radio shows and newspapers around the country.

And basically saying that this would be done as a money saver, that with the sale of the profit, with the profit of the sale of the building, they could support kind of their journalism going forward.

And that was kind of the extent of their... As news of the sale spread throughout the community, Susan Goldberg, the CEO at WGBH, made a public statement to apologize for not being more open and to justify the selling of the building. She claimed the station was losing $500,000 a year, some $2 million over the last five years. Now,

Now, to the staff at WCAI, news of the deficit was just that, news. They say they hadn't heard about it. In fact, they claim they've been told by GBH they've met all the fundraising goals. And look, I'll be honest, I don't know what the truth is. I do know that like many public radio stations, WGBH is retrenching. Last spring, they reported a $7 million budget shortfall and they laid off 31 people.

Which leads me to wonder, what's really going on? What does WGBH really have in mind? In my darkest imagination, the sale of the building is just the first step of closing WCAI down and turning it into a repeater station for WGBH. Which, I should note, is a station dedicated to serving the greater Boston area, not the people living on a distant peninsula. But that's just me spinning out a worst-case scenario. What is true is that the station has to move.

And there's no doubt that WCAI could broadcast from another location. What will it be? No one knows. A storefront in a strip mall? An office park? We have those on the Cape. It's not all captain's houses and lighthouses here. So those are real possibilities. And if the staff at the station with the mission they carry in their hearts shows up to work at an office park, yeah, it's likely they'll continue to produce the same essential local programming. Or will they?

In time, will a new location and building, one that's more cookie cutter than of the place, seep into the mindset of the people who work there? Will Cape Cod sound more like Ohio and Idaho?

So I've been writing this essay in fits and starts over a couple of weeks. Sometimes I could find the words to say what I'm feeling. Other times I was too mad to write. But in that time, there have been lots of meetings and lots of public statements and lots of news reports. And nothing definitive has happened. We're still in the middle of the story, but the community has spoken. There's a fleet-footed effort underway to keep the station right where it is.

The Woods Hole Community Association, in an emergency meeting, voted to commit $300,000 toward the purchase of the building. And they've also secured commitment for nearly $2 million in funding from other sources. They've even gone so far as to say that if they acquire the building, the station can stay rent-free for a period of time.

As one member of the association put it, "We're not certain WGBH would even pause in the sale process long enough to allow the community a chance to buy it, but geez, we should try, right?" Well, trying it had some impact. In the latest news, it appears WGBH is willing to pause the sale process, and they said they're open to considering selling to the community association.

So sitting here in this studio, in this old house, I've been looking out the window as I tell you this story, and I can see tinges of blue ocean through the trees.

And I'm wondering if any of this, the surprise sale, the angst so many of us are feeling, the apparent belief that a station can be moved like some piece of backyard furniture, the need for a local nonprofit and others to dig deep into their pockets and throw a lifeline to save an important building. I wonder if I'd be telling you the story if the people making decisions saw WCAI and the captain's home it lives in as a crucial part of a sustainable community.

I can't believe it, but I found a copy of the final paper I wrote for the class on sustainable communities. It's called Beyond the Sustainable Moment, Backyard Radio in Maine.

I'm afraid to read it. I never like going back to something I've written. I'm ridiculously critical of my writing. But I encourage you to take a look. Perhaps you'll find some inspiration, some ideas for telling stories and producing programs that contribute to a sustainable community. You can find it at the post for this episode of Sound School at transom.org.

I've also included links to some of the programs I featured on this episode and links to a few news articles about the situation at WCAI, plus a link to Jay Allison's poetic rallying cry to save the old captain's house. Sound School is a production of PRX and Transom. Music in this episode comes from my friends at Stellwagen Symphonette,

I'm Rob Rosenthal in Woods Hole, where for now, it's still the radio center of the universe. We got out to Michigan on Lake St. Shee, a beautiful spot.

I hated the place the minute I stepped into it. I couldn't stand it. The late Mildred Huntington of Vineyard Haven. We finally got this place up right on the lake, very, very close, closer to water than this. I would walk down there, take a deep breath, and there's nothing. It's complete void. Didn't smell like salt water. No smell to it. I

I couldn't stand the place. I didn't like the food out there. You couldn't buy any baked beans unless you had the tomato sauce in them. I don't like beans with tomato sauce. You couldn't buy any salt-mixed pork so I could make a chowder. You couldn't buy any hardtack that goes with the chowder. You couldn't buy any New England rum, which Gail and I both liked to have a drink of at night. There wasn't anything about that place I liked. It was horrible.

You're listening to the Cape and Islands NPR stations.