WVEW aims to broadcast by Sept. 2

July 25, 2006

By DANIEL BARLOW, Southern Vermont Bureau, Rutland Herald

BRATTLEBORO — The town's newest community radio station received a local permit last week that allows for the installation of an antenna.

Organizers of Brattleboro Community Radio hope to begin broadcasting late this summer.

Brattleboro Community Radio, which plans to broadcast from a downtown studio at 107.7 FM, has until Sept. 2 to turn the construction permit received by the Federal Communications Commission in March 2005 into a broadcasting license.

That means getting the volunteer-run, commercial-free music and talk station on the airwaves, "or else Brattleboro will never have a community radio station again," said Ken Brace of Townshend, a member of the Vermont Earthworks board, a local nonprofit that applied for the license five years ago.

"I don't know how we can afford to miss that deadline because it is so important," Brace said on Monday. "We've got 50 program hosts all trained and ready to go. The studio is 90 percent complete."

The Brattleboro Development Review Board gave the station site plan and local Act 250 approval to install the antenna on July 17, according to Alice Herrick, the zoning administrator. Board Chairman Craig Miskovich, the replacement for former chairman David Gartenstein, who stepped down due to term limits last month, did seek to reduce the tower's size.

Herrick said Miskovich and the review board set a requirement that the aluminum antenna, which likely will be installed on the roof of the Brooks House in downtown Brattleboro, be only as high as needed to reach the FCC-regulated broadcast limit.

It turns out the antenna size requested by WVEW — 30 feet tall and 11 inches wide — is the minimum required to broadcast, Herrick said.

"The DRB was hoping they didn't need all that height," she said. "But it turns out that if you chopped off two feet, it would affect the strength of the tower."

Brace said he hopes to have the antenna installed after the first week of August if the project receives Act 250 approval. After that, the station has until Aug. 17 to begin the process of applying for the broadcast license.

Brattleboro Community Radio, or WVEW as it also is known, is a successor to radio free brattleboro, a 10-watt community station that took on the FCC in a three-year legal battle after the agency shut it down for broadcasting without a license.

That fight, which centered partly on the argument that communities have the right to control their local airwaves, ended in defeat in April for the 8-year-old station, which had been shut down by the government in summer 2005.

Brace said the WVEW founders were inspired by rfb, but applied for the license because the sustainability of the unlicensed station was not clear.

"We thought we should apply during this small five-day window for a low-power FM license if things didn't go well with rfb," he said. "And four years later — surprise — a construction permit arrives in the mail."

Setting up the station, which will occupy the same studio apartment in the Brooks House as rfb, buying new equipment and working through the local and state approval processes, will cost about $30,000, Brace said.

The station will be funded through donations and dues from members, but Brace warned that funds are tight now. He expects donations to increase once the station goes on the air.

Contact Daniel Barlow at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .