Indy Radio hopes to bring ‘culturally relevant’ content

By Jordan Kline - Daily World writer

Friday, April 13, 2007 11:56 PM PDT

DAILY WORLD / This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it In the inaugural broadcast, Gary Murrell of Hoquiam, right, takes a call on his show “What’s Left?” Indy Radio manager Sandi Woodruff operates the board.

But to some, “worldly” is a euphemism for liberal, and Woodruff doesn’t deny Indy Radio’s programming will be left-of-center.

“To me, news is liberal in nature,” she says. “Emotions don’t require information, they just require your gut feelings, and that’s the right wing. By its nature news is going to be liberal because it’s for people who want to make their own decision.”

Woodruff admits that the programming will appeal to a small portion of available listeners, mainly middle-aged people who still listen to radio. “We’ve got probably 25,000 people that can probably hear the signal, and of those, probably half of them are going to hate what they hear,” she laughs.

“Lets face it, we’ll probably get maybe 1 to 2 percent of the listenership here on the Harbor. One in ten people reads a newspaper these days, and I’m hoping that we can get one in ten of those people who don’t read a newspaper and give them something they will listen to.”

She’s not aiming to provide the antithesis of conservative radio, known for its boisterous, loud hosts and opinion journalism.

“I don’t want to get the screaming flip side of Rush Limbaugh. Air America can do that stuff because they’ve got the resources. This is a very purple area in terms of its politics, and we’re hopefully servicing the people who really want to hear something other than commercial news stuff and NPR.”

The syndicated programs come into a computer, and Woodruff has set up automation so the programs will run without interrupting — no warm bodies needed. “It’s as simple as setting up a playlist,” she says.

But she says listeners will hear a few minutes of dead air or some mistakes here and there as some of the kinks are ironed out of the program schedule.

Because the overhead is so low, she hopes to scrounge up enough money from listeners and corporate underwriters to at least break even. “For now, funding is all coming out of my pocket,” she said.

In radio since 1971

Woodruff says she’s been doing radio since 1971, when the government of British Columbia, Canada, paid her to run a small station “in the middle of nowhere.”

After getting her foot in the door, Woodruff says she bounced from small station to small station, learning more about all aspects of the business. “I did a little news, a little disc jockey work and a lot of the fixing of the equipment. It seemed like every little radio station I went to was in total disrepair. If I wanted to do anything, I had to fix whatever machine it was,” she said.

Eventually she ended up as an engineer at KFWB 980 AM, a Los Angeles news station. But its brand of news coverage was less than desirable for Woodruff.

“I had to leave eventually because it just got so depressing. As an engineer I had to listen to the station all the time. It gets to you after a while because it’s just so gloom and doom and who killed who, what was blown up, and it sells, but I just couldn’t handle it after a while,” she said.

Thirteen years ago, she moved to the Northwest, and took engineering jobs wherever she could “because it pays better than anything.”

Now, she’s devoted to getting Indy Radio off the ground. Her experience in Los Angeles made her want to separate the station from typical news radio, which she says covers “nothing more than what the cops did last night” and a sprinkling of local politics.

Some local news

“Cop shop news is entertaining and gets listeners, but that’s not really where I want to go,” she says. Other than Murrell’s show, there will be local news in the mornings and at lunchtime, but she says the station doesn’t have the resources for consistent beat reporting.

“There’s interesting stuff going on here, for instance the Junction City mill controversy. That’s a good talk provoker because how far can you tap somebody before he says ‘screw you, I’m leaving town.’ That’s the kind of thing I want to get people thinking about and covering all sides of the issue, and it’s the stuff Gary wants to do as well,” she said.

Murrell said the Harbor was in dire need of a station like Indy Radio. “I intend to bring local issues onto the radio station, news that’s of interest to this area. I want to do book reviews, and bring all kinds of people into the station that have never been on talk radio around here before,” he said.

No ax grinding

At the same time, she doesn’t want to flood the airwaves with Harborites who have a political ax to grind.

“I’m actually trying to stay away from the DJ model of radio, because I’ve been in that model before and things just got too political. I’m not looking for people to come knock on the door and say, ‘I want to play hip hop for two hours.’ There’s all kinds of possibilities for that in town because there’s so many frequencies. But I’m trying to do something that’s more culturally relevant. I want to give people who want to hear more news the chance to here that,” she said.

Woodruff has been busy securing translator stations for Indy Radio as well.

“Our main 94.3 FM signal will be listenable throughout Hoquiam and much of Aberdeen on an inexpensive radio.

“Our main translator is near the Coca Cola plant. … It’s at 94.7 FM and should be listenable in south and central Aberdeen and Cosmopolis on an inexpensive radio, and from Ocean Shores to Central Park in a car.”

Indy Radio can also be heard on 92.9 FM in Olympia, Tumwater and parts of Lacey, and 92.9 FM in Ocean Shores. It’s also available to stream online at nwindy.org.

‘Big media’ friend

Woodruff also received some help from an old friend in “big media.” Bill Wolfenbarger, president of Jodesha Broadcasting has let the station hook an antenna to the roof of KBKW’s Aberdeen studios.

She says that Wolfenbarger initially feared an influx of low-power FM stations, but eventually realized they wouldn’t be competing with his stations.

“He’s a kid from around here and he dragged himself up from his bootstraps and ended up back here with, let’s face it, a rag-tag operation in Raymond, and he built it up and turned it into something. I have a lot of respect for anyone that can do that especially in a market as tough as this one. It’s not like I’m out after his revenue or anything because it’s not the same pool at all,” she said.

Woodruff doesn’t have big dreams about Indy Radio. She wants to keep it simple and hopes to make a little profit in the process. “If we can just keep it on the air that’ll be enough. If we can just make enough for gas money to commute down here every so often, that’ll be great,” she said.

Jordan Kline, a Daily World writer, can be reached at 532-4000 ext. 111 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .