Congressional Record—Senate S1532
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S1532 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE February 28, 2006 The bill addresses protections for cer- Eric Michaels, Radio Vermont’s gen- lived in WDEV’s broadcast area (which ex- tain so-called isolated streams and eral manager and vice-president, every tends south to Route 4 and north nearly to wetlands in the wake of the Supreme month during his daily morning show. the Canadian border) to listen to the station for even a few hours without hearing the Court’s 2001 decision in Solid Waste The connection that WDEV and the voice of someone the listener knows. It Agency of Northern Cook County v. voices it carries have to the commu- might be Dan DiLena reading his menu from Army Corps of Engineers and will help nity is as distinctive and unique as the Red Kettle in Northfield or Ben Koenig to ward off any future legal challenges Vermont is to our country. of the Country Bookshop in Plainfield sing- to the scope of the act. Vermont Life recently published a ing about his store in a hokey Caribbean ac- Our Nation’s streams, ponds, isolated well-crafted piece, ‘‘Community Radio cent. It might be Ed from Morrisville, wetlands, and other bodies of water are Speaks,’’ featuring the history and phoning in to ‘‘The Trading Post’’ at 6:30 too important to not take action to highlights of WDEV’s 75 years on the a.m. to sell an old-fashioned grinding wheel and a prickly pear cactus. It might be a protect them. We owe future genera- air. birthday wish going out to someone the lis- tions nothing less than healthy waters. I join my fellow Vermonters in con- tener works with. Or a caller to any one of f gratulating Ken, Eric, and all the peo- the talk shows: ‘‘The Mark Johnson Show,’’ ple who, in 75 successful years, have WDEV: SOUNDS LIKE HOME Morrow’s ‘‘True North’’ or progressive activ- made WDEV a station with a true ist Anthony Pollina’s ‘‘Equal Time.’’ If you Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, 2006 touch for its Vermont audience. listen to WDEV long enough you will get a marks the 75th anniversary of a true I ask unanimous consent the article sense of what your neighbors are doing and Vermont treasure. Locally owned and be printed in the RECORD. thinking. Which is a pretty good way to not operated, WDEV of Waterbury, VT, There being no objection, the mate- only define community but to keep it alive and well. first came to the airwaves on July 16, rial was ordered to be printed in the At the heart of this rich local stew is the 1931. Its continuing and expanded pres- RECORD, as follows: station owner and president, Kenley Dean ence in Central Vermont and the [From Vermont Life, Spring 2006] Squier, who, at 70, has made a national name Champlain Valley ever since then is a for himself (and was part of two Emmy- COMMUNITY RADIO SPEAKS rare and stellar example these days of award winning broadcast teams) as a tele- (By Marialisa Calta) the invaluable resources that inde- vision broadcaster covering stock-car racing ‘‘Rural radio is important to people,’’ in- and other sports for CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN, pendent, community-based media can tones Eric Michaels in his mellifluous radio- offer. Fox, Turner Broadcasting and the Speed announcer’s voice. He is taking a break from Channel, among others. Squier is a walking WDEV station owner and President his duties as on-the-road producer of WDEV’s conundrum, a serious fan of jazz and clas- Ken Squier took the reins of WDEV ‘‘Music to Go to the Dump By,’’ broad- sical music with a deep background in the from his parents, Guila and Lloyd, who casting, on this particular Saturday in Sep- auto racing world of NASCAR. He is a man first operated the station at the same tember, from the Tunbridge World’s Fair. equally at home interviewing, say, Governor time my own parents were operating a ‘‘We feel that if we are out in the commu- Jim Douglas about fuel shortages or health small Waterbury newspaper nearby, nity, working hard, people will know us and care or hosting ‘‘Music to Go to the Dump and his parents and mine were friends. respect us. We take our work very seri- By,’’ and reading advertising copy (includ- ously.’’ A cow in a nearby 4–H exhibit moos If things had gone differently Ken and ing, full disclosure, an ad for this magazine, loudly, and Michaels, fiddling with his equip- a sponsor). He employs an enormous—by cor- I might have had a media conglom- ment, sends a song over the airwaves, a porately held radio standards—staff of more erate in the making. Growing up in the country-western tune called ‘‘I Don’t Look than 30 yet he is famously cheap; Bryan station’s studios, Ken’s life was steeped Good Naked Anymore.’’ Pfeiffer, who cohosts ‘‘For the Birds,’’ (a in the culture and the craft of commu- There, in a nutshell, is the contradiction— show about birding), loves to joke about the nity radio. He understood WDEV’s role and the strength—of WDEV, which cele- single light bulb that Squier allows, the bulb in community life, and when he as- brates 75 years of broadcasting from Stowe that all the broadcasters purportedly have to Street in Waterbury this July. Smart local sumed operation of the station, his ap- share, unscrewing it from one broadcast commentary is mixed with ridiculous tunes. booth and taking it to another. proach to community-based program- Conservative local pundit Laurie Morrow’s It is not unusual for Squier, in a single ming became the foundation of the sta- show, ‘‘True North,’’ broadcasting an hour or broadcast, to support the death penalty, tion’s lineup. Today the residents of two before nationally known liberal icon criticize the Bush administration and ful- Waterbury and its surrounding commu- Amy Goodman’s ‘‘Democracy Now.’’ Patsy minate about the rise of corporate monopo- nities turn the dial to WDEV to find Kline, the Texas Tuba Band, stock car racing lies. His station may broadcast conservative everything from a trading post to buy from Barre’s Thunder Road and Harwood Ann Coulter and independent Congressman and sell their goods and treasures, to Union High School boy’s basketball share Bernie Sanders in the same morning. ‘‘It’s as airspace with Miles Davis, Red Sox baseball, such off-beat program offerings as if Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken shared a state legislative reports and Mozart. brain,’’ wrote McKibben. ‘‘Music to Go to the Dump By.’’ WDEV It’s the place on the dial (550 AM, 96.1 FM ‘‘His watchword is ‘relevant,’’’ says Mark is the place to go for everything from and 96.5 FM) where a Vermonter can tune in Johnson, who has been hosting a two-hour local news to high school sports to for the Dow Jones average of the milk prices. weekday call-in show on the station since school closings. It has become a vital Where the Associated Press delivers news 1998. ‘‘It’s all about what’s meaningful to the source of news, information and enter- from the world, and Bethany Dunbar, an edi- community.’’ tainment to its devoted audience. tor at The Barton Chronicle, delivers the And you can describe ‘‘meaningful’’ in dif- WDEV is an authentic piece of the news from the Northeast Kingdom. ferent ways. The All Men’s Moscow Marching A listener whose normal fare comes from Transistor Radio Band, for example, depends Vermont that we cherish. ‘‘dedicated’’ channels—all-sports, all-talk, on WDEV to provide music for its parade up Under Ken’s guidance and initiative, all-country-music, all-jazz—and who acci- the main street of the village of Moscow WDEV has broadened its scope, becom- dentally tuned in to WDEV might find the every July 4th. Farmers depend on weather- ing the anchor for the Radio Vermont station bewildering, if not downright schizo- man Roger Hill’s forecasts for haying. Kids Group, which now operates stations de- phrenic. But, as Middlebury College pro- tune in on snowy mornings to hear about voted to classical and country music, fessor and author Bill McKibben points out, school closings. Representative Sanders re- as well as news, sports and community the hodgepodge of views, opinion, musical calls that once, when he was on the air, a events. It has taken to the web, where styles, reports (sports, business, agriculture, station newscaster interrupted him to in- politics, news) pretty much reflects the form listeners about an accident on Main WDEV now streams two of its most hodgepodge of views, opinion, musical tastes Street in Waterbury. popular morning news programs, ‘‘The and interests that make up the average Squier was born to radio; for Christmas Morning News Service’’ and ‘‘The Mark Vermont community. 1935, his parents Guila and Lloyd Squier Johnson Show.’’ McKibben, who included WDEV in a story (then the program director) sent out a holi- Ken has shepherded WDEV through about the virtues of a life lived on a small day card depicting the infant Ken in front of the years with his acute sensitivity to scale that he wrote for Harper’s Magazine a set of building blocks spelling out the call the local perspective. I have always en- two years ago, said that when you listen to letters WDEV. The station itself was only joyed stopping in to the station for a the station ‘‘you hear . things that other four years old, having been started in 1931 by people are interested in.