State of the Station – WCOM

Jacques Menache is launching a series of Live Broadcasts with as many guests as possible to be held every week-day from 1 to 2 pm through Thanksgiving. You will be the Hosts. So will I. It is called the State of the Station and it will address what I consider to be a crisis of identity here at WCOM. We have to renew or to die. Unless we renew, we will not survive the next twenty years. With the proliferation of social media, podcasts, Youtube channels, Spotify, to name just a few, is there a need for our community radio station? Indeed, does anyone listen to the radio anymore?

Contact: jmenache@aol.com

WCOM AT THE CROSSROADS

Dear Friends, Loved Ones, WCOM Community, Fellow Artists and Musicians, Town of Carrboro Staff Members, Town Officials, Orange County officials, Comrades.

WCOMFM is a unique community radio station with studios situated in the brand new Drakeford Library complex in Downton Carrboro, North Carolina.

Ruffin Slater, Founder of Weaver Street Market Coop, and Jacques Menache, Founder of the ArtsCenter,  formed this low power radio station and Djs Cooperative twenty years ago, DJ Tofu Dave is another surviving founding member.

Low-Power means 100 watts; With a car radio antenna it barely covers all of Carrboro and some of Chapel Hill.  Without the internet WCOM would have not survived twenty years.

The Question now is:  With the internet, can WCOM survive another 20 years? 

In other words:  What is the relevancy of a community Radio Station in these times of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Podcasts, just to name a few platforms readily available. The local listener-supported Radio Stations specialize in Jazz, Classical Music, Syndicated news and Talk shows.  The Commercial radio stations specialize in: well, commerce.

We would like to be relevant to the community.  Can  we broadcast the results of the local baseball games? the new books in the library, the events at the artscenter, the interviewing of local candidates and the result of elections.  What are the new bands and the local concerts, the gallery openings, and the local festivals, the food scene and the local restaurants and their foods, the local hispanic community and their challenges,  the local climate events, the events of the farmers market, the current thinking of the LGBTQ community.  Interview the  people behind all these communities. 

 Will anybody stream or listen to us? We propose a series of on-air interviews to explore precisely the Relevancy of your community radio station. We will record these interviews, transcribe them, and distribute them to as wide an audience as possible.  We will invite all the people and organizations we address this letter to:  you.