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| Women broadcast community radio |
Jacoba Charles
2008-03-27 |
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KWMR’s small studio in Point Reyes Station is a deftly arranged space filled with CDs, plants and posters, with sunlight filtering in through a skylight. A tower of recording and transmitting equipment blinks and flashes in the back corner beside the on-air studio’s glass door. Volunteer programmers can be seen inside at most hours of day and night, with others preparing for their shows at the main room’s round, wooden table.
At the heart of the activity are the cubicles of the program director Lyons Filmer and the development and events director Adrienne Pfeiffer, two of the station’s three full-time employees. Kay Clements, the station’s manager and music director, works in the administrative office next door and is the other full-time employee.
“I had no previous radio experience, just a love of being in the area and finding a way to have fun and contribute,” said Clements, who keeps the physical plant of the station running smoothly and can be seen around town with her little border terrier, Pete.
The three women each started as volunteer programmers at the station before being offered paid positions.
“A good friend and I thought, as music fans, ‘Oh gosh, how could you not get involved with something this exciting,’” said Pfeiffer, who likes to wear fresh flowers in her punk-rock pigtails. “The first step was becoming engaged in what happens here. All of us are still on the air as volunteers, which is separate from our job descriptions.”
KWMR has continued to grow and evolve since it was first founded, in 1995, as a small station only available on Horizon’s cable network.
“The station was on the air just a few weeks before the Inverness fire,” said Filmer, who has a smooth radio voice and often wears her own textiles, such as knitted scarves.
“Being a source of information in times of emergency has been important from very early on.”
Both Clements and Filmer first volunteered on the air before the station began to be transmitted over the airwaves on May 2, 1999. Clements first hosted a show in 1995 and was hired as station manager in 1998. The following year, Filmer volunteered to read on air once a month, and in 2000 she took over as program director from Muriel Murch.
Both Filmer and Pfeiffer said that finding a place at the station was unplanned.
Pfeiffer, who has spent a lot of her life in Bolinas, was hired as an employee when the station gained funding for development in 2003. “I started here in the office about three days before we went on the air in Bolinas,” she said. “It felt really serendipitous.”
Filmer worked at her college radio station and later spent most of the 1990’s as a volunteer at KPFA. She mainly worked in the women’s department and the drama and literature departments. Now, she sometimes draws her interests in agriculture, food politics and textiles into her profession through on-air interviews.
Pfeiffer said that her history in events, performing arts, music and media gave her an ideal background for working in outreach at the station. She is in two local bands (Pink Sabbath and the Snake Oil Saviors) and wrote a music column for two years. “It was a really nice marriage of all the things that I’ve done,” Pfeiffer said. “But a big part of why I enjoy working at KWMR is that it really does serve the community.”
The women running KWMR (along with the news editor Andrew Shaw and chief operator Richard Dillman, who work there part time) aren’t the only ones who share that sentiment. Though the number goes up and down, the station usually has over 100 volunteers contributing about 85 percent of the live programming – more than usual for a community radio station.
Filmer said that working with the hosts to create the concept and shape of programs is one of her favorite parts of the job. “I help them put their various interesting ideas in the format of a radio program – using sound elements to help enhance the space of their show, refining their voices and choosing theme music.”
There was a short classical interlude playing on KWMR as I drove in to work on Tuesday morning. Cruising past the willows near Marin Sun Farms and then around the bend at Gallery Route One, I was struck with the idea that the radio waves are everywhere – whether you have a receiver to hear them, or not. In a very real way, this local station saturates the community of West Marin. Sure, we are also part of larger communities as well – you can hear KPFA and KQED and various other stations – but only KWMR is ours, alone.
“KWMR brings together what have been disparate townships within West Marin,” Pfeiffer said. “I feel a really strong sense of duty to this community because I love it so much.”
KWMR always welcomes new volunteers! If you want to get involved, contact Lyons at programming@kwmr.org
By Jacoba Charles |
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