END OF AN ERA
WNPV Radio preparing to go off air April 30
TOWAMENCIN » When April ends, the airwaves above the North Penn valley region will be emptier, and so will a little brick building on Snyder Road in Towamencin.
Sitting below five 165-foot-tall radio antennas and one cell tower, that brick building has been the home for six decades of WNPV, the local radio station found at 1440 AM and 98.5 FM.
“We’ve been at it for 60 years, and our mission and our core values are really no different today than they were in October of 1960. It literally is to serve the community,” said Phil Hunt, the station’s General Manager.
“It’s gotten to the point where it’s not sustainable for us to continue to do that. It takes resources to do it properly; those resources, primarily, are people, and we were having trouble making ends meet,” he said.
Hunt announced Wednesday that WNPV will go off the air on April 30, bringing an end to an era of live, local news that began on Oct. 17, 1960. The station’s coverage of local sports, politics, breaking news, and key issues have earned dozens of awards, a handful of which greet visitors as you walk past an old teletype machine through the station’s front door.
“We have eight full-time people, and a handful of part-time people, and the interesting thing is that, though we’re not a huge staff, the average employee has been with us for 24 years,” Hunt said.
“We’ve been able to attract — and, as importantly if not more importantly, retain — some of the best broadcast professionals anywhere. To think that a community-based radio station in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, has been able to do what we’ve been able to do for 60 years, and have what we consider is top-quality programming, is pretty remarkable,” he said.
Staff learned Monday of the plans to shutter the station, and all have pledged to stay together until the final day. Hunt said any other station or organization would be lucky to have them.
“I have asked the staff to make a commitment to stick with us to the end, and we’ve made that commitment to our audience, and to our advertisers,” Hunt said.
“We will not change our programming between now and then. We will program exactly the same way we programmed yesterday, a year ago, or two years ago. To this point, I know of no staff member who’s leaving, and I know of no advertiser who’s cancelled an ad buy,” he said.
The announcement has drawn reactions from far and wide on social media, including contact from station alumni across the country sending best wishes to staff there now.
“The support has been overwhelming. You always wonder how much of an impact you’re having, and it takes something like this to realize we do,” Hunt said.
It’s still too early to know what will happen to WNPV’s equipment, infrastructure, broadcast license, radio frequencies, and their 13-acre property, but Hunt said the announcement of the final day on air may lead to future developments.
“We have had a number of people express an interest in this station, in the past two days. And where some of that has come from, has been surprising. I’ll leave it at that,” he said.
One question asked most often by visitors is: Does the station really broadcast from a house?
“For the hundreds of Cub Scout tours I gave over the years, the very first question the Scout have when they walked in the door was, ‘This doesn’t look like a radio station?’” Hunt said.
“When it was being built in 1959, prior to us going on the air in October of 1960, the township said ‘Yes, you can have a radio station, but you have to build a building that matches its surroundings. What was here? Small, little farmhouses. So this building has never been anything but a radio station,” he said.
During a visit Thursday afternoon, WNPV announcer Chuck Irwin was stationed inside the control room, watching a bank of monitors and dials where he’s worked, nearly every day, since June 1988.
“He was in radio before that, so Chuck is a true example of a radio professional —” Hunt started, before Irwin jokingly interjected, “fossil,” as Hunt continued: “and we’ve been grateful to have him.”
“That’s been our commitment all along: ‘to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.’ That’s not my words, that’s verbatim from the Federal Communications Act of 1934. That’s what radio stations are supposed to do,” Irwin said.
Community members have shared “massive quantities of tears” after hearing the news, Irwin said, but he’s grateful to have been able to provide afternoon news shows every weekday and his big band-themed “Echoes of an Era” show on Sunday nights since 1994.
“It’s kind of like being a dirigible pilot now, but back when I started, it was the business to be in. Radio was still a viable commodity, when I started in the mid’60s,” Irwin said.
“AM radio was on the top of the heap then. As time went on, FM took over. We have an FM transmitter now, which we were hoping would help, and it did, some, but the business has changed so much,” he said.
When Irwin broke into the industry, federal regulations allowed for more local ownership, instead of national or global companies owning large numbers of stations.
“Back when I started, you were only allowed to own seven AM radio stations, seven FM radio stations, and seven TV stations, in the entire country. That changed in the 1980s,” he said.
“The diversity of ownership was kind of taken away from the business, and I think that’s an important part of serving the public: having different owners of stations, instead of one owner owning all three stations in a market,” Irwin said.
Shifting from tapes to digital has made their work easier in many ways, Hunt and Irwin said: instead of splicing together tape, programs can be clipped and saved with just a few clicks, and overnight coverage can be programmed and breaking news or weather alerts inserted with much less manpower.
“We haven’t had snow lately, but when it snowed, we have people who slept here, overnight, on the floor, so they were able to tell the public what was going on,” Hunt said.
“It wasn’t that long ago that we were the only way the community found out if there was school that day,” he said.
Lansdale borough councilwoman Mary Fuller recalled those days at the close of Wednesday night’s council meeting, saying she’d always tune in to 1440 when snow was on the way.
“It’s sad for me to see yet another news outlet cease to function, particularly local radio. I know many of us, as young people, took great joy on snowy mornings, listening to WNPV in hopes to hear our school name be called, because I could never remember the number of my school,” she said.
“The end of April will be the end of an era, so I want to extend my thanks and appreciation for all that WNPV has meant to this area. For 60 years, they were the voice of the North Penn area. I’m saddened about that, and I’ll miss it,” Fuller said, before adding thanks for Hunt and his staff.
According to information provided by the Lansdale Historical Society, WNPV was originally a division of Equitable Publishing Company, publishers of The Reporter, until the newspaper was sold in 1980 and the station spun off to ownership by the Knipe family, which owned the paper. John Skibbe, son-in-law of paper owner George W. Knipe, then became station manager and was eventually succeeded by Hunt, his son-in-law, who has worked at WNPV for 43 of the station’s 60 years.
The station’s coverage area has always extended beyond the immediate North Penn area, according to Hunt: WNPV can be heard in the Lehigh Valley, in Chester County, across the Delaware River, and in Philadelphia, but news coverage has always been centered on Lansdale.
“We don’t cover news in the Lehigh Valley, but when we carried NASCAR auto racing for over 20 years, it was not on a Philadelphia radio station, and in recent years it wasn’t on a Lehigh Valley radio station, so with specialty programming like that, the public couldn’t hear it on the radio anywhere else,” he said.
The local business community has always supported the station, Hunt said, and the station has always been grateful for their support.
“Our advertising dollars come from the successful businesses in the community, that are locally owned, and those businesses have the same commitment to the community that we did,” he said.
“We’re here to serve the public. If you serve the public properly, the public will buy your wares, or listen to your radio station, and that’s one of the biggest reasons why we have been able to be successful for 60 years,” Hunt said.
No formal plans are in the works yet for programming changes, public open houses, or retrospectives ahead of the final day, but Hunt said programs developed for their 50th anniversary in 2010 may be updated accordingly. Employees have also just started to discuss ways to stay in contact via social media, or get together with alumni in person before the final day, to reflect on the station and its successes.
“People have asked me, ‘What do you think you’ve really done well?’ I think we’ve done local politics better than anyone,” Hunt said.
“We have had so many political debates, and so many election night coverage of results, that — I’m biased, but I don’t think anybody did it better,” he said.
Coverage of state sports championships for North Penn and Lansdale Catholic High Schools have also been highlights, he added, as have fundraisers for local nonprofits, like the con