[grc] Happy anniversary to WINGS!

[Lisa Rudman]

*Happy Anniversary Frieda!  WINGS has been an early and often inspiration
to me. *
BTW let me know what you think of this week's show from Making Contact's
Women's Desk on Violence Against Black Women in US and Indigenous women in
Yucatan.We're doing a Tweet Chat (branch) about those issues on thurs 21 do
you tweet? join in!
*I am so so tempted to run away to women's media camp :-)  --Lisa*

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Lisa Rudman, Executive Director, *Making Contact*
Radio show and podcasts at www.radioproject.org
& www.facebook.com/makingcontact
twitter.com/Making_Contact


On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:52 PM, Frieda Werden <wings at wings.org> wrote:

> Beloved community radio people,
>
> 29 years ago, the very first episode of WINGS was released on the Public
> Radio Satellite in the US. The pilot was produced at Western Public Radio
> in San Francisco by Augusta del Zotto, Katherine Davenport, and me, and it
> included 13 news stories (!).  The pilot was funded by a director's
> discretionary grant from Sandra Rattley at the NPR Satellite Program
> Development Fund, Thanks, Sandra!
>
> Sadly, the SPDF was very soon de-funded by CPB.  When WINGS applied to CPB
> in 1987, we were told "this is an idea whose time has passed."  Apparently
> not!
>
> Thanks to a small travel grant from NFCB, Katherine and I attended the
> AMARC meeting in Vancouver in 1986.  That connected us to the international
> community radio movement, so that we gained more international contributors
> and also international subscribers. We also started to realize that
> community radio was the place where we'd find the minds and ears and
> station programmers that liked us, rather than Public Radio. WINGS won a
> Golden Reel from NFCB for coverage of women's conferences in our first
> year.
>
> In the fall of 1987, we signed a contract to distribute weekly (on open
> reel) via Longhorn Radio Network at the University of Texas.  But most of
> our station subscribers were not on Longhorn  or on the PRSS, so we bought
> a bunch of cassette decks and dubbed to them from our Otari MX 5050B open
> reel editing deck, mailing out the shows two per cassette in padded
> envelopes with paper show descriptions enclosed.
>
> In 1994 the Otari gave place to a digital audio workstation. Also in the
> '90s we signed a contract with Pacifica to be on their ku-band satellite.
> In those days, we had to dub our shows to DAT tapes and mail them to
> Berkeley for uplink, because cassette sound was not considered good enough.
>
> Over the years, cassettes gave way to CD duplicating and mailing, and
> finally to distribution via internet - to community radio satellites,
> community radio program download sites, and direct to some subscribers
> using email.
>
> Thanks so much to hundreds of contributing producers around the world for
> making our programming so diverse over the years, and thanks to many
> stations in various countries that air WINGS.
>
> Extra special thank yous to the sustaining community radio stations that
> contribute annually so that WINGS can continue to pay honoraria to
> contributing producers.  In the past year, these have been: KCSB-FM in
> Santa Barbara, KGNU in Boulder, KMUD in Garberville, KRZA in Alamosa,
> KKFI-FM in Kansas City; WORT-FM in Madison; WERU and WMPG in Maine - all of
> them some of the greatest stations around. We're proud to be on your
> lineup. And welcome to new sustaining subscriber KMUZ in Salem, Oregon,
> which is starting to carry WINGS on June 1 :)
>
> I recently retired from working as a campus-community radio station exec
> here in Canada, but I'm in great health and spirits and plan to continue as
> series producer for WINGS into the foreseeable future.  However, I am on
> the lookout for future successors. As always,WINGS is recruiting new
> producers and new stations.
>
> I'm also looking forward to having visits from radio folks at my new home
> on beautiful Denman Island BC Canada.  My partner Suzette and I are hosting
> our first-ever Women's Media Camp starting July 29.  Info:
> www.facebook.com/womensmediacamp
>
> Come up and see us some time!
>
> Yours in community media solidarity,
> Frieda
>
>
> --
> Frieda Werden, Series Producer
> WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service
> wings at wings.org
> www.facebookcom/wingsradio
> www.facebook.com/womensmediacamp
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