FTV: End of 2025 Update
It has been a few months since we last updated you on our quest for a new tower for WOAS-FM 91.5. Let us just say Mark and Matt from Range Communications are on the job, but they are also wrapping up their own projects as the winter weather sets in. As long as we don’t have to start studying the fine art of tower engineering, we are perfectly fine with broadcasting online and let them do the heavy lifting (more on this a little later). When our new 91.5 frequency was approved by the Federal Communications Commission just about a year ago, we didn’t know we would need a new tower. While not exactly what we had in mind for 2025-2026, we are happy (for now) to have the option of having our signal broadcast on Twitch via our website www.woas-fm.org . To wrap up the year 2025, it seemed to be a good opportunity to catch everyone up with all things WOAS-FM 91.5.
If you haven’t followed our little saga over the past couple of years, I encourage you to look back in our website archives for the full details. Suffice to say we lost our 88.5 frequency to a Class A Non-Commercial radio group in Marquette in 2021. As a Class D station, our frequency was fair game to be purchased at an FCC auction. Our path forward became ‘apply for a new frequency’ which we did with the help of Todd Urick at CommonFrequency.org. His generous donation of time and his inside knowledge of the whole process let us concentrate on fundraising for the new equipment we would need. It still took Todd nine months to process the paper work and to have the FCC approve the move. By the time we were granted the use of 91.5 FM, we had already remodeled the studio electronics (including a new broadcast board, transmitter, and equipment bay) thanks to generous donations we received from all over the country.
We pondered applying for a Class A license to prevent this kind of displacement from happening again. Todd’s suggestion that we ask Minnesota Public Radio’s permission to operate within the second adjacent channel to their Houghton affiliate at Michigan Technological University was a sound one. WGGL FM at MTU is in no danger of having WOAS interfere with their signal as we will only be broadcasting at 100 watts. A more powerful station would not be afforded the same opportunity. We are protected going forward as no Class A station would be allowed to take away 91.5 and we will not have to change from our current Class D license..
We were all set to take the last steps to change over to our new home near the end of June (by installing four new tower bays tuned to 91.5). Unfortunately, we discovered that many winters of water freezing inside the legs of our tubular steel tower had damaged the lower ten feet. We called in Matt from Range Communications in Marquette to evaluate the situation and his grim assessment was pretty bleak: “DOA – there is no way to repair this damage,” he told us. We had a few brief moments of panic before our technical team of Jim Bradley and Al Harrison began brainstorming. My uninformed input went something like this: “We spent nearly $19,000 on new equipment, the last $7,000 of which needs to go on a tower to do us any good. I have no idea how much a tower would cost or if we could source another used one, but we have come this far. We can’t let something ‘simple’ like needing a new tower derail us now,” (and yes, the last part was said as a matter of faith that we would be able to do just that). In other words, just when we thought we were in the last miles of the marathon, we noticed the path ahead was suddenly a lot steeper than it had been before we discovered the tower damage.
After meeting with the Board of Education’s Operations Committee, we were given the greenlight to start gathering data on what a project like this might cost. With the 2025 All-School reunion right around the corner, we were also given the okay to start a low-key fundraising campaign (as long as we let people know it was being done ahead of us having a solid plan with dollar signs attached). Let me say that since I became the manager in 1997, I have been blessed to have people around me who a) know what they are doing and b) have been generous in sharing their time and talents. I had a good mentor in former GM Mike ‘Zenith’ Bennett so I wasn’t a total novice on how to run the station. The only thing he didn’t fill me in on was how much work it would take to rehab everything if we lost our frequency (which makes sense – who even had this on their radar when Mike left?).
We spent the spring semester of 2025 broadcasting online on our website www.woas-fm.org . We could have broadcast off the tower if we limited ourselves to only 15 watts (over that power the tower elements still tuned to 88.5 reflect back enough power to trigger the safety circuit on our new transmitter which shuts everything down). FCC regulations prevent this, saying, “If you are licensed to broadcast at 100 watts, you must be at 100 watts or not be on the air at all.” We had to file a form telling them WOAS would be silent while repairing the tower problem. The ‘construction permit’ (CP for short) we were issued in December of 2024 gives us a three year window to complete our remodeling, or so we thought (again, more on that a little later). We began the 2025-26 school year broadcasting online as we worked on the arrangements for a new tower.
During the 2023-2024 school year, we were allowed to keep broadcasting on 88.5 as the Class A station that took our frequency was not ready to operate from their tower in Rockland. As long as they were still working on their three year CP, we kept on the air while applying for the new 91.5 frequency. That same year, the Ontonagon Area Schools started offering a new class called Communications. Working with instructor Tim Nelson, we were able to add those students to our list of DJs. Comm students paired off and rotated their broadcast days so everyone was able to get ample air time. Two students in the new CommClass, Jack Nelson (Tim’s son) and Violet Amos ended up being our spokespersons in October 2023. The NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt sent a crew up from Chicago to do a feature about our situation. Jack and Violet did such an outstanding job being interviewed by NBC’s Maggie Vespa, no one realized they had only been working in the studio a couple of weeks. The exposure on NBC plus an earlier front page feature in the Detroit News (which generated a call in spot on Mitch Albom’s radio program in Detroit) gave our fundraising a major boost.
As the 2024-2025 school year neared, it was obvious that the four to six week processing window the FCC had given us for our new application wasn’t going to happen. The rep we were in contact with apologized and said they had been slammed with applications that summer. Rudy said, “I have seen your application in the queue and we will get to it as soon as possible. We should have it done by late November or early December.” Luckily for us, the other station was still not ready so we were again given permission to stay on 88.5, but only until Christmas break. Their three year CP ended in February of 2025 so they had to be on the air by then. December 17, 2024, we received confirmation that we were good to go with 91.5. Knowing we could not broadcast at 100 watts until the new tower bays were installed, we started 2025 online on the station website.
The master plan was working just fine until we discovered the ice damage on the old tower. The tower was ‘pre-owned’ by the Country Road Commission when it was donated and put into use in 1978. We did get 47 years out of it, but the damage was still a bit of a surprise. It could have been worse. The old tower stands next to the gym and it would have been much worse to find it collapsed onto the roof so we are not going to complain too loudly about finding the damage the way we did. After the inspection was done, brainstorming how to replace it began in ernest. We had already begun our modest fundraising campaign when my phone rang.
Former student Mark Pantti from Rockland was still an OASD student when we did the last major remodeling of the studio back in the late 1990s. I had lost track of him over the years and was pleasantly surprised to find out he works with our tower inspector Matt Savolinen at Range Communications. His words were music to my ears: “I talked to Matt. I think we have a tower for you. You know how much the station means to me and we will be glad to help you.” Just like when I got the email from Todd at CommonFrequency volunteering to help us with the FCC paperwork, the clouds parted and the sun began to shine. When professionals in the tower industry stepped up and offered to help get us back on the air, a load of worry was lifted from our shoulders. The next day, Jamie Gollakner, another former student, called and offered to help raise funds for the project. Mere words can not express how much we appreciate the assistance of everyone who has stepped up to help us in our times of need. Much of the tower work is being donated but we will still have some infrastructure bills to pay to make it happen. If anyone would like to donate to this project, a tax free donation can be made to: WOAS FM TOWER FUND – C/O Ontonagon Area Schools, 701 Parker Avenue, Ontonagon, MI 49953.
The second year the Communications Class was involved, it had been taken over by a new teacher, Natalie Rios. Ms. Rios may be new to the teaching game, but she has decades of experience under her belt in the broadcast industry. As any first year teacher discovers, she found herself running as fast as she could to stay in one place. We made a modest goal of me getting her students on the air while she concentrated on the fine art of communications in its various forms. With a year of experience behind us, she has fine tuned the class schedule so the DJs rotating through the schedule get a fuller experience. Our web feed has been well advertised in the past, but we were not too concerned about viewer numbers. The ‘online only’ presence has shown our ‘unique viewer’ numbers on Twitch slowly climbing as the year goes on.
Jack Nelson was not able to get radio into his schedule last year, but we are happy to report he was able to rejoin the WOAS team again this year. As the most experienced DJ on the day shift, Jack is also serving as the station’s Student Manager this year. Jack puts us on the air the first thing in the morning and then comes back at 10:20 a.m. to do his show, Study Break. Jack has expressed an interest in getting into broadcasting so he is keeping himself busy. Each Friday, he does interviews with a variety of local personalities. When he expressed interest in doing a phone interview with a non-local, we handed him the broadcast board manual and encouraged him to ‘figure it out’. Now that he has, he will need to show the General Manager who still hasn’t had time to sit down and learn all the ins and outs of the new board.
As this 2025 recap was being formulated, we got yet one more ‘radio surprise’. Todd at CommonFrequency realized we have one more deadline approaching. He had filed the FCC paperwork telling the agency that we would not be broadcasting off our damaged tower. He read my last tower update and responded, “The ‘silent station’ status we applied for has a cap and it expires on January 15, 2026. If you are not on the air by then, they will cancel your license.”
I contacted Mark and Matt with this new turn of events. The zoning issues they have been dealing with have dragged on, thus keeping us from putting up the new tower. Their solution will be to install a temporary mast on the school roof so we can broadcast from that as the new tower work continues. The FCC will allow us to broadcast at a lower power from this temporary unit but we will be back on 91.5 in January 2026. Just when you think you have all the loose ends tied up, right?
The last four years have been crammed with activities designed to keep WOAS-FM alive. It has also been educational for all involved. After watching media pros like John Carlisle (from the Detroit Free Press), talking with Mitch Albom on the air, and observing the NBC Nightly News crew sent up from Chicago do their thing, I now have a new appreciation for how much effort goes into prepping information for mass consumption. Here is to 2026 and beyond – with many thanks to everyone who has contributed to WOAS-FM from 1978 until today.
Students in this year’s Communications Class (whom we call ‘NRCs’ for short) include:
(l to r) Kalyton Kin (Class of 2028), Niko Amos (2028), Brody Bobula ((2028), Dyceson Drew (2026), Gatlin Urbis (2028), Samar Sahel (2026), Haylie Banister (2027), Bruce Jean (2028), Logan Beck (2028), Jayden Razmus (2028), Layla Williams (2026), and Summer Stites (2027).
Top Piece Video: I get it Ringo – we get by with a lot of help from our friends (live from the Greet Theater)