<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Friday October 13, 2023 turned out to be our lucky day.\u00a0 Like the visit paid to us by John Carlisle and Ryan Garza from the Detroit Free Press back in April of 2023, we weren\u2019t really at liberty to say much about NBC Nightly News visiting WOAS until our story aired.\u00a0 The Freep\u00a0 guys said, \u201cSure, write about the visit, but after the article goes to print,\u201d which finally happened on July 13, 2023.\u00a0 Hmmm, there is that number 13 again\u2026 but in this case, it was a Tuesday.\u00a0 In this day and age, it didn\u2019t take long for social media to start spreading the word about NBC Nightly News coming to Ontonagon, but we figured it was better to play it safe and keep the details to ourselves until their piece aired.\u00a0 If you are reading this, then it isn\u2019t much of a secret any more as the segment about WOAS-FM 88.5 appeared on the NBC Nightly News on November 9, 2023.\u00a0 A quick search for \u2018WOAS\u2019 at NBC.com will direct you to a slightly longer version of what was broadcast that night.\u00a0 In order to understand the complexity of having a major news outlet do a feature on our area, we need to go back to the beginning, more or less.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Not long after the Freep published John Carlisle\u2019s article (on the front page no less and also on their web site), it was shared extensively by different social media outlets.\u00a0 At the time it came out, we thought our three month fundraising effort for the station was nearing the end, but the Freep article kicked it into gear again.\u00a0 Mitch Albom picked up the story and put us on the air for a very pleasant ten minute chat about the importance of high school and college radio stations.\u00a0 A few days later, we got a call from Kinjal Patel at NBC Universal who wanted to know more about WOAS and why we needed to purchase a new transmitter.\u00a0 Kinjal told us she saw WOAS as a \u2018feel good\u2019 story about a small town radio station and said she was going to pitch the idea to her group and see if they thought it would be a worthy story for NBC to cover.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It wasn\u2019t long before Kinjal called us back.\u00a0 She was excited her team gave her the go ahead to start working on the story.\u00a0 She asked a bunch of questions about where we were in the efforts to get a new transmitter and frequency, how long we had been on the air, and so on.\u00a0 The third time she made contact, she said their idea was to come and do the piece once the new transmitter was in place.\u00a0 At that time, we were planning on placing the order and having it up\u00a0 and running by mid-August.\u00a0 Various delays kept the order from being filled immediately so we kept updating Kinjal with promises that \u2018as soon as we know, you will know\u2019.\u00a0 As August turned to September, it began looking like perhaps the shelf life on our feel good story was going to expire before we ever got the new unit on the air (we had continued to broadcast with our old transmitter in the meantime).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once the new transmitter arrived and our engineer Jim Bradley had it mounted in a temporary equipment rack, we let Kinjal know it was in service.\u00a0 The new unit did not fit in our old rack so we sat down to plan how the studio could be rearranged to make it more convenient to service all of the rack mounted pieces.\u00a0 We decided a new, free standing floor bay would solve all of our problems, but the new layout added another couple of weeks to our renovation plans.\u00a0 After trying to let Kinja know we understood if things had taken too long on our end, she said point blank, \u201cNo, we still have it on our big board and are trying to work on the arrangements to get a correspondent, producer and film crew there.\u00a0 I will let you know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Prior to 1999, the station had two very large steel equipment bays standing in the same area we pictured installing the new one.\u00a0 Those two large racks contained the original transmitter and two very large reel to reel tape decks.\u00a0 All of these units were \u2018pre-owned\u2019 before being put to work in the station as was the broadcast board.\u00a0 When we remodeled twenty-five years ago, we no longer needed these large bays so they went out the door and all the new (and smaller) equipment went on a shelf high in the corner of the studio.\u00a0 It was a great way to save floor space and keep busy fingers away from the electronics, but it was a pain to access for any kind of maintenance.\u00a0 The floor space taken up by the two bays was now occupied by a desk and computer that served as our station logging device.\u00a0 With WiFi connected Chromebooks now in use, we were able to move out the computer station to make way for the new bay.\u00a0 In other words, we have kind of come full circle from floor bays back to a single free standing rack unit.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Just prior to the new, unassembled equipment rack\u2019s arrival, Kinjal called with the good news.\u00a0 The field producer would be calling me early the next week to work on the logistics of their visit which was now scheduled for Friday October 13.\u00a0 I had pretty much convinced myself that we would simply be broadcasting with our temporary rigging until after they had been here, but I didn\u2019t count on Jim\u2019s \u2018let\u2019s get \u2018er done\u2019 enthusiasm.\u00a0 When he asked, \u201cHow far did you get on putting the new rack together?\u201d I had to admit it took me an hour and a half just to get it out of the packing material.\u00a0 Surely the components for the Hubble Space Telescope arrived with less padding, strapping, cardboard, and tape holding them all together.\u00a0 Time was ticking, but on the Wednesday before the NBC team arrived, we dug in and assembled most of the new bay.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Thursday dawned with the rack rails and shelf in the new bay almost ready to receive the devices from the old rack.\u00a0 In a matter of hours, Jim had disconnected all of the wiring save the ones running the new transmitter (we were still on the air).\u00a0 From the bottom up, we mounted the power conditioner unit, the old transmitter (for nostalgia’s sake), two shelves, the headphone amp, and the studio monitor amp.\u00a0 Around 3:00 p.m. we had to shut down the station to move the new transmitter, reconnect the assorted cables, and then power all of it up again.\u00a0 All in all, the station was dark for about three hours and there were smiles all around when everything decided to play nicely together – we were back on the air, but not done.\u00a0 Jim needed to bundle the cables running down from the ceiling and replace all the dislodged ceiling tiles.\u00a0 There are some cable connectors we need to redo so the front door and back panel can be installed on the bay, but two days and fifteen hours after Jim started, we had a presentable radio studio on the air.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Having the two Freep guys here gave us a pretty good idea of how a visit from a big media outlet worked.\u00a0 NBC was sending a team of four so it made sense they were going to need more space and time to do their thing.\u00a0 John and Ryan spent several hours in the building so we did the math and figured this was going to be a bit longer.\u00a0 When the field producer, Ramon, called and said they would like to get set up at 7:00 a.m. Friday, it pretty well confirmed our suspicions that this would end up being a very long, interesting adventure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By Friday morning, I was already exhausted but still managed to be waiting by the front door when the sound and film guys (Marty and Steve) arrived promptly at 7:00 a.m.\u00a0 They had come up from Chicago and spent the night in Marquette and left there at 5:00 a.m. to get to Ontonagon.\u00a0 Ramon had called me Thursday night from Marquette to say he would be arriving in town that night and would see me in the morning.\u00a0 He arrived about ten minutes after the other two and reported that the correspondent (Maggie Vespa) had flown into Green Bay and would be driving up and arriving a little later in the morning.\u00a0 With the WOAS studios located in two rooms inside the library, we had made prior arrangements for the crew to use the library for the day.\u00a0 As we watched them unpack all their gear, our library aide (and faithful WOAS on site assistant) commented, \u201cIt is a good thing we cleared the library for today – they wouldn\u2019t fit all of that into the studio.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My job was simple:\u00a0 show them where to set up, answer any questions, and stay out of the way.\u00a0 Getting to be a fly on the wall watching the well oiled machinery of a veteran news crew go about their tasks was a lesson in TV journalism.\u00a0 One does not think about all of the behind the scenes stuff that goes on when sitting down to watch a news broadcast.\u00a0 Ramon was the ringmaster of this traveling circus and he had pages of notes prepared to make sure they got all their tasks done.\u00a0 He had a timeline established and on occasion he would note, \u201cWe are ten minutes behind,\u201d or \u201cwe have fifteen minutes left to do this,\u201d and so on.\u00a0 There were no random acts involved in the whole process – everything was done according to plan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Just before Maggie arrived, I volunteered to run downtown to pick up the breakfast order Ramon had called in earlier.\u00a0 No sooner had I arrived with four breakfasts, bakery, and coffee for all, Maggie pulled in after driving north from Green Bay.\u00a0 By mid-morning, the crew was set up, fed, and ready to start doing the interview segments.\u00a0 Marty hooked up both of us with wireless microphones.\u00a0 While Steve adjusted the angles and backgrounds for the two cameras they would be using, Maggie and I talked about the Bears and the Packers.\u00a0 Maggie is an Illinois native and as only two lifelong Bear and Packer fans could, we lamented about how sad the current season was playing out for both teams.\u00a0 After a little discussion about the kinds of questions she would be asking out of the way, and we were off.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It seemed like less of an \u2018interview\u2019 than two people simply having a conversation.\u00a0 Professionals like Maggie know how to put their subjects at ease and I thought, \u201cWait a minute, how come I am not nervous?\u201d\u00a0 I have been interviewed for TV before and my goal is to not come off sounding like Elmer Fudd.\u00a0 In this case, it was, dare I say, fun to be in the middle of the whole process.\u00a0 Ramon was somewhere behind me.\u00a0 He and Maggie would exchange ideas about questions to pursue, the timeline, and so on.\u00a0 My job, again, was to watch all this transpire and enjoy seeing them do their jobs (and not to sound too \u2018Fuddian\u2019).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We had lined up student DJs to be interviewed.\u00a0 The front office staff and Betsy took care of rounding them up when they were needed.\u00a0 Counselor Lindsey rolled in with the portable coffee cart she uses for events and treated everyone with hot refills for their already cold breakfast coffee.\u00a0 Classes changed, students peeked through the doors as they walked by, and the school day unfolded like any other day.\u00a0 The camera man spent some time taking background shots around the school and Marty was constantly fiddling with his gear, changing batteries, swapping mics and so on between interviews.\u00a0 With one of my principle DJs out of town and another who suddenly developed cold feet about being interviewed, we had to go to Plan B.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The school started a new communications class this year and I have been working with instructor Tim Nelson to get his nine sophomores involved in radio.\u00a0 These students rotate their days in the studio so they have not had the amount of time in the studio as our three senior DJs who are on the air everyday.\u00a0 Nonetheless, it fell upon two sophomore communications students, (\u2018NelComms\u2019, we call them) Violet Amos and Jack Nelson, to represent the school and WOAS-FM.\u00a0 Watching Maggie introduce herself to them was as close as I got to their interviews.\u00a0 They disappeared into the station and all I heard was Maggie\u2019s assessment when they were done:\u00a0 \u201cOh, they did great – they were so cute!\u201d\u00a0 This first segment was all interviews and data gathering.\u00a0 The plan was to have Jack and Violet return later so the crew could shoot some footage of them broadcasting in the studio.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We went out the back door to shoot a little footage of Maggie and I talking about the radio tower which stands next to the gym wall.\u00a0 Once that wrapped up, they whisked Maggie off to do some shots around town and to pick up lunch.\u00a0 Maggie said her goodbyes so she could get back on the road to Green Bay to catch her flight home.\u00a0 After playing food \u2018gopher\u2019 (as in \u2018go for\u2019) earlier, I tried on my other hat and played \u2018security\u2019 so they wouldn\u2019t have to pack up all their equipment while they were downtown with Maggie.\u00a0 Yes, I will admit I did the cliche cop thing and passed the time with donuts and coffee.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the crew arrived to eat their lunch sans Maggie, I heard the announcement that the football team should report to the bus at 2:00 p.m. to depart for their away football game.\u00a0 I called across the library, \u201cHey, Ramon, do you know that Jack will be leaving in fifteen minutes with the football team?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhere is the bus loading?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 I pointed down the hall toward the student parking lot.\u00a0 Ramon, Steve, and Marty sprang up from their lunch and grabbed their gear:\u00a0 \u201cCan you get Violet down there so we can get a couple of shots of them together before Jack leaves?\u00a0 We will figure out the studio shots later.\u201d\u00a0 They went one way and I went to the office to find Violet.\u00a0 Fifteen minutes later, they were back at lunch, Jack was on the way to a football game, and Violet returned to class to await her third call to be filmed.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The rest of the day consisted of bits and pieces.\u00a0 They filmed multiple takes of Violet doing station breaks between fading out and back into the music being broadcast.\u00a0 Once they had all their gear stowed, there was one last element Ramon wanted filmed.\u00a0 Marty and Steve set up curbside on River Street and flew a drone camera back and forth while Ramon and I drove the same three blocks several times.\u00a0 Ramon filmed my car radio changing from static to the tunes coming in on 88.5.\u00a0 After exchanging good-byes, I went home at 6:00 p.m. exhausted while they faced another long drive (and a flight for Ramon back to New York) to get back home.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I thanked them for coming all the way to our little corner of the world, they in turn\u00a0 thanked everyone who had shown them so much hospitality.\u00a0 Who knew when this whole losing our 88.5 frequency adventure started it would end up generating so many positive experiences for our station, the school, and the community?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the aftermath of the segment being aired on NBC Nightly News, my phone blew up with texts, emails, and phone calls.\u00a0 Ramon and Kinjal were both excited and he passed along that, \u201cThis was a fun one to do.\u00a0 Everyone at Nightly loved it, too. A bright light we all needed.\u201d\u00a0 Although Kinjal left NBC for a job at CBS shortly before the piece aired, we remember it was her vision that saw \u2018a feel good story\u2019 in what was taking place with WOAS.\u00a0 I predict we will be hearing more from Kinjal, Ramon, and Maggie in the future and can\u2019t thank them enough for shining a light on our little corner of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Yes, we were all a little\u00a0Radio Ga Ga\u00a0<\/em>when NBC came to town to visit our humble little studio!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Friday October 13, 2023 turned out to be our lucky day.\u00a0 Like the visit paid to us by John Carlisle and Ryan Garza from the Detroit Free Press back in April of 2023, we weren\u2019t really at liberty to say much about NBC Nightly News visiting WOAS until our story aired.\u00a0 The Freep\u00a0 guys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}