.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The best place to start this brief history of WOAS-FM is, of course, at the beginning.\u00a0 In 1977-78, Ontonagon Area Schools High School librarian Thomas Graham Lee decided our little town needed a radio station.\u00a0 He filed an application with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) for a license to run a modest Class D 10 watt FM station from a studio located in two rooms off the HS Library.\u00a0 With no equipment, tower, or studio to broadcast from, Tom literally began from scratch.\u00a0 A host of student, faculty, and community volunteers came together to get the station on the air by December 17, 1978.\u00a0 There was no radio station broadcasting from Ontonagon then and local radio celebrity Jan Tucker\u2019s show was carried on a station from afar (first from Ironwood, then Houghton).<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The equipment was all \u2018pre-owned\u2019 (used) and donated or purchased at low cost.\u00a0 The tower, provided by the County Road Commission, was put in place with a lot of manual labor (think building the pyramids or an old fashioned barn raising).\u00a0 Studio construction and assembly of all the electronic components (both done by volunteers) took a lot of planning and time.\u00a0 When the station finally took to the air, it featured a broadcast desk with two turntables, a cart machine (a device that played 8-track cartridges), and two massive reel-to-reel tape players.\u00a0 The \u2018cart machines\u2019 were used to play Public Service Announcements (PSAs) and the reel-to-reel players carried canned (pre-recorded) programs during times when live DJs were not on the air.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0DJs were required to pass an FCC License exam in order to be on the air.\u00a0 Tom performed the General Manager\u2019s duties as well as instructional duties.\u00a0 The day shift was staffed by students (many drawn from study halls) and the evening schedule was filled by community volunteers.\u00a0 Many new things were tried over those first years including broadcasting high school ball games.\u00a0 If one looks above the ceiling tiles at the school, there are still miles of wiring left over from the network used to do these remote broadcasts.\u00a0 After the start-up phase was complete, Lee turned over the day to day management to English teacher Margarette Muskatt so Lee could focus on other projects he had in the works.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the mid-1980s, interest in WOAS was flagging.\u00a0 Many of the pre-owned studio pieces\u00a0 began to lose the will to live.\u00a0 The Community Schools program in Michigan was still very active in adult and after school education at that time.\u00a0 The CS director, Mike \u2018Zenith\u2019 Bennett, saw an opportunity to grow the station\u2019s reach as part of the CS program.\u00a0 Mike began writing grants to replace the failing equipment, worked to get more students interested in being on the air, and set up a schedule of evening programs for each day of the week (except for the weekends and when school was out of session).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A good example of Mike\u2019s innovative approach was a grant he applied for to support Doug Fillpula\u2019s \u2018<\/span>Walk of Life<\/span><\/i>\u2019 program.\u00a0 Doug\u2019s show targeted older folks, especially those in the hospital Long Term Care Unit and Maple Manor.\u00a0 He would open each show with Dire Strait\u2019s <\/span>Walk of Life<\/span><\/i> and offer old time tunes, brain teasers, and interesting things from the days gone by.\u00a0 Another example was Linda Graham\u2019s <\/span>\u2018Laulan Voima<\/span><\/i>\u2019 Finnish language show.\u00a0 The National Museum of Radio in Washington, D.C. asked for tapes of her unique program and we happily obliged them.\u00a0 The list goes on and on, but the gist of it was simple – people in the community who were passionate about music were offered a chance to share it with listeners within the boundaries of Northern Ontonagon Country.\u00a0 At 10 watts, the station\u2019s signal was limited by the \u2018Bluff\u2019 that extends from Mass City to Rockland.\u00a0 The one demographic that Mike was proud to say he heard from a lot were the unfortunate folks spending time in the county jail.\u00a0 They were a \u2018captive\u2019 (sorry) but appreciative audience.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the mid-1990s, state-wide funding for the Michigan Community Schools program evaporated and the adult education classes disappeared.\u00a0 Bennet moved into a new position as the elementary school principal before he took another position at Bessemer High School.\u00a0 With Mike no longer running the station, I volunteered to step up from my position of \u2018volunteer DJ\u2019 to \u2018General Manager in training\u2019.\u00a0 Mike stayed in contact so I didn\u2019t exactly feel like the Lone Ranger, but the first two years I was the GM was a crash course in learning the radio gig.\u00a0 There were many things I didn\u2019t know about broadcasting when I started at WOAS.\u00a0 At first, I was just making <\/span>From The Vaults<\/span><\/i> tapes to run during the intervals between live DJ shows.\u00a0 With Mike gone, we kept on the air with a skeleton crew and started to plan for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were two nagging things to tackle as soon as I was put in charge of the station.\u00a0 The first was the pile of mail that had accumulated when Mike\u2019s new office was a mile down Parker Avenue.\u00a0 We had a large office desk with a wing that was literally three feet deep with unopened correspondence.\u00a0 The first CD package I opened was <\/span>Drive to Survive <\/span><\/i>\u00a0by Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers.\u00a0 Mike had contacted a lot of record labels for music to air but he hit the blues labels hard as that genre was his passion.\u00a0 Blue Wave Records, Blind Pig (originally based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Thackery\u2019s label), Alligator Records, Antones . . . if a label featured blues artists, we were on their mailing list.\u00a0 I put <\/span>Drive to Survive <\/span><\/i>playing as I began sorting mail and became a big fan of Thackery and a host of other Blind Pig artists.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Deep down in the pile, I found a correspondence from the Federal Communications Commission.\u00a0 A chill ran down my spine when I read a note that had obviously arrived well before August of 1997.\u00a0 It was a form reminding us that our license had to be renewed by October of 1997.\u00a0 Talk about a quick education in FCC regulations!\u00a0 I am still not sure how I got it in on time, but I did and we survived a close call without losing WOAS-FM.\u00a0 Since that initial renewal, I have had the pleasure of repeating the process three more times.\u00a0 I am not complaining as the cycle of license renewals is normal, but each of the renewals I have had to do has been on a different platform.\u00a0 The first time, it was done on a paper form.\u00a0 The rest were all done electronically with each cycle featuring a \u2018new and improved\u2019 method of filing.\u00a0 We shall see what the next iteration in this filing process will look like in a few years.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0WOAS-FM operated in this fashion until the OASD School Improvement team began meeting the second year after Mike left.\u00a0 I volunteered to do an evaluation of the radio station and made recommendations for the future.\u00a0 Other staff members volunteered (or were volunteered) to write up summaries of other school offerings and special programs.\u00a0 At the second meeting, we were supposed to report our findings.\u00a0 The superintendent was a bit dismayed as he went around the room asking for reports on each area.\u00a0 Nobody else had a report except yours truly which gave me plenty of time to explain the station\u2019s history.\u00a0 I ended by saying, \u201cThe radio station is twenty years old and with the pre-owned equipment failing, we needed to either remodel the station and upgrade the equipment or close the doors.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When asked if I had a list of what was needed and the cost, I said, \u201cYes, I do.\u00a0 Here is the list of necessary equipment and assuming free labor, it will cost close to $8,000 dollars to implement these changes.\u201d\u00a0 Superintendent John Peterson looked at the numbers and said, \u201cWe can\u2019t possibly afford it this year.\u201d\u00a0 Before I could respond, he continued, \u201cCould you still do it if the board allocated $4,000 this year and $4,000 next year?\u201d Thus began WOAS-FM\u2019s third phase of operations.\u00a0 When the plan was announced, UPPCO\u2019s communications director, Janet Wolfe, contacted us and said, \u201cUPPCO would like to donate $1,000 to the project.\u201d\u00a0 We were off and running to make our largest capital investment since Mike Bennett\u2019s time as GM.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With half the money available the first year, we prioritized the two things we could not do without to keep on the air.\u00a0 Our two engineering consultants, Jim Bradley and Al Harrison, recommended a 25 watt BEXT transmitter and a 10 channel Arrakis broadcast board.\u00a0 We budgeted new players (cassette and CD) and a CD burner in the next year\u2019s budget.\u00a0 We already had a basic recording deck\/mixing board for the production studio we had purchased with a grant from the Detroit Free Press.\u00a0 That unit was not ideal but we knew it could be upgraded later.\u00a0 Before we went on the air in 1998-99, we did some extensive rearranging in both studios.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0About the time we were planning how we would re-do the studio\u2019s layout, the school announced they would be putting new carpeting in the library over the summer.\u00a0 I happened to run into the carpet company rep when he was measuring the library.\u00a0 I showed him the station\u2019s two studios and asked what it would take to get them recarpeted as well.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWith a job this size, we will always have enough remnants to do both rooms at no extra cost\u2026BUT\u2026you have to move everything out of them first.\u201d\u00a0 He said they would be back in a week to do the installation so when the custodial staff emptied the library, I hauled every desk, cabinet, table and the two large equipment bays (housing the two reel to reel tape layers and the transmitter) into the hall by the cafetorium.\u00a0 It took two days but it was worth it to see how much space we had.\u00a0 All that was left was to decide which things we could do without.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After the carpeting was installed, the library aide mentioned there were extra bookshelves in the library at the old elementary building on Greenland Road.\u00a0 She said, \u201cWe are taking them out.\u00a0 Would you like some for the radio lab?\u201d\u00a0 Thus we gained one whole wall of free shelves.\u00a0 With those in place, Al and Jim installed the new transmitter and broadcast board while I worked on putting back the cabinets and tables we would need.\u00a0 Nobody was spinning vinyl anymore so our record inventory went to St. Vinnie\u2019s in Ontonagon.\u00a0 The rest of the shelves and cabinets we did not need were put in the custodian\u2019s room with \u2018take if you need\u2019 signs attached.\u00a0 Within a week, they were all gone.\u00a0 New interior doors and cabinet doors were installed by the students in the woodshop class.\u00a0 By the end of the 1999-2000 school year, we had a remodeled studio.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With a stable broadcast system now in place, it was easier to get students scheduled into radio.\u00a0 Like the old days, students bored with study hall were our best source of day shift DJs.\u00a0 With our limited signal range, we began exploring the realm of internet broadcasting.\u00a0 Our techno-whiz in this endeavor was former OASD student and local computer guru Mark Szaroletta.\u00a0 The school technical director at the time had given us two out-of-date computer towers to adapt for our purposes.\u00a0 Mark dove into his pile of spare parts and created \u2018Kang and Kodos\u2019, the servers we used to stream audio and video from the station onto \u2018the internet\u2019.\u00a0 We had some early success toward this goal (ie:\u00a0 getting our over the air broadcast online) but every time we got it to work, the Intermediate School District (ISD) in Hancock upgraded their system and put our efforts back to square one.\u00a0 With the reliability of our online portal proving to be dismayingly unstable, it was hit or miss for the first decade.\u00a0 Mark\u2019s work life took him elsewhere but we kept trying to make the system more reliable.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We finally hit on a free streaming service that worked very well, but this free platform suddenly morphed into a \u2018pay for your subscription\u2019 service that we could not afford.\u00a0 When things looked the bleakest on this front, one of the online help techs at the ISD contacted us.\u00a0 He said he had set up a similar website with audio and video streaming at his old high school downstate.\u00a0 He offered us a way forward and had us set up in no time at a price (for his consulting work) we could afford.\u00a0 Steven had the inside knowledge of the systems at REMC 1 (Regional Educational Media Center – a division of the ISD) that we lacked.\u00a0 He was able to adapt our web feed to work on another free streaming service (Twitch) where we have maintained our online presence ever since.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Space will not allow me to go over everything involved with us losing the 88.5 frequency to a Class A non-profit group in Marquette.\u00a0 The best way to catch up with everything that took place between 2021 to the present is to visit <\/span>www.woas-fm.org<\/span><\/a> and scroll back through the FTV archives to hear the whole story.\u00a0 The short version goes like this:\u00a0 We were handed a basket full of lemons when we learned that 88.5 would no longer be our home after more than 40 years.\u00a0 The generosity of too many people to name here allowed us to make gallons of lemonade which we can now use to toast to our new home at 91.5 FM.\u00a0 The 2023 fundraising campaign did more than just allow WOAS-FM to continue.\u00a0 We started with a modest $3,000 goal for a new transmitter and in the end, people donated six times that amount.\u00a0 We started in \u2018we just need a new transmitter\u2019 mode and ended up replacing that unit, adding a new equipment bay, purchasing a new broadcast board, and ordering new tower elements tuned to our new 91.5 frequency.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It would be great to have had enough money left in our account to have some station swag available for the open house.\u00a0 Unfortunately (or should I say \u2018fortunately\u2019?) all of our funds have gone into the station\u2019s new equipment.\u00a0 If those of you who visit us during the All School Reunion want to get some up to date 91.5 promotional materials, we will be able to accommodate you with the help of our local print shop, Peninsula Graphics.\u00a0 We will do a limited two day broadcast at 91.5 so tune us in while you are in town.\u00a0 Welcome back, we hope to see you at the All Class Reunion.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>*News Break:\u00a0 Our tower needs to be replaced*<\/b> – we got a rude surprise on June 23 when we planned on installing our new tower bays.\u00a0 All three legs of our pre-owned tower (it was given to us by the County Road Commission in 1978) are ice damaged.\u00a0 A tower inspection was done on July 3, 2025, and it was determined that the age and damage leads us to only one path forward:\u00a0 we need to replace the tower.\u00a0 The estimated cost of a new tower installation comes in around $30,000.\u00a0 We are exploring other options and are waiting to see what funds are available from the school district.\u00a0 We will keep you posted.\u00a0 In the meantime, see the announcement about the tower fund campaign we are starting in this issue of the <\/span>Ontonagon Herald.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nTop Piece Video:\u00a0 ZZ Top ,\u00a0 we thank you for the great line . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Over the years, I have found periodically updating the history of WOAS-FM is the best way to remind locals and newcomers that we are still \u2018Your Sound Choice\u2019 in Ontonagon.\u00a0 Since we began streaming video of our studio and our over the air broadcast signal, we have also become \u2018Bad and World-Wide\u2019 (if ZZ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-local-music-news","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594","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=3594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3597,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions\/3597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}