WAMC
City of license	Albany, New York
Broadcast area	Primary: Albany Capital District of New York; parts of Eastern New York ; Southern Vermont, Western Massachusetts, Upper Northwest Connecticut Secondary: West-Central Connecticut, southwestern New Hampshire, northwestern New Jersey, northeast Pennsylvania, a small portion of Quebec.1
Branding	WAMC, Northeast Public Radio
Frequency	90.3 MHz
Repeaters	see below
First air date	1958 (Original licensee Albany Medical College)
Format	Public Radio
Audience share	4.7 (FALL 2007, RRC2)
ERP	10,000 watts
HAAT	600 meters (2,000 ft)
Class	B
Facility ID	70849
Transmitter Coordinates	42°38′14.00″N 73°10′7.00″W / 42.6372222, -73.1686111
Callsign meaning	Albany Medical College
Owner	WAMC, Inc.
Website	www.wamc.org

WAMC is a public radio station out of Albany, New York, broadcasting on the 90.3 FM frequency and several others. The organization's legal name is "WAMC, Inc.," and it is also known as "WAMC Public Radio" or "WAMC Northeast Public Radio Network." WAMC runs the Northeast Public Radio network of stations. In addition, the station operates the WAMC Performing Arts Studio, a venue in Albany located near its Central Avenue studios.

The NPR member is a charitable, educational, non-commercial broadcaster meeting the requirements of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3)). The organization's IRS Form 990 - 'Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax' can be accessed at Guidestar.org. Total annual revenues (Fiscal 2006): $7 million.

Present corporate officers include Thomas S.W. Lewis, chairman of the board of trustees; Alan S. Chartock, president & chief executive officer (since 1981).

History

WAMC started in 1958 as a radio station for the local hospital and medical school, Albany Medical Center and Albany Medical College. Albany Medical Center is the large tertiary-care hospital serving the upper Hudson Valley, and the medical school (with which it is affiliated) is one of the country's ACGME-accredited medical schools. The affiliation with Albany Medical Center was the source of the call letters "WAMC."

The station's 24/7 non-commercial classical musical format served a large listener base and was popular amongs music aficionados. The earliest years also included broadcasts of health information and lectures from visiting professors. Early on, part of WAMC's regular programming was the broadcast of live concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra from Tanglewood and Boston. When the NPR network was founded in 1970, WAMC signed-on as one of NPR's original ninety 'charter' members. Around 1980, financial pressures caused the hospital and medical school to divest the station. In 1981, the FCC license on 90.3FM was transferred to a 501c3 tax-exempt entity, WAMC, Inc., which had been set-up by a group of five corporators (amongst them the current CEO and president, Alan S. Chartock) affiliated with the State University of New York and New York State government. In the years since the transfer, the station has cut back on most classical music programming (live BSO concerts are still broadcast) while becoming a producer of information-based, non-music programming, providing a variety of interview-format programs to radio stations across the country via the station's in-house subsidiary, National Productions.

Community and corporate contributions (often obtained during regular fund drives) have helped the original single station grow over the years into a network of nine stations and eleven translators with large primary service contours covering New York's capital district, western Massachusetts, southern Vermont, and parts of New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey. WAMC-FM's main transmitter and antenna are atop Mount Greylock in Adams, Mass., the highest mountain in the state, giving the flagship 90.3 MHz signal a large radius for a transmitter of its size.

Criticism and views

Accusations of bias

NPR's official news policy says its affiliate stations should be "fair, unbiased, accurate, honest, and respectful of the people that are covered." ³

A Washington-based NPR news producer, who requested anonymity, stated that Alan Chartock, the station's president and a frequently heard voice on the station, presents politically-biased commentary.⁴ The producer stated that he was "driving through upstate New York and listening to the local public radio station, and there was this guy on the air ranting."⁴ "He was talking about the war in Iraq and how wrong it was and how we’re being held hostage as a country by this right-wing administration." The NPR producer assumed he had tuned into a Pacifica radio station, one of a small network of community stations that broadcast left-of-center advocacy-journalism programs. "But then I nearly couldn’t believe it when this guy said, ‘In just a few moments we’ll be returning to NPR’s All Things Considered.’ The NPR producer was listening to a pledge drive hosted by (WAMC CEO) Alan Chartock.⁴

"If you took a photo of me in the car,” says the NPR producer, “my jaw would have been on the floor. It really freaked me out. As a producer, I want NPR to be viewed as middle-of-the-road. I want people to think that NPR is fair. But when someone like Chartock gets on the air, it makes us look like a left-of-center organization, just as we believe Fox [cable news] is a right-wing organization because they mix commentary with news. And I guarantee you that Joe Listener out there is not making a distinction between the crazy local guy and the reasonable national organization."⁴

Chartock responded that WAMC’s editorial neutrality is maintained by "including as many conservative commentators on the air as liberal ones".⁴

Website

Chartock publishes a blog on WAMC’s web site. Chartock says he is concerned about governmental restrictions on free speech.⁵ He is dismayed by what he calls the proliferation of corporate run radio stations, which he believes express extreme right-wing views without giving opposing viewpoints.⁶ Chartock's station-subsidized blog regularly features "sharp attacks on the Republican Party, the Bush administration, and 'neocons' in general."⁴

Support for Chartock's programming

Stephen Yasko, manager of WTMD (89.7 FM), an NPR member station in Towson, MD which plays mostly adult-alternative music, contends that any quality-control challenges that might be created by NPR’s decentralized nature are outweighed by the advantage of unique local programming.

“Public radio stations reflect the values and texture of the communities they serve,” says Yasko, who has also worked in the NPR member services department. “If NPR or any national organization had too much control or input into every station’s local personality, then you would lose the very thing that makes us what we are. So if Alan Chartock is what Albany and upstate New York created and what works for them, that’s a beautiful thing, no matter what some outsiders might say.”⁴

Network expansion

WAMC has grown into a network of nine stations and eleven translators serving portions of seven New England and Middle Atlantic States, bringing news, information and cultural programming to what WAMC claims is an audience of nearly 400,000 monthly listeners^{citation needed} . The station's most recent fund drive (as of September 2008) raised over $800,000 in just over five days.

Though the original expansion of the WAMC network starting in the mid 1980s was done to serve areas that had previously lacked NPR service, many of the station's expansions since then have been into areas that either had service from a WAMC signal or where an established NPR network was already on the air. Two examples of this were WAMC's purchase of WAMQ (then WBBS), a signal whose coverage area is near enveloped by other WAMC signals, and in 1992 WAMC outbid SUNY Plattsburgh for the then-WCFE-FM in 1995 to serve an area with two established NPR stations.

Miscellaneous

First Amendment Fund

In 2005, WAMC's board of trustees established a "First Amendment Fund" to promote and preserve the First Amendment and the right of free speech by providing a source of funding "to support WAMC if special situations or needs should arise". The current level of contributions in this "unrestricted, board designated" fund is $482,577. "WAMC's IRS Form 990 for Fiscal 2006 (page 35)".

Original programming

WAMC produces many programs of its own. These include:

• The Best of Our Knowledge
• The Book Show
• The Capitol Connection
• Dancing on the Air (monthly presentation of Live at the Linda)
• 51%
• The Health Show
• Hudson River Sampler
• How to Save Your Life
• In Our Backyard
• The Legislative Gazette
• Live at the Linda
• The Media Project
• Midday Magazine
• Northeast Report
• Performance Place
• The Roundtable
• Tim Coakley Jazz
• Vox Pop
• WAMC Bluegrass Time
• Word for the Wise

Former programs

• The Environment Show -- name was dropped, format changed, and program morphed into "In Our Backyard," with NYS wildlife expert Ward Stone.
• Knock on Wood -- with Steve Charney and Harry
• Me and Mario -- discontinued after a public falling-out between former Governor Mario Cuomo and program host Alan Chartock⁷
• Music Through The Night -- Midnight to 5 A.M.
• Rachael's Place
• Weekly Rundown
• Zucchini Brothers show

National Productions

WAMC also produces programs that are distributed under the name National Productions. These include:

• The Best of Our Knowledge
• The Book Show
• The Capitol Connection
• 51%
• The Health Show
• How to Save Your Life
• In Our Backyard
• The Legislative Gazette
• The Media Project
• Word for the Wise

Podcasts

WAMC also podcasts their original programs.

Technical data

Stations, wattage, service contour maps

Translators

WAMC-FM

WAMK

WOSR

Other

Coverage maps

1. WAMC's published coverage map showing counties that are covered in whole or in part
2. Old service contour map - created with the intent of discrediting WAMC's coverage claims, using the map above (an outdated version predating WAMC's most recent network expansions) overlaid with FCC service contour maps (again, predating expansions) for comparison. When viewing this map, the following FCC disclaimer should be taken into consideration: "Often stations may be received at locations well beyond the displayed service contour, depending on the location of other stations on the same or adjacent channels."

References

See also

• Alan S. Chartock
• David Guistina

External links

• Public Radio Neighbors Agree on Lake Placid Service
• WAMC Homepage
• The WAMC Performing Arts Studio-- A WAMC-owned venue in downtown Albany adjacent to their studios.
• Alan Chartock - Blog -- 'Alan Chartock shares his thoughts for today....'
• WAMC Student Town Meetings
• WAMC Northeast PIRATE Network -- A Web site containing articles generally critical of WAMC and its management.
• WAMC PIRATES' Blog -- A Web log containing musings and comments generally critical of WAMC and its management.
• Query the FCC's FM station database for WAMC
• Radio Locator information on WAMC