by Bob and Barb Park

Since our February 2017 newsletter WIDE-LP has continued to put "progressive voices on the air" and broadcast "music off the beaten track." Some talk shows we previously aired are no longer being produced but we have added some new ones to our schedule. Squaring the Strange, Alternative Radio, Talk Nation Radio, WINGS and The Henna Hundal Show have become regular features. When program changes are made they are reflected on our schedule page at http://madisonwi.us/WIDE-LP/schedule/, which displays all our weekly talk and music shows.

The musical highlight of 2017 for WIDE was our participation in Make Music Madison on June 21. Our station has no studio, and this event marked our first live broadcast. The front deck of the Skog family house on Orchard Drive served as our stage. (They are the family that hosts our transmitter in their garage.) Our audience numbered as many as 35. Seven different groups or individuals provided original music of their own composition or pieces composed by others who had granted permission for broadcast. The photo below is from the event. We were a Make Music Madison venue again in 2018, but rain made it necessary to do it in the garage, where seating was limited. Some hardy listeners stood in the driveway under umbrellas. Photos of both events are available at http://madisonwi.us/WIDE-LP/photos/MakeMusicMadison/M.htm.

The Make Music Madison events are a good way of meeting neighbors and raising awareness of the station on the west side of Madison. With the same ideas in mind, we also participated in the Midvale Heights neighborhood-wide fall garage sale events in 2017 and 2018. The chief items we had for sale were used CDs and cookbooks. The CDs were donated to the station by Mardi Steinau, who was a DJ on WOMR when she lived on Cape Cod before she moved to Wisconsin. The cookbooks were copies of The Culinary Manifesto, created by Health Writers, Inc., in 2002 when they still had a Health Writers On The Air program on WORT. Health Writers had applied the previous year for a low power radio station construction permit, and eventually became the FCC recognized owner of WIDE-LP. After Health Writers stopped creating programs for WORT its new board focused on the low power station and the remaining cookbooks were turned over to WIDE-LP to help with fundraising. (The cookbook Table of Contents and Index can be seen online at http://radiosponsors.madisonwi.us/cookbook.pdf.)

A generous gift from the Midvale Heights Community Association Board got our successful fund drive for 2018 off to a good start. Subsequently one or more members of the station board met with the boards of all the surrounding neighborhoods (Westmorland, Orchard Ridge, University Hill Farms, Dudgeon-Monroe, and Crawford-Marlborough-Nakoma). We called attention to our Saturday Neighborhood News at Noon time slot and encouraged its use for neighborhood announcements.

To establish a closer connection between the station and progressive groups in the greater Madison area we compiled a Directory of Active Progressive Groups in Dane County WI that is now online at http://madisonwi.us/Progressive_groups/. The station has contacted most of these groups by email, and a number of them have become station sponsors by contributing either money or audio content for broadcast. These sponsors are listed with logo or photo and a description of their group's goals and purpose in the Progressive Crossroads section of the station Sponsor Page at http://radiosponsors.madisonwi.us/#crossroads.

The biggest boost to progressive programming on the station since our last newsletter came when Bob and Barb attended the Democracy Convention (https://www.democracyconvention.org) on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis in August 2017. This was the 3rd such convention sponsored by the Liberty Tree Foundation, the first two having been held in Madison in 2011 and 2013. Bob recorded 39 of the plenary and breakout sessions for broadcast and online listening. He also recorded speakers at a number of rallies in Madison, including the 4/22/17 March for Science, the 7/6/17 Rally: Get Your Hands Off Our Healthcare, the 8/27/17 & 8/19/18 Pride Rallies, the 3/10/18 Madison High Schools Walkout to Demand Gun Control, the 3/24/18 March for Our Lives, the 5/5/18 March for Science, the 9/23/18 Capitol Rotunda Die-In, the 1/12/19 Rally - Unite Against Fascism and speakers at a number of other public events. Speakers he has recorded over the last 2 years include Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Mark Pocan, Douglas La Follette, Kathleen Vinehout, Chris Taylor, Mike McCabe, John Nichols, Norman Stockwell, Keith Eillison, Jill Stein, Medea Benjamin and numerous lesser known progressives.

On Sept. 30, 2018, we marked 10 years on the air with an interview of a key local progressive radio person, Molly Stentz, News and Public Affairs Director at WORT. (You can hear the 1 hr. 20 min. interview here.)

We have continued to use Twitter to announce topics on upcoming talk shows, providing a link to the show, and have posted well over 9000 tweets since we began this practice in 2009. In July 2017 we started a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/WIDE.LP.99.1/ where we now post announcements that are forwarded to Twitter, sometimes using the Facebook scheduling feature allowing announcements to be publicly posted at a future time and date. The Twitter feed and the Archives link on our web pages provide world-wide access to most of the talk shows we have broadcast since going on the air in 2008.

Questions or comments on our station may be emailed to radio@widelp.org.

WMUU's purpose is to present news and information to a wise, mature audience who want to hear the issues, voices and perspectives of people the world over - who see how others' lives affect their own. Radio is a way to connect our vibrant, aging community which may find its own shrinking due to health, mobility and vison or hearing impairments.

Operating 24/7, the station broadcasts a wide range of syndicated programming that presents useful information about important issues of the day. You can hear everything from Commonwealth Club of California, Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Economic Update with Richard Wolf, Bioneers, Big Picture Science, Travel with Rick Steves, United Nations Radio News to phenology reports by The Nature Conservancy called "Wisconsin Nature Notes," and "Durango's Roadhouse" a live music show on Saturdays, 7-9 PM, from Common Ground Coffeehouse in Middleton.

Each weekday afternoon from 3:30 to 5:30 the station features locally recorded talks organized along the following themes: Global Monday, FYI Tuesday, Wellness Wednesday, Environmental Thursday, and Science Friday. There are recorded talks from local organizations like the UW Mini-Med School, The Madison Institute, the League of Women Voters, the American Constitution Society, Attic Angels and SAIL.

On Sundays, the station carries the 9 and 11 AM services live from the First Unitarian Society of Madison.

In addition, the station has identified two initiatives which it will work to partner and present research and information as it grows: Climate Change and Alzheimer's Disease. We are partnering with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Goal #13), and UW-Alzheimer's Disease and Research Center for information for patients and caregivers.

Tune in to WMUU at 102.9 FM, or stream at wmuu.airtime.pro, TuneIn, or Radio Garden.

For more information contact Kelly Warren, Director and Producer at 608-438-4178 or wmuuradio@gmail.com.