Losing A Small Town Voice

This column originally appeared on Oct. 5, 2008

Two years ago this month, I traveled to Hobart, Indiana, to help celebrate the 50th birthday of an old college friend.

Dan and his wife Sandy have known one another since high school, and together have raised three near-perfect children (daughter Lisa tends to go a little heavy on the cell phone calls to Mom, but what are you going to do?) The kids all go to the same school that Dan and Sandy graduated from, and where Dan, who I met the first day of my college career, played football. When I arrived that Friday in October, in fact, everyone was anxiously anticipating the playoff showdown between the Hobart High “Brickies” and their cross-county rivals.

The game (which the Brickes won, by the way) was broadcast on the local radio station, WEFM-FM. While we sat in Dan and Sandy’s living room and caught up with one another that evening, Sandy made regular trips to the kitchen to tune in for the score and then touch base with various family members by phone, generally seeing who could voice the biggest distaste for the opposing squad and its hated head coach. The scene struck me as a slice of small town American life that we sometimes think no longer exists, but really does.

I’m telling you this because up until last week, that same scenario regularly played itself out in living rooms and kitchens across Chester County on Friday nights or Saturday afternoons (except the part about me being present.) High school football fans tuned in to West Chester-based WCOJ-AM and caught the action in Ches-Mont games, as broadcast by Bill Mason and John Aberley, cheering on their alma maters and heaping scorn on the opposition.

It is unlikely that will happen anymore, now that WCOJ has been sold, down the river, to a religious programming radio system that intends to air Catholic-oriented shows. Holy Spirit Radio laid off all the employees of WCOJ on Tuesday, and has not indicated that it intends to keep any of the current programs, including the football broadcasts.

Truth be told, I didn’t listen to WCOJ very much. I appeared on broadcasts a couple of times, discussing court stories with Steve Karp and current events on “Circle in the Square.” I didn’t tune in to the Ches-Mont broadcasts because, frankly, I don’t have a dog in that fight. But I know my friend Nick swore by WCOJ’s Phillies broadcasts, and that the folks at the D K Diner viewed it as an invaluable resource for finding news stories to argue about over eggs and sausage.

And it made me feel good about the community I live in, knowing that WCOJ was out there touching people’s lives from Pottstown to Oxford with information from the sublime (Ron’s Swap Shop) to the ridiculous (The Paranormal Café). Say what you will about the county’s last remaining local radio station, WCHE-AM, but it certainly lacks the geographic reach and broadcast signal of its former neighboring rival.

The loss of WCOJ’s local programming isn’t going to be a topic of discussion at the next presidential debate, but I would like it to be. I would like to tell the candidates how the little chips at our sense of community eventually add up to a large feeling of displacement and loss. I would like to make sure they know how important it is to our small world to hear the voice of the local morning broadcaster let you know what the weather was like outside your very own window and whether school was going to be canceled because of it.

Mostly, I would like to tell them that being able to catch up on the Downingtown East versus Downingtown West score at halftime is just as valuable as listening to someone deliver a sermon.