It was a surprise at the end of an old cassette long buried in a box.
For decades, I’ve recorded airchecks of radio stations, and I have a collection of hundreds of old cassettes. I started digitizing them more than a decade ago and the pandemic gave me time to finish the project.
One of the last tapes to check was an old cassette on which I had recorded part of Turi Ryder‘s show from KSTP in 1991. I popped it in, hit record, and walked away.
When I checked the recording later, I was surprised by what I found. There, at the end of the tape, was a piece of radio history gifted from my grandmother, who had died weeks earlier.
I had never realized what was on the tape before I recorded over part of it: a recording of WOJB/88.9 (Reserve, WI) that Grandma must’ve recorded from our family cabin in the fall of 1987, judging by the content of the recording.
Grandma had been recording A Prairie Home Companion (which I had forgotten had ever aired on WOJB) but it’s what came next that’s more interesting. When Garrison Keillor goes to his mid-show break, WOJB is holding its pledge drive, and there’s an usually strong plea: the station might go off the air if you don’t give.
WOJB’s general manager recounts that he had just returned from Washington, where they had renegotiated an agreement with National Public Radio for their “touch and go, hand-to-mouth operation:”
(The recording ends when the tape ran out.)
The GM recounts how WOJB, which signed on in 1982 and is owned by the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, had been unable to make its NPR payments in 1986 and almost lost the service until NPR agreed to a discount.
“We’re willing to own up to the fact that it can’t be done, we’re willing to pull the plug on it, we’re willing to say we tried our best and did our darndest for 5 1/2 years. If we can’t do it, then we’re not going to feel bad. We’re going to feel that we’ve done the best job that we can.”
WOJB 1987 pledge drive
Of course, they didn’t pull the plug, though WOJB has continued to face financial challenges over the years, as documented by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2018.
Modern-day WOJB still carries “Morning Edition” and “As It Happens” as well as local news and a broad variety of music shows appealing to the greater northwestern Wisconsin community. Its lineup also includes “Native America Calling” and “Democracy Now.”
The 1987 statement mentions the “state network” (Wisconsin Public Radio), which has transmitters in Brule, Park Falls, and Menomonie, but WOJB fills in a rural gap between the three areas. It’s also among only a handful of signals available in some parts of the region, which has few commercial radio stations.
You don’t have to find an old cassette from your grandma to hear WOJB: They now stream through wojb.org.
As for Turi Ryder, she’s podcasting.