“Dogs have been listening for 35 years…” Ellen Wong, co-host of The Farm Hour on WIOX.
On August 27, WIOX Community Radio, Delaware County’s first and only non-commercial- educational radio station, celebrates 5 years of broadcasting to the central Catskills and beyond. When reminded of this exciting news, station supporters and staff volunteers were universally flabbergasted! That Was Zen, This is Dao program host Lewis Harrison was overheard saying: “I’ve been flabbergasted since birth.” Another staffer, Folk Music host Sonny Ochs whispered, “I’ve been flabbergasted ever since I met Lewis Harrison.”
Over the past 5 years, WIOX has somehow managed to become the central Catskills’ connection to live local information, insight, entertainment, and a link to what matters in the world. Since day one, WIOX has been a megaphone of support for local talent, the arts, economic interests and issues important to local stakeholders throughout a multi-county region that includes Delaware, Schoharie, Green and Ulster.
“Let’s be honest,” confided Peg Ellsworth, host of Catskill Digest and one of the station’s early provocateurs, “Anyone who remembers the moment back ‘in the day’ when WIOX broke radio silence probably didn’t have much else going on that day. Even still, the tiny micro transmitter that generated the first WIOX broadcast—play by play of a vintage Roxbury Nine championship base ball game—hurled the experimental radio signal over a half mile radius!! I was stunned in my car driving on Route 30!”
Biting his lip, WI-OX Comedy Hour program host Glen Pedersen recalls those early days:
“We began with a pretty standard power source: Coco, my pet hamster, running on a flywheel. Today, I’m proud to say, we’ve got three hamsters managing 6 flywheels running 24/7. We’re just waiting on 2 more hamsters and a woodchuck backordered from Amazon Prime.”
WIOX’s influence now extends not only across the Catskills region on FM, but globally as well, via multiple listening platforms, including Internet streaming, smart devices and Margaretville Cable’s Channel 20. Further extending WIOX’s influence throughout the region is the station’s partnership with WSKG Public Media—Upstate New York’s premier group of television and radio signals from the Catskills to the Finger Lakes. WIOX is a proud member of the WSKG family.
On any given week, WIOX listeners can enjoy talk, sports, news, business, arts, farming, forestry, cinema, recreation, real estate, wellness, myths, and nearly every musical genre blues, pop, classical, Gothic, folk, jazz, country, accordions, show tunes, both rock and roll, and importantly, local artists. And even though WIOX hasn’t accomplished great things on the scale of bands like The Monkees, on the other hand, 5 years in, The Monkees had broken up and WIOX is still going strong. Think about it.
WIOX Community Radio continues plans for expanding audience into the future . On the immediate horizon, are plans to move the WIOX antenna to a new much higher location, extensively increasing and broadening signal reach. “We’re not sure what ‘extensively’ looks like,” explained Morning Edition on WIOX program host Kent Garrett, “but we do know that we’ll be able to inform, enthrall, annoy, even entertain even more Catskillians over the next 5 years. Or the next 35 years if you’re a dog.”