About WERU

WERU provides programming that is diverse, engaging, surprising, alternative, worldly and local.

WERU's sound is made possible by volunteer power, listener support and community participation. We offer diverse music and cultural programming, alternative news and community-centered public affairs programming.  We are an independent and locally owned and operated community radio station, offering noncommercial programming to, for and by folks living in our signal area in Eastern Maine.  We invite you to browse our web site to find out more about WERU Community Radio.

WERU’s Mission

• to provide a community-based, noncommercial radio service for the people living in the areas covered by the station's signal;
• to broadcast programs designed to serve the needs of those not currently served by other broadcast media;
• to be a voice of many voices offering a wide variety of people an opportunity to share their experiences, concerns, and perspectives with their neighbors over the WERU airwaves.

The Future of WERU (Strategic Plan Update)

What do you want it to be? What are the most necessary and useful things that WERU can do to serve its audience in the future? What are the most important priorities that WERU should address over the next several years? How are we doing right now in terms of strengths that should be sustained and weaknesses that should be improved upon?

These are just a few of the questions that the WERU Board of Directors has been asking in recent months as it began working on the station’s strategic plan for the next three years. Station staff and volunteers are now being asked to contribute ideas and perspectives for the plan, and listeners are invited to be part of this discussion as well.

Following is a brief outline of the major goals in the draft strategic plan:

• Programming: Fulfill the station’s mission statement by serving underserved and diverse audiences, meeting unmet community media needs and functioning as a noncommercial “voice of many voices” on the airwaves. Continue to develop local news and public affairs programming, maintain and expand musical diversity, increase training opportunities for volunteers and continue to survey listeners for programming preferences and ideas.
  
• Broadcast Operations: Provide high-quality audio sound and community radio service utilizing existing and emerging technologies. Replace our aging transmitter with a new digital/analog transmitter, maximize the “second channel” capacity of digital broadcasting, establish emergency standby power, improve our signal in Greater Bangor and explore improving it elsewhere.
  
• Non-Broadcast Operations: Have appropriate non-broadcast facilities and systems for achieving the overall mission of the station. Maintain functional and up-to-date computer and phone systems, incorporate renewable energy and improve the physical plant as needed.
  
• Fundraising & Development: Generate the funds necessary for ongoing operations and new initiatives for improving the radio station. Continue to experiment with approaches to pledge drives, create an endowment, develop guidelines and opportunities for individual major donors and analyze the effectiveness of the station’s various fundraising mechanisms.
  
• Outreach & Public Relations: Increase public awareness of WERU, enhance our reputation as an important local institution and grow our audience. Continue to experiment with different approaches to community outreach events and partnerships with like-minded community organizations.
  
• Human Resources & People Power: Recruit and retain enough volunteers, board members and staff to meet station goals. Provide ongoing training opportunities in all aspects of station and organizational operations. Share our experience with training and managing volunteers with other like-minded community organizations.
  
• Governance & Management: Be a model nonprofit organization. Function collaboratively and transparently. Continue to develop and refine appropriate station policies and procedures. Experiment with
  approaches to internal and external organizational communication.
  

Please send any comments, reactions or ideas you have to these planning goals and objectives to the WERU Board of Directors, c/o General Manager, WERU, P.O. Box 170, East Orland, ME 04431 or e-mail matt@weru.org. Thank you for your input!

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WERU Staff

WERU Board of Directors

WERU-FM is licensed to Salt Pond Community Broadcasting, a non-profit corporation actively run by an all-volunteer board of directors from the community that WERU serves. Board of Directors meetings are held at WERU.  Click here to find out when the next Board meeting is scheduled. 

As well as other various governance committee meetings, Board meetings are open to the public. The current board members are:

Kathleen Rybarz - President-Lamoine
Lisa B. Martin- Vol Rep & Vice President - Monroe
Lynn Soucy- Treasurer - Dedham

Heather Martin-Zaboray - Secretary- Surry
Alfred Bourgoin - Vol. Rep.Winterport

Matt Murphy- Ex Officio - Penobscot

John Greenman - Old Town

Roland Magnan -Sandy Point
Susan Pierce - Northport
Jean Bourg - Unity

WERU Community Advisory Board

The WERU Community Advisory Board holds periodic "listening sessions"  for members of the WERU audience and general public. Please call the station at 207-469-6600 to find out about the next such meeting. For more info about this, click here. 

The current CAB members are:

WERU’s History & Info

• On May 1, 1988, after eight years of planning and work by a dedicated group of volunteers, WERU-FM 89.9 began broadcasting from the top of Blue Hill Mountain on the coast of Maine. Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary was the station's first benefactor and WERU first broadcast from studios in his converted chicken coop, affectionately known as "The Henhouse." In 1997 the station moved to its current location on U.S. Route 1 in East Orland, and is currently conducting a capital campaign to pay for the purchase of this permanent home.
• From its inception WERU-FM has been a grassroots, nonprofit, noncommercial, volunteer-powered and listener-supported community radio service. Striving to be "a voice of many voices," WERU trains members of the community to be on-air programmers and behind-the-scenes producers. It provides access to the airwaves for individuals, musicians (local and beyond), nonprofit community organizations, and many others in the station's signal area. Community Radio is a place for people to share music, information, ideas and more, and thus is a vibrant resource for community-building over the airwaves.
• WERU-FM is a noncommercial educational radio station licensed by the FCC to Salt Pond Community Broadcasting, a nonprofit corporation run by a volunteer board of directors drawn from the station's service area.
• The station's management and governance structure includes our small paid staff, which supervise and maintain daily operations, and several volunteer committees whose job it is to work with the staff and other volunteers on various aspects of the station (programming, fundraising, etc.) and make recommendations to the Board. Consensus is sought on all major decisions through a process of collaborative decision-making.
• WERU is proud of its active volunteer base of 150 people and its paid operations staff of four full-time and four part-time employees.
• Financial support for WERU comes from its listeners and members (over 2,500 supporting members, including individuals, families, organizations and businesses), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and special events such as the station's Full Circle Summer Fair, held each summer.
• WERU-FM transmits from Blue Hill Mountain at 89.9 MHz with 15,000 watts of power (since 1988), and at 102.9 MHz in Bangor with a 50 watt translator (since 1997).
• WERU is a member of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the Maine Association of Broadcasters, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters - AMARC, Maine Association of Nonprofits, and is a founding member of the Grassroots Radio Coalition.

Annual Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Report:

2007 ANNUAL EEO PUBLIC FILE REPORT

Salt Pond Community Broadcasting Company

FULL-TIME POSITION HIRING

INITIATIVES

The information required by FCC Rule 73.2080(c)(6) is provided in the chart that follows.

The employment unit engaged in the following broad outreach initiatives in accordance with various elements of FCC Rule 73.2080(c)(2):

Please direct any questions about this report to:

Matt Murphy
General Manager
207-469-6600
matt@weru.org

Improving FM Reception

Do you live on the fringes of WERU's broadcast signal?  You can try to improve your FM reception.  Click here for directions and diagrams to help improve your FM reception!

You can also contact the folks at Directive Systems, who have created special receiving antennas for some serious WERU listeners who couldn't catch the signal at home. 

Directive Systems, 177  Dixon Road, Lebanon, Maine 04027

Phone: 1-207-658-7758       Fax:  1-207-658-4337

info@directivesystems.com        www.directivesystems.com

Better yet, if you want to know just about everything about radios including how to build your own transmitter check out this useful site: electronics.howstuffworks.com/radio

If you live on the fringes of WERU's broadcast signal, are frustrated with fuzzy reception, and you have access to the internet... you might try listening to WERU online.  Click here to listen online.