Posts Categorized: News

The Maine Blues Society celebrates 25 years!

Twenty-five years ago then WMPG Program Director Ed Noyes loved blues music. He loved it so much he created the WMPG Evenin’ Sun program, MPG’s flaghip blues show still heard six nights a week from 5-7pm. He also took his love of blues to another level, helping create the Southern Maine Blues Society. To make this love complete he opened his own nightclub called Morganfields which brought the best national blues acts to Portland. The…

Maine Blues Society

WMPG presented Shadows of Liberty at Local Sprouts Cooperative on Monday June 9th @ 7pm.

WMPG in partnership with Local Sprouts Cooperative, presented a screening of an acclaimed social justice documentaryShadows of Liberty about corporate control of the mass media. All proceeds from ticket sales benefited WMPG.

Shadows of Liberty

Flatbread Pizza for a WMPG benefit on draws crowd

Thanks goes out to everyone who joined us on Tuesday May 20th for pizza or two at Flatbread Pizza on Commercial Street in Portland. Flatbread donated $3.50 to WMPG for each pizza ordered between 5-9pm! Yea! Thanks Flatbread Pizza for supporting WMPG and all the other non-profits you support as part of this project!

WMPG’s 10th annual Fashion Show was lots of fun at Port City Music Hall! Videos now available of show! Thanks Foo Crew!

Another huge thanks goes out to everyone who came out and supported WMPG at our 10th Annual WMPG Fashion Show Benefit! It featured local fashion designers presenting their works in a fast-paced, high fashion setting with a hometown touch. It all took place at Port City Music Hall in Portland. The show included entertainment by Dark Follies Vaudeville theHoop Vixzens plus live music by The Moodiest. A huge thanks to The Foo Crew who were there and filmed the entire show…

WMPG’s founder Howard Allen attended the WMPG 40th Birthday Party – listen to him give a brief history of how WMPG started!

40 years ago Howard Allen was attending USM, then known as UMPG, and was instrumental in creating WMPG!Thanks Howard! On 4/23/14 we had a live broadcast event and community gathering to celebrate the station’s 40th Birthday. Howard attended and was interviewed by longtime WMPG’er Jessica Lockhart. Click here to listen to the Howard Allen interview The celebration started at 10am with an hour of special programming originating from the station’s studios. Howard dropped in then and was one of many to stop by. The…

Jessica Lockhart & Howard Allen
Jessica Lockhart & Howard Allen at the 40th birthday!

EdTalk – USM forum discussion about the state of education in Maine.

On Thursday, November 21st, WMPG broadcast USM Edtalks live from USM’s Hannaford Hall. This was a chance for the USM community to speak to a panel of Maine Senate and House Representatives about the rising cost of education, budget cuts and the future of public higher education in Maine. The forum was co-hosted by USM Student Government, The Free Press, WMPG, and the USM Executive Director of Student Life & Dean of Students. The moderator…

Check out the new Gallery Talk Blog!

Lars – WMPG’s host of You’ll Dance To Anything, Sundays 9-11pm also presents us with Gallery Talk, a 2 minute arts module heard weekly on WMPG. He also provides it in a blog format. Gallery Talk can be heard Thursdays 7:00am, 5:00pm & 8:30pm on WMPG! Or check out the blog at gallerytalk-lars.blogspot.com

NAACP’s Rachel Talbot Ross responds to LePage’s “kiss my butt” comment. Click below for audio.

Rachel Talbot Ross is the State Director of the Maine NAACP, and President of the NAACP’s Portland Branch. This morning, Ms. Talbot Ross visited the WMPG studios to participate an audio project being prepared for a MLK Day radio special. She talked with WMPG Volunteer Reporter Lorenzo Raffa about today’s response from Maine Governor Paul LePage to invitations from the Maine NAACP to attend events honoring Dr. Martin Luther King. If you would like to…

NAACP State Director Rachel Talbot Ross

Has your car gone to the dogs?

No need to growl…just give us a whistle… we’ll come fetch it! Make no bones about it…donating your car will make WMPG howl with delight! If your car has an engine and is towable… and you have the title, call 1-888-WMPG-AUTO to see if your old wheels may be eligible for a tax deductible donation to WMPG. You make the call… and we take care of the rest! WMPG has teamed up with the friendly…

Dogs in Car

Underwriter Profile: Lee Auto Malls, Adam Lee

Lee Auto Malls One of the first things I noticed when I stepped into Board Chairman Adam Lee’s office was the beautiful nature photography displayed on the walls. Turns out it’s his work. But more about that later. First, I was interested in finding out how a business partnership that started with a handful of used cars on consignment, and about $1,000, became a company with 14 new car franchises, 13 used car dealerships, and the highest volume…

lee auto malls
Adam Lee, Lee Auto Malls Board Chairman

WMPG’s Blunt Radio featured on WCSH’s 207

We are proud to report that WMPG’s own Blunt Youth Radio program was featured on the WCSH 207 program. The Blunt Youth Radio Project produces a weekly call-in talk show that airs Monday nights from 7:30-8:30 on WMPG, Southern Maine Community Radio. High school age youth from the Portland area, both free and incarcerated, staff the show. Blunt Members are trained in all areas of radio production: interviewing, hosting, reporting, editing, and engineering. The show has won several Gold and…

WMPG’s Fred Greenhalgh featured on the cover of the Wall Street Journal

We’re happy to report that WMPG volunteer Fred Greenhalgh and his production company FinalRune was featured in the Wall Street Journal on February 25, 2010. The article, entitled “Return With Us to the Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear – Via the Internet,” heavily focused on his signature field recording style and director Fred Greenhalgh’s passion for reviving audio drama in an age of the iPod. Missed the show – no problem we recorded it and you can listen to it here: Click here to listen to program Fred Greenhalgh also recently won a Gold Ogle Award , an international…

WMPG Volunteer Fred Greenhalgh wins the “Ogle Award” an International Award for Radio Drama

Fred Greenhalgh, volunteer producer of the program Radio Drama Revival on WMPG, has won the Gold Ogle Award , an international audio drama award for Best Fantasy Audio Drama. He won it for “Waiting for a Window,” a surreal tale of Norman, a sailor who finds himself stranded on a strange tropical island where no one ever seems to leave. The half-hour drama was produced by Greenhalgh’s Portland-based FinalRune Productions . It was recorded entirely on location in the Portland area — at marinas, marshes, the beach,…

Malaga Island: A Untold, a radio and photo documentary produced by WMPG-FM in collaboration with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

n 1912, the state of Maine evicted about forty-five people from Malaga Island off the coast of Phippsburg. The island residents were poor, black, white, and mixed race. The eviction is typically viewed as a shameful moment in the state’s history. WMPG-FM, in collaboration with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, announces the premier of Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold, a radio and photo documentary recounting this infamous event and its impact on several generations of descendents.

Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold includes an hour-long radio program plus a gallery show featuring photographs, audio, and a panel discussion. The radio documentary aired on WMPG, February 26th. A gallery opening will took place at Salt.

“This is one of those stories where people say ‘That happened in Maine?!’ or ‘The state did what?!’ Then they say ‘Tell me more,'” said Rob Rosenthal, radio producer for Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold….

"There are a remarkable number of photographs of the Malaga Island community. Newspapers published several dozen photos over the years sometimes in a kind of newspaper photo-spread unusual for the time period. Photos were also taken for postcards. This postcard image was titled "The Deuce of Spades." In the picture is probably Annie Parker holding Pearl Tripp. Some contend this picture was posed purposefully in an animal pen. Photo Courtesy Maine Historic Preservation."

Return your returnable bottles & cans and support WMPG!

Next time you bring back bottles and cans you can help support your favorite local community radio station…And you don’t even have to get dirty! CLYNK, a new local redemption program, will let you turn in a bag of bottles and/or cans at any participating Hannaford and will credit it to WMPG. There are special bags, which you can pick up here at WMPG, that have a barcode. Want us to mail you a few…

Long time WMPG Technical Director remembered with Memorial Stone

For more than ten years WMPG DJ’s had Phil Hersey to thank for keeping all the equipment up and running. Phil’s favorite time at WMPG was either late at night repairing equipment or when a band was playing and he was the engineer. Phil was the WMPG Technical Director and engineer for our Local Motives program, the program dedicated to live local music. If you were in a local band around here for the last…

Take a virtual tour of WMPG’s facilities!

Have you ever wondered what WMPG’s music library looked like or perhaps the on-air studio? If yes, then here it is, we recently took out our digital camera and took a walking tour. Take a look at our 67,000 cds and 30,000 lps! Check out our new audio console compliments of the Maine Association of Broadcasters. Meet a few of the people that keep WMPG running! Thanks to Stephanie Sample for the creative editing of…