Posts Categorized: News

Ashley, Mark and Courtney knocked everyone’s socks off during a live performance of The Portland files on Friday September 14th at 7pm in USM’s Talbot Auditorium in Luther Bonney Hall.

We are now gathering a team of adults and middle schoolers to produce a live weekly one-hour show on Saturdays 9-10am called “Middle School Mic Drop. The middle school aged kids will be on air, and the adults will supervise.

WMPG’s “Blunt Youth Radio Project” has made the big move to Tuesday night! Blunt will still be on from 7:30 to 8:30 pm EST and will still be a live call-in, public affairs talk show entirely produced by teens. YOUNG PEOPLE MAKE AMAZING RADIO!!

Querying the Past is a 6-week special series that will air on Thursday evenings 7-7:30pm. We will air 6 unique programs every Thursday evening over 6 weeks and the first episode began on Thursday June 14th in honor of Pride Portland Week. This series comes from the LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project that is collecting and preserving the voices and stories of members of the Southern Maine LGBTQ community. The Principle Investigator for this project is Dr. Wendy Chapkis, Professor of Sociology and Women & Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine. Professor Chapkis is also the Faculty Scholar for the Sampson Center’s LGBTQ+ Collection (from 2016 through 2018). The LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project integrates USM students into the process of community-based research; after being trained each fall, students serve as interviewers and transcribers of the oral histories.
Listen to- Coming Out
Listen to- Bar Scene
Listen to- Gender
Listen to- Religion & Sexuality
Listen to- Careers
Listen to- HIV-AIDS

June 14th special Pride Portland Programming on WMPG:

3-5pm  – WMPG Dance Party/Open House (Come on down to 92 Bedford Street in Portland!)
7pm  – the premier episode of “Querying the Past Radio“

WMPG’s Blunt Youth Radio Project will hold an open house on Monday June 18th from 7:30-8:30pm. The Blunt Youth Radio Project is a nationally award-winning radio talk show produced by teens in Portland, Maine. On the air for 20 years, work by Blunt members has aired on Various NPR programs including All Things Considered, Morning Edition, This American Life, among others.

WMPG Community Radio has long participated in the annual national broadcast of the Homelessness Marathon. This year, the programming airs on Tuesday June 12th from noon to midnight and originates in Washington DC, scheduled in conjunction with The Poor People’s March.

WMPG host Don Kimball spoke with U.S. Senator Angus King on his weekly show Friendly Fire: A Voice for Veterans. They talked about legislation pertaining to veteran’s well-being.

Listen to the interview

To celebrate Women’s History, from Thursday March 8-March 14, all DJs and Talk shows will feature women’s music and topics. Beginning on International Women’s day, we will present our signature eclectic music and talk by honoring women from all genres of music and women working in the commnuntity to make changes.

On Sunday February 11th, the Bates Gospelaires performed live during the Maine Gospel Train’s show. DJ Sister Milka asked the choir to perform as part of celebrating Black History month.

Listen to The Gospelaires

WMPG celebrated Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. day with two special programs by WMPG volunteers Michael Cutting and DJ Zachariah. Michael played freedom music, speeches, and more.
Listen to Michael’s show

DJ Zachariah from Palm Wine Radio played musicians who have spoken out against injustice, inequality, prejudice, while advocating for civil rights in Africa.
Listen to DJ Zachariah’s show

We are sad to report that longtime WMPG DJ Steve Hirshon passed away peacefully this past Friday night. During his 30 plus years at WMPG Steve wore many hats including DJ, public affairs producer, development director, sports director and serving on the WMPG Board of Directors. Until recently Steve could be heard every Thursday morning hosting his show “Hukkin’ a Chainek” – a Yiddish phrase that means making a big noise – which featured an eclectic mix of musical genres, along with interviews with community activists, authors, journalists and politicians. Steve exemplified everything that is good about WMPG and will be greatly missed.

Jim Ward presented his 15th annual Christmas music special that ran for 17.5 hours!!!!! You can listen again if you go to our programming page and click on any of the shows between Sunday 14th 5pm through Monday 25th 8:30am.

Tune in this Sunday, Nov. 19 from 9-11pm to DJ Shaxx Presents for an ALL-REQUEST Monsters of Alt-Rock special. It’s a battle between alt-rock giants – Morrissey (The Smiths), U2 and the Pixies . The playlist will be voted on by listeners. Go to this fancy survey to collect the votes.

On Friday November 10th (observed Veterans Day) WMPG presented stories from Veterans and music iconic to war and conflicts throughout history. We featured USM student veterans, and a few local organizations: Vet to Vet and Veterans for Peace. There is a special feature from WMPG’s own Dick Dinman about Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart and his experiences in WWII. Also featured from WMPG producer Lise Stamant, an interview with a local veteran who is working to end suicide amongst veterans. Thanks to Rachel Spigel, Mike Hallinan, and Wolf Mullen for their help in producing the program.

Wow – Thanks to everyone who made the 22nd Annual Record Sale a huge success! The weather was perfect, the set-up and clean-up was the fastest ever. After deducting expenses, donations to WMPG from this event are over $10,000. Thanks to everyone who donated records and CDs or helped work the event. It couldn’t have happened without all your help. The Friday night load-in was amazing! We had more than 30 people here and had the truck loaded in under an hour. Smoothest load-in ever! The clean-up was done in two hours! The sale was very well attended with more than 500 people paying to get in.

We are sad to have to report that WMPG’er Tanner Olin Smith has passed away. Tanner was a USM student and WMPG work-study student. If your band played on our Local Motives show in the last couple years you will likely remember Tanner. He helped engineer the show. The whole community was shocked and sad to hear of his passing and there was a memorial concert held at One Longfellow Square to celebrate Tanner’s life. The event was called AQUAMARINE: A MEMORIAL CONCERT FOR TANNER OLIN SMITH is a celebration of the life and music of Tanner Olin Smith. It featured his former bandmates, collaborators, & friends presenting memories, thoughts, and songs written by or inspired by Tanner. Aquamarine is one of many songs Tanner wrote and performed with his former band Laminated Cat.Tanner’s family donated the proceeds from the event to Tanner’s favorite institutions, the Tanner Smith Memorial Fund at Erskine Academy and WMPG. It was a sad but uplifting event and all who attended were moved deeply.

Blunt Youth Radio Project is hosting an Open House, on MONDAY, September 25th
from 7:00-8:30 PM at WMPG – Southern Maine Community Radio on the USM Portland campus
at 92 Bedford Street.

Check out our live show and find out how you can join. This is a FREE radio training for teens. You get to do a weekly talk show on community radio.

The Late, Late Show aired on Friday September 1st, an interview with Daniel Rodriguez the former NYC Police Officer that sang the National Anthem and God Bless America at Yankee Stadium after the 9/11 tragedies. Then join Jim Ward at 11pm, on Sept 9th and 15th for his 9/11 tribute show.

If you love radio and especially if you love WMPG, we’d like to invite you to participate with us in National Radio Day on Sunday August 20th. Across the country stations will be celebrating radio – your source for great music and talk produced by members of your community. We are looking for testimonials and Facebook posts on why you love radio and what WMPG means to you.