WEHC increases power

By CAITLIN SULLIVAN/Staff

The headphones are causing a delay, so she takes them off.
And three-two-one.
“Thank you for listening to WEHC-FM 90.7 your college and community station,” April Bertaux said into the microphone last week.
Bertaux’s hosted her “Broadway show tunes and movie musicals” show on the Emory & Henry radio station since she was a freshman, four years ago. Back then, there were parts of campus that couldn’t receive her broadcast.
“When I started here my freshman year you couldn’t drive off campus and get the radio station,” Bertaux said. “We put a lot of work into the programs we do and I think it’s great that we’re now going to be heard.”
With a new tower, transmitter and signal increase totaling 9,000 watts, WEHC can now reach five counties, stretching north to Richlands, south to Mountain City, east to Rural Retreat and west to Blountville. In addition to student and community shows, WEHC is partnered with the Virginia Tech Foundation and WVTF airing NPR and BBC programming through its affiliate Radio IQ.
A Monday ceremony at the base of the tower overlooking the campus marked the start of the full signal.
E&H President Rosalind Reichard and Mass Communications Chair Dr. Teresa Keller joined U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher and Delegate Joe Johnson along with students and community members for the event.
“It was Delegate Joe Johnson that went to the Tobacco Commission,”
Boucher said in addition to the Tobacco Commission money for studio equipment and training, the U.S. Department of Commerce provided funding for the tower and new transmitter.
“We waited 11 years for this,” Keller said. “You just can’t imagine how grateful we feel.”
She said both WEHC and Roanoke-based WVTF wanted to expand but the FCC wouldn’t grant the signal increase if the other radio station was there.
So 11 years later the FCC finally granted the signal expansion to E&H and WEHC partnered with WVTF.
“We’re sharing. Isn’t that great?” Keller said.
Back at the studio Bertaux has seven and a half days worth of show tunes on her computer.
“I think it’s now great to be what you’d think of as a legitimate radio station,” Bertaux said as Grease’s “Summer Nights” spins in the background.
“Wow, I need to get on,” Bertaux said, grabbing the headphones, putting them on, then taking them off as the song wound down. “That was a close.”
Bertaux said she loves musical theater and started her show in order to share it with people.
In musicals “you get things by singing your emotions that you don’t get by speaking,” she said.
“Not everybody is as obsessed with Broadway as I am,” Bertaux said.
Still, it’s been four years since she saw a Broadway play.
Along with the sharing her love, she’s helping keep the art of speaking alive.
“The art of communication is falling off with this generation because of texting and blogging online,” Bertaux said. “The art of rhetoric is falling. It’s the most important skill I have ever learned.”
WEHC comes from a long history of radio. It was the first AM radio station in the state in 1929, and then switched to the FM dial in 1992, first broadcasting with 100 watts and then 500 watts by 2007.
Bertaux said theater and more generally radio provide an opportunity for people to verbalize themselves and communicate with each other.
“The power of radio to stimulate your imagination,” she said. “You can’t see it, so we have to create it and that’s a reason I love show tunes, because they tell a story.”
Bertaux scripts her shows but she said most people don’t because they’re better at talking off-the-cuff.
And if she makes a mistake she smiles, even on radio.
“The most important thing is to handle it with a smile because if you’re smiling they can hear it in your voice,” she said.
To contact Caitlin Sullivan e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call (276) 628-7101.