PORTLAND, Maine — Tom Bell, who worked for many years as a reporter at the Portland Press Herald, knows a good story when he sees it. It was clear to him that he’d found one at WMPG, the 50-year-old community radio station (90.9 FM) that’s part of the University of Southern Maine.
The story was the station itself, which has just three full-time employees but about 130 volunteer DJs who are the heart and soul of the operation. “This is a community,” Bell said. “But it’s hard to see that community because people are coming and going.”
They do indeed roll in and out in rapid succession because each DJ’s show lasts only 90 minutes and airs just once a week. And since it’s community radio, these are not professional broadcasters with polished deliveries, but USM students and regular folks from all over greater Portland who want to be on the radio because they love music.
“They don’t just want to sit at home and listen to music,” Bell said. “They want to share it.”
Shining a light on the passion and energy that power WMPG was what Bell, who’s a volunteer there himself, wanted to do with his new documentary, “An Extraordinary Place.” Another crucial element the film highlights is the diversity of its DJs and their musical tastes.
The DJs are of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds, and what they play — from Broadway to the blues, from Goth to Zydeco — reflects their joyous variety. There’s nothing else like it on the radio dial in Maine, although WERU in Blue Hill, another community station, is right up there.
Lincoln Peirce has been a DJ at WMPG for years, featuring country-western music released before the mid-1970s, and said, “We don’t just want to be a lot of 60-year-old white guys on the radio playing their favorite songs. We want everybody to have a voice and I think we’re doing a really good job," he added.
Interested in seeing the new documentary “An Extraordinary Place”? There will be a screening of the film at 6:00 p.m. on February 15 at Talbot Hall (in Luther Bonney Hall) on the USM campus in Portland.