William Bilancio is focused on getting the antenna set up for his new station, WBWK, for the city of BrunsWicK, Georgia. He is happy because he has gained some momentum for the station building project by meeting supporters through his job with the city, and his notable technology background helps with decision making.
Hailing from the East Coast, William transferred to the south a few years ago with his partner, Lenora, a native of the state.
When they moved to the peninsula town, they were intrigued by the possibility of starting a radio station. William looked on Facebook for resources. He found postings by REC Networks about an upcoming filing window for LPFM’s. William contacted them to see if he had a shot. Turns out, he did.
The beginning, as with many new stations, has been bumpy. But progress keeps moving. After a couple of years of struggle, William’s team has an FCC license for 95.7 on the local dial. They have a board of directors and (18% of their funding goal.
Stephanie Schubert sat down with William to talk about WBWK over Zoom, and he began by sharing what his team was working on.
William
We’re trying to get the antenna on top of this building. I’m still waiting for a contract from the city.
Stephanie
Oh yes, communication with the city can take patience. Just one of the 18 things right now I’m sure you have up in the air.
Passion in community radio is amazing because people are willing to jump through so much bureaucracy to make it happen. I understand that you have background in radio going back to the mid 80’s. You managed a community college station and a commercial station – both in upstate New York.
What strikes you about Brunswick that makes you think it’s good for community radio?
William
It’s a fun, little quirky place. Downtown is so freaking quirky, it’s not even funny. We have some good restaurants. We have a lot of cute little stores. We have two coffee shops right next door to each other – the new one belongs to my partner, Lenora. We’re 10 minutes from the beach.
It’s a good community. It needs to be built, like, it needs to be brought together. And you know, all studies show that community radio stations will do that. We’ll work on doing that.
Stephanie
How far does your signal reach?
William
[We’re] looking at the map of where our signal is going to go. We do hit a lot of Glenn County. The original plan was the radio station was just going to be for the city of Brunswick, and then we started looking at things and realizing that Brunswick is part of Glenn County. And so, we know that we have to market to that as well.
Stephanie
You mentioned to me that during the last FCC LPFM filing window, while you were in competition for one frequency, 95.5, you had an opportunity to take over the county station.
William
Yes. The county has their own low power FM radio station that they do not use. Well, all of it is PSAs and ads for things in the county.
The joke at my house – we were in a blowing tropical storm, and my wife’s like, “Hey, look at this.” She woke me up, pointed at Facebook, and it was the county going, “For more information, listen to our radio station”. So, I had to get up, get some clothes on, and go out to the car to see what they were doing, because I was sort of curious, because I knew they weren’t going to be doing anything. And it sounds like crap. They don’t have good audio. And when I turned it on, it was the PSA. And this is in August. They were saying “Remember to wrap your pipes so they don’t freeze” in August. So, yeah, this [county station] really isn’t working.
I tried to take them over. I wrote a whole proposal for them. I said, ‘Here’s what you can be doing with it. Here’s what we can do with it, but I want full control of the license. I want to put it in my group’s name,’ because I didn’t want someone to go, ‘Okay, my cousin now is going to run this station, and you’re out’. Yeah. But they turned it down.
Stephanie
And the other non-profit that you were competing with won the bid for the 95.5 frequency. But then you were granted the frequency of 95.7.
William
I really did want 99.5. How cool would that be? WBWK 99 and a half on your FM dial, right? But the other nonprofit [that won the bid] has been in this area since 1967. They run the Head Start program here, and a bunch of other things. And they’re just going to focus on the black community, wheras we’re going to focus on all the communities in Brunswick. So, we’ll see what happens.
Stephanie
I understand you have a lot of experience in Information Technology. You’ve been a studio engineer, you have experience with working on transmitters, you have worked in research and repaired computers, and you’ve worked for a civil engineering firm-and I have to add that you had a short career fixing tennis ball machines.
William
Fixing Prince ball machines was the boringest thing in my life. That lasted maybe a month, and then they realized I really knew how to do things, so the company moved me to the research and development lab behind a locked door, and that was like the best thing, because I had a radio that I could listen to. I had a phone to call in to win free tickets and stuff.
Stephanie
~laughing~ What’s something that you learned or that has stayed with you during all of this technology work?
William
I’m always the most vocal team leader, manager, just for my team, right? The team is always as important as the customer and the work, because if your team’s not happy, they’re going to piss your customers off, they’re not going to do a good job, and they’re going to keep looking for other jobs.
Stephanie
Your technology background and your position as IT manager for the city must be helpful in starting a radio station.
William
I don’t stay in my office very often. The minute I started working for the city, I started wandering around. So, I get to know everybody, even the city manager calls me the mayor of downtown, because she’ll just see me out, wandering, talking to people and getting to know businesspeople. But yes, having the guy who’s on the neighborhood committee-he was going to be on my board, but he gave money from his department, so he couldn’t be on my board. So, yeah, I got to know him. And getting to know people, yes, it has helped a lot.
And lately, you know, for the last year and a half, it’s to find space that’s empty, to try and find out who owns it, and try and get them to let [the radio station] use it.
Stephanie
Let’s talk about your vision for your station.
William
I have no vision. It’s just all out there.
Stephanie
You have a mission statement on your website that reads:
To welcome all voices, regardless of perspective, to freely, regardless of perspective, to freely discuss issues. Nourish the spirit and entertain. And then you say, embody the spirit of Brunswick Georgia. Foster local pride and respect between people. Encourage increased communication and understanding.
I think that’s very nice.
William
It is, and –that is our goal. Lenora wrote that. She has an English degree and she wrote that. I would have been just like, ‘have fun and talk about Brunswick.’ That would have been my statement. And she goes, ‘You can’t do that, you have to have professional language.”
Stephanie
~laughing~ You and Lenora complement each other well. So, what is your balance of talk versus music?
William
I really want it to be live local people.
You look at a community radio station and Monday through Friday it’s all talking news from about six a.m. till about anywhere between 12 and two o’ clock. Then you have a mix. So that’s what we’re going to be doing.
But mainly I want it to be live. 24/7. I really want my automation computer in the end, you know, going, ‘Hey, I’m over here. Can you use me please?’
I know I’m going to have Democracy Now! Then there, in the morning, the Chicken Man Show is going to be in there. But that’s only two minutes.
Stephanie
The Chicken Man Show?
William
Yeah. Chicken Man is a radio show from the 60s. When I went to high school in upstate New York, I walked to school every day, and I had a radio because it’s boring up there, especially when you’re walking in the snow. So the local station played Chicken Man, which was a two-minute show. And it’s The Adventures of Chicken Man. You have to look it up. So, we just found out who’s distributing it and how much that costs. So yeah, so we’re gonna do that like twice a day.
Stephanie
~laughing~ Ok, I will look that up.
William
So talk in the morning, music and light talk in the afternoon/evening. And…The Grateful Dead Hour. That’s the other one we’re going to do. That’s a must for me.
Weekends. I have no clue how we’re going to do anything yet. Because I know news isn’t big on the weekends, right?
Stephanie
Right. Maybe some public affairs programs. But back to news. I’m curious because I know it can be challenging. How does that look for Brunswick?
William
We want to have a news team that will go out, get the facts and be able to do local news in the mornings. Have a show, do some investigative journalism as well.
We’re going to probably work with the local college, with their students, as well as The Current, which is out of Savannah, going to work with them for a little bit to at least train people.
Stephanie
It’s the local newspaper–
William
It’s the online newspaper. They’re on their own, but the college has a good journalism class, and the professor really wants to work with us. Have some experience doing radio journalism.
Stephanie
That sounds exciting
William
Oh yeah, we’ve been working on this. The professor was going to be a board member, but he’s too busy. But we’ve got things, you know, we are trying. I mean, we’re reaching out. We have a list of people who want to volunteer, so one board member who’s the volunteer coordinator, we’re asking her to do that this week.
Stephanie
I have been thinking about how the government has reserved the lower band of the radio dial for Non-Commercial Educational stations. Both community radio stations and Christian radio stations are about community, but they tend to operate in their own right/left bubbles. What would you say if someone outside the realm of the left wing was interested in having a show on WBWK?
William
Brunswick is this spot area right below Savannah, which is very blue. And then there’s us there. We’re blue, but you know, more purple, we’ll say we’re purple. Brunswick. Glenn County, very red.
So, you know, we have both kinds. There’s going to be somebody who’s going to want to come and do a conservative show. And here’s what I always tell anybody who’s asked about doing a show: turn in your application. Tell us what the show is going to be about. Tell me how you’re going to do the show. The Program Committee will say yay or nay. Then I follow that up. If it’s a yay, I say, ‘Yes’. But, if it’s a nay, we will work with you to get to try and get it so it is broadcast worthy, right? Not going to change your whole idea, but we’re going to make it so that it will work on radio, like you’re going to come to me and go, ‘I want to do a puppet show’. That’s not going to work because, you know, no visual. So, we’re going to come up with something else that will work. That’s my thing. I’m not going to push people away, not going to turn people away if they have a viable idea. It just needs to be fleshed out and worked out.
Stephanie
Okay, so you guys got your FCC license for 95.7. You’ve got a board of directors. You’ve got $12,000 out of your $67,000 goal on your website. You have volunteers responding. What else have you got?
William
A headache?
Stephanie
~laughing~
William
I’ve got maybe a spot we’re working on-a location for the studio.
Stephanie
That sounds hopeful. I won’t linger on it too much as I know real estate searching can be a drawn-out process. You also told me earlier that WBWK has a booth at the farmers’ market and at the monthly mini festival called First Friday. Good for awareness and fundraising?
William
We are trying and trying to get money. That money will come. It’ll be here soon. I can feel it.
When we go out to do the First Fridays at the farmers’ market, we have a jug of money that we put out so people can drop money. And we do not know how much is in here, because we don’t know how to get it out without destroying the jug. Yeah, so, but, you know, people put $2 in, yeah, they’ll be like, Oh, great idea. And a lot of them are tourists, like, they think it’s great. They love their community radio station, you know? Every little bit helps, right?
Stephanie
I should add that Porch Fest is arguably the pinnacle draw of Brunswick, is that the case? It’s a big draw for tourists and local music. A dream for a radio station.
William
It is, and it’s great. It’s the second Sunday of November. It’s historic downtown Brunswick, the streets get closed, and we have bands on porches. It’s the biggest event that people come down here for.
There’s tons of food trucks. It’s all walkable. It’s a full day thing, and it’s just fun.
We’ve actually had Jekyll Island ask us to move our date because they used to do shrimp and grits at the same time. And we still get more. We were getting more people. We beat them by about 20,000 people last year, a big turnout, 67 bands on 47 porches.
Stephanie
And what is next on your station building list?
William
We’re getting ready to start streaming. Once we find space, we’re going to start streaming and just have fun. It’s all we want to do really- have fun. The business part of this is what’s boring and unfun, but the radio should be fun, right? Once we get on the air, we’re gonna have a big party and really shoot up the town and have some fun with it. The mayor of the city, Cosby Johnson, is very big and behind us on this and wants us to succeed, because he’s never done ribbon-cutting at a radio station before. But yeah, every time he asks me about [the radio station] I’m like, ‘I’m ready to do the most boring two-hour show there can be.’ He looks at me, I’m like, ‘That City Commission meeting.’ He’s like, ‘Yes, it will be very boring, but people need it.’
Stephanie
Well, I am excited for WBWK, William. Let me know when you get on the air.
William
You guys will know when we’re on the air. You’re going to see this big bubble, bright light coming from the East Coast.
Learn more about WBWK-lp, The Kraken
WBWK logo and photo of William Brunswick used with his permission