Pensacola’s newest media outlet, community radio station WPNX, hit the airwaves in September. Founded by three Pensacola locals with deep roots in the community, they’ve hit the ground running with a unique vision for the future of DIY radio.
Sean Linezo, one of the founders at WPNX, first conceptualized the idea more than 20 years ago after returning to Pensacola from traveling the country and working with Prometheus Radio Project. The idea would sit and grow during that time while Linezo continued traveling and working to help build other stations.
“We had our first meetings right here in the back of this cafe that we're sitting in, in the back of End of the Line Café 24 years ago,” said Linezo. “We never did our community radio station back in 2002, but it did inspire Fred Toucette, who's still with WPNX now, to start an internet radio station as soon as that was a technological possibility. And then I never made a radio station of my own. I would travel around and help people organize to build them. And I would participate when I could in different ways. But I ended up always on the road and living in Japan for like 12 years.”
The catalyst for WPNX’s revival and Linezo’s return to Pensacola came in 2016, when 309 Punk House was planned to be sold and demolished.
“That would have erased all of the history of the place,” he said. “And I thought it would be really interesting to preserve it and kind of let it become a living monument. We decided with Scotty and Val, we decided to do an exhibition, we did an open call, and we did an exhibition called Punksacola that was like an overview of the DIY and punk history in Pensacola.”
Planning for WPNX to broadcast on a low-power frequency, Linezo was forced to wait until the FCC application period reopened in 2023. During that time, he lived at the 309 house while continuing to travel.
“I talked to Todd Urich from Common Frequency, who assisted me in the application,” he said. “And I turned it in not thinking too much of it, and then a few months later we were awarded the construction permit. From there, I was like, 'Uh-oh, what do I do now?' And I decided to do the same thing a lot of people do when they get these construction permits, and that's called Prometheus Radio Project.”
The FCC application period for low-power projects only opens for 10 days once every 10 years, and if approved, a period of 36 months is given to begin broadcasting. Linezo called Pete Tridish from Prometheus Radio Project, and they began working on the blueprint for WPNX. The tower officially went up Monday, September 23 this year, and broadcasting began a week later.
Grassroots Radio Conference
The launch of WPNX coincided with this year’s Grassroots Radio Conference, for which Pensacola was the host city.
The GRC serves as a yearly gathering for low-power radio experts across the United States to come together and share resources and knowledge, furthering their efforts toward a greater network of community radio. Some of the presenters I was able to catch up with included Ursula Reudenberg, Network Manager of Pacifica Network, Pete Tridish, and filmmaker Maureen Gosling.
“I really admire the courage they had to kind of put that forward,” said Reudenberg. “And they certainly have indicated that that's going to be a cornerstone of how they move forward with their station: connecting culturally with a lot of different entities in this kind of general region. I think that there's so much potential in that. And I'm really excited.”
Tridish looked at the cultural aspect from a standpoint of current events and trustworthiness.
“I think that's a great way to start because it takes a lot to be a credible news outlet,” he said. “But, along with the music, I'm sure you're going to see the way people really feel about a lot of issues. I think it'll just, a lot of it's going to be about the people-to-people connections and about the explicit localism of it.”
Tridish also explained the importance of community radio as a source of local information that is impactful to the community.
“The economics of media are the more listeners you have, the more clicks you get, the more ad revenue you get,” he said. “And it's just only good for you to have a huge audience. And so, we're seeing that people know a lot more about, for example, the war in Iran than they do about their local school board meeting, even though their school board meeting has more tangible impact on them. And because you can't really muster the resources to cover the local school board in the way that the Iran war gets covered, There's less news about it. There's less audience.”
Reudenberg emphasized the value community radio has on governing concepts and beliefs.
“It's a very, very precious cultural aspect of the United States,” she said. “It's a culture of community that's based on values of democracy and values of healthy community. And it's a system that fortunately and unfortunately is relatively separate from any real financial business plan. And so, the people that are engaged in this are doing it because they believe in community and democracy. And I believe that's the glue that holds our country together.”
A 'cultural corridor'
Linezo wants this to lead to what he’s dubbed the cultural corridor, intended for sharing programming and disaster response efforts. Linezo credits conversations he had with Dr. Nashid Madyun from Florida Humanities, who he said has a great appreciation for oral histories.
“We were talking about this idea of a cultural corridor that I had that connects New Orleans to Miami,” said Linezo. “A network of community radio stations that share programming to support independent artists and films and exhibitions that can travel in between. The value of it gets magnified because in a time of disaster or emergency response, the cultural corridor becomes a lifeline of communication to help your neighbors. And if we already have these relationships with our neighbors when there's not a crisis, it'll be easier when there is a crisis.”
Filmmaker Maureen Gosling, whose works Hot Pepper and This Ain't No Mouse Music! were shown at the GRC, hinted at the conglomeration of media and the importance of community to media diversity.
“We just saw the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers and all those guys into one entity.” She said. “And it means that it's totally turning our media into a monolith. It takes away the variety and the incredible diversity that we have in this country, which we need so desperately. And I just think it's great that there are all these independent stations. By the bootstraps, folks that are saying, 'No, we need to protect our free speech. We need to protect the First Amendment and be able to express ourselves, be able to share our stories, be able to have local news.'”
Coy Glass, another founder and community liaison for WPNX, emphasized the importance of showing films like Gosling’s to expand upon the storytelling nature of radio and deepen the roots of culture in the community.
“I think that the GRC we tried to put on this year, we wanted to focus on, I don't want to say positive things, but I felt like the GRC last year was a bit of a downer,” Glass said. “It was ‘look how horrible things are in some ways and what are we going to do about it.’ I think what we really wanted to have was a conference that didn't feel so heavy. Something that we could celebrate some things and some people, and we celebrate storytelling. Humanity is storytelling. I mean, what we're doing right now, that's how we've gotten this far, is by telling our children stories, and they tell their children stories and so forth and so on. And we get culture and society. Folk music and folk tales. And then, you know, some of that spills right over into modern superheroes and cinema and things like that.”
One of the major points Glass hit upon was the desire for WPNX to be something other than what many call “jukebox radio.” His goal is to step out of the algorithm and try something new.
“If you can hear it on the radio somewhere else, we don't necessarily need to do that,” Glass said. “You can go somewhere else and get that.”
“You know, the market is saturated. There is so much talk radio, and there are so many people yelling so loudly. Why try to compete? I mean, it just turns into a shouting match, and I don't think anybody wins or anybody feels better or anything gets accomplished.”
While their goal is to have as unique programming as possible, Glass also recognizes the role community feedback plays in longevity.
“You can fight the good fight while remaining positive," he said. “And really, I think tuning in to your local community and really talking to people instead of talking at people, not just talking but listening, and that's partially what the radio is, right? You may play your records for your community, but you're also going to turn around and listen to the records that your community is playing for you. And I think that simple exercise in how to communicate and not just talking but also listening is a heavy dose of exactly what we need right now.”
Taking their time
Glass and the other founders of WPNX have stated their desire for this to become an opportunity for anyone from the Pensacola community to come forward to have their voice be heard. They intend the station to be something that serves the community and allows for a greater level of connectivity across diverse groups and subcultures in the area.
“We're not in a huge hurry because that's how people make mistakes,” said Glass. “We've taken our time with this. We've gone step by step, and we're going to continue to do that. Step by step, one thing at a time. We're not going to run out and get a bunch of people involved that we don't know who they are or what they're about. We're going to vet everyone and really build this organization with the intentionality that it lasts well after we're done being associated with it. So, we want to do it right. We want to do it slow.”
If you’ve tuned into WPNX since launch, you’ve likely been wondering why they have the same song playing on repeat. According to Linezo and Glass, the song is intended to be interpreted as transmission performance art aimed at fundraising. The song comes from a film titled The Lost Record created by Linezo’s friends Ian Spinionious and Alexandra Cabral.
“It's kind of like a science fiction fantasy film based in the 1970s, and it's a dystopian or a hyper-capitalist world where Music is outlawed,” said Linezo, “Except for the number one record, the only song worth listening to. And the DJ in that film on that radio station is Henry Rollins. And he explains why there's only one song that you need to hear. It's something that blurs the reality or the distinction between art and life, as we've taken this artwork that has inspired this and we're putting it into our everyday lives.”
Linezo intends for the Number One Record to continue on repeat through the remainder of the year while WPNX continues building out their roster of hosts and programming, slowly taking up more and more space in the broadcast until they are fully fledged with unique programs throughout the day.
“I'm working with Ian to develop this fundraising campaign and hopefully... By the end of the year, we're going to bring him to town to liberate the airwaves with a live concert broadcast on WPNX. That's what we're talking about doing right now. So, I'm working with him to write these little introductions. That's how we're gonna introduce each of the shows, with like a little message about joining the resistance to the algorithm, the resistance to corporate jukebox radio. Let's play music we want to listen to and things that you want to share with the community.”
Going forward, WPNX is broadcasting, although most of their weekly programming is only one song. Coy Glass was the first to debut his show, The Moon Pie Danger Zone, which airs every Sunday evening from nine to ten. They plan to continue taking their time and doing things slowly, with no rush to reach any sort of finish line.
“The next immediate course of action is going to be programming the station and then finding people,” said Glass, “Basically creating an organization, creating a community advisory panel to advise the board on how the community feels and what the community is looking for. We have so many things that we need to do immediately.”
While Glass is focused on community input, Linezo is looking at what equipment is still needed.
“It's really building infrastructure and educating the community on how to participate," Linezo said. "And we need a studio. We need microphones. We need turntables, or we just need the capacity to invite the community to participate.”
