Smashing Pumpkins "Disarm" (part 2)

(This is Part 2.  You can read Part 1, here)

WABN was going off the air.  It was our last day.  Goodbye.  Gone.  Kaput.

I'd been on the air for 6 years, from 1994 to 2000.  Sometimes for 10 hours a day.  I worked and lived with a close knit group of friends who'd become family.  We'd fought for the station.  But the fight was over and it was time to say goodbye.

I helped orchestrate the final run-up, giving every DJ and friend of the station one last chance to step up to the mic, say something that mattered, and play one last song.

I rehearsed, in my head, what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to leave the airwaves.


Six years earlier, I'd quit my job in television in a power struggle with the boss.  He demanded that I leave my part-time job at WABN.  I told him he couldn't tell me how to conduct my private life.  My check-mate move, was to quit.

"Bold move," said Rita later that afternoon.  "Now what?"

Rita and her husband Craig owned WABN, an AM/FM combo in Abingdon, Virginia.  They literally did everything related to the station---sales, billing, maintenance, Craig went on-air, called local sports games.  This was true DIY independent radio.

Part of the reason they were so fiercely independent, had to do with the mess they'd just come out of.

They had purchased the station several years prior, with a partner (a relative).  After only a few years in, the partner tried to sell the station without their input or consultation.  He had controlling interest.  He fired Craig and Rita, and expected them to quietly hand over their stock.  Craig and Rita were doing no such thing.  What's more, the partner incorrectly thought he could sell the station without their consent.  He was wrong.

A protracted legal battle began, for control of the station.  Craig and Rita were barred from even entering the building.  Two years passed.  The station suffered from inattention, the partner tired of the fight, and finally, he turned control of the station over to Craig and Rita.

And that's when their troubles really began.

The damage had been done to the station's billing.  They were deep in the red.  The creditors were lining up.

When Rita said to me, "Bold move," she knew what might be on the horizon.

Shortly after I went to work full time at WABN, the station filed for bankruptcy.

Let me tell you this---I learned more than I ever care to know about bankruptcy court in the years that followed.

Craig and Rita scraped and fought to bring in enough billing to keep the station alive, while working tirelessly to come up with a plan they could present to the bankruptcy court for a way to emerge and go forward.

The partner, meanwhile, because he was a creditor, re-entered the picture to resume his efforts to sell the station to another party.

 . . . Let me stop right here and say that the story of the 6 years of bankruptcy court is a long and complicated journey, that I hope Craig and Rita publish some day.  Suffice it to say, that despite community support, a fight at the FCC level, arguments before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and a truckload of craft, smarts and passion, we lost this fight.  The station, which had been an award winning community radio outpost, would land in the hands of a large radio group who would use the FM signal to rebroadcast their syndicated Talk Radio station.  They would simply turn the AM off.

I could have walked out the door of WABN the day Craig and Rita told me they were filing for bankruptcy.  But I didn't.

I believed in them, and I believed in their mission.  I believed in a radio station that let teenagers call in and have their voice heard.  I believed in a station that let the DJs pick the music.  I believed in a station that talked to you, not at you.  And I believed in Craig and Rita themselves---that their fight was right and that it was worth fighting.


We were winding through the final day at WABN.  Friends of the station had a chance to pop on air and pick a last song.  The part-timers were on now, with their last words.  Craig and Rita's adult children (who made up the rest of the full time staff) would have their say, followed by Craig and Rita themselves.  Then the transmitter would be shut off.  Right before the family spoke, I would have my turn.

I had written out my speech.  I wanted it to be good.  I didn't want to cry.

I talked about how I had come to be at WABN.  About what I had learned by living in the presence of people with dedication, passion and conviction.

I said that I learned the importance of fighting for something you believe it.  The point is not to ask whether you can win, it's to stick with it if you are right.

And I ended my 6 years of independent radio the way it started.  I played "Disarm."


That was 12 years ago, and it's still painful to write about.  In fact, when I started this blog I knew that the "Disarm" stories were on the top of the list of posts I needed to write.  I've been putting them off for 3 years.

Twelve years later, WABN FM still rebroadcasts Talk Radio.  WABN AM is still silent.  And the building where Craig and Rita and their kids and I worked for all those years, remains empty and unused, the fields around the brick building are overgrown, the whole thing abandoned.

Nothing has come to Abingdon to replace WABN  (the Talk Radio station is located 20 miles away).  No station does high school sports.  No station has a request radio program.  No station shows up at the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life or any of the other dozens of charitable events that WABN supported.

I don't live in Abingdon anymore, but I am certain that the community is less, for not having WABN.

But because of it, because of them, I am much more.  And I am thankful for that . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.