Your Pledge Dollars at Work: Champlain 400

VPR's special series, Champlain 400, is truly an organization-wide project combining the efforts of VPR News, Commentaries, Music, and Online.

You may have heard this piece by John Van Hoesen, VPR's VicePresident for News & Programming, where he describes some of the "behind the scenes" work that went into the 10-part series Champlain 400: Stories from the Lake. VPR producers traveled to more than 15 locations, interviewed more than 20 people, and recorded 15 hours of sound - all to bring you the kind of stories and history and reporting you expect from Vermont Public Radio.

"Stories from the Lake": just one part of our multilayered coverage of Champlain 400, and just one more example of your pledge dollars at work for you.

VPR Wins Nine Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards

The Radio-Television News Directors Association has honored Vermont Public Radio with nine regional Edward R. Murrow awards for its news coverage, including the top award for Overall Excellence. 

It's the most awards VPR has ever won in the competition, which includes all of the New England states. The other awards were for Best Documentary, Continuing Coverage, Best Feature Story, Hard News Feature, Use of Sound, Investigative Reporting, Broadcast Writing, and Website.

You’ll find links the award-winning coverage at our website.  Thank you for making this kind of award-winning news coverage possible!

VPR's Coverage of Same Sex Marriage Hearing: Your Pledge At Work

Tonight you are able to listen to the entire Statehouse Hearing on the same-sex marriage bill. You will also hear comprehensive news coverage of this important issue as it continues to unfold.

VPR's Vice President of News and Programming, John Van Hoesen, is in the middle of the many moving pieces that make this special coverage possible. He files this observation:

"Live broadcasts always create fairly electric moments in public radio. A surprising amount of connections need to be made to various electronic devices, and connections also need to be made among the people behind the scenes.

So at 6:06 p.m. when Sen. Sears announced the opening of the public hearing on same-sex marriage and VPR’s online legislative stream produced the crystal clear sound of his voice, it was a very good sign! All the checks and double-checks to make sure the stream would be clear and reliable had worked. So if you have your computer on and you’ve logged onto the legislative stream from the Vermont House tonight, you are tuned in.

Also, for the very first time, VPR is broadcasting the hearing live over HD-3, which is available on WVPS, WRVT, WBTN and WVPR. This part of the broadcast is coming from the House Chamber over a dedicated line to VPR’s Colchester studio where it’s being broadcast onto HD-3. So these two broadcasts are coming to you thanks to the hard work of VPR’s engineers, reporters and producers and the fact that VPR has studios, towers and an investment in new technology.

Everyone appears to be “on-mic,” and there are no extra buzzes or hums and no one is bumping into the mic. In addition, the audience microphone is well-placed and working well. This was the good work of the Statehouse audio crew, another key partnership in this successful broadcast.

Meanwhile, Bob Kinzel was listening closely to the hearing in preparation for a live report on VPR at 7 p.m. with Mitch Wertlieb.

In the background, we are recording the hearing into a digital audio file, which we will later post online so you can listen to the entire hearing whenever you want from VPR.net.

Our reporters have cameras with them and they’ll be taking photos of the public hearing, which you’ll see online as well.

Plus, Ross Sneyd will be reporting from the scene as well in the event National Public Radio would like to have a story on the hearing. He’ll be contacting the Newscast Unit at NPR later this evening.

John Van Hoesen
Vice President for News and Programming

Curating a World-Class Music Library - Your Pledge at Work

One of the questions I'm asked most often is, "how many CDs are there in the library?". I wondered myself a few years ago so I counted them. But I soon realized that was a much better exercise for providing an estimate than a hard number, because of the constant stream of new recordings coming in every day.

The reason? There are actually two, and they work together: one is the serious committment VPR has to building a multi-genre, world-class, music library; the other is the listener-funded music budget that supports that vision.

Listener support also helps to pay for subscriptions to periodicals like BBC Music, Opera News, F-Roots, and Down Beat magazines. These are great resources for finding out about the newest releases around the world, as well as new venues and new artists on the scene, emerging styles and performance techniques, and industry trends.

Every music host at VPR is a curator in their specialized area of the library. Based on their reading and the years of experience and expertise they bring to the job, hosts send me suggestions and requests for new recordings. My part of the process is placing the orders and managing the annual acquisition budget to make sure everyone's accommodated. (I admit it, I'm never shy about including a few of my own picks as well!)

It says a lot about the dedicated support of VPR's listeners that I've never before had the scope or depth of resources available to do the job I do at VPR. That translates into direct benefits for all of us: more new recordings, a better variety of choices, deeper cuts, and an expansive, ever-growing range of repertoire and performances.

Thank you for making it all possible! And yes, we definitely take requests.

(By the way - the answer is "around 35,000". Today.)


Cheryl Willoughby
Dir. of Music Programming

The Voices of the Recession: Your Pledge at Work

The idea seemed simple enough when it was suggested by John Van Hoesen, VPR's Vice-President for News and Programming: tell the story of the recession through the voices of some of the people affected.

About two months after the idea first hatched, we aired Hitting Home. It was a series that mushroomed into 14 different stories, interviews, commentaries and Vermont Edition subjects.

We heard some poignant stories.

John Dillon introduced us to a recently laid-off state worker. Charlotte Albright tracked down a software developer who decided to launch his own musical instrument repair business in the Northeast Kingdom after being laid off. And Lynne McCrea told the heart-wrenching story of Meghan Cline, a homeless mother, and her fruitless search for an apartment. It wasn’t all bad news, either. We also heard from a couple of businesses in Burlington that are expanding.

A series like this takes time and people. There were at least a dozen VPR staffers involved in putting together the series, including reporters, producers, editors and audio engineers.

Take a listen to all of their work. The series is compiled online here. Thank you for making this kind of in-depth, poignant storytelling possible.

Ross Sneyd
News Editor
Vermont Public Radio

From the Mountain to Your Radio - Your Pledge at Work

VPR Director of Engineering Rich Parker send this note yesterday:

It's the first day of our membership drive with volunteers answering phones and we always get a lot of questions about how VPR signals get to various parts of Vermont. When VPR started, there was only one transmitter, WVPR at 89.5 - it was on the top of Mt. Ascutney, overlooking Windsor, Springfield and the Connecticut Valley. Due to the faithful and generous support of our listeners and underwriters over these past years, we are now able to broadcast across the state of Vermont and nearby border states from nine full service FM stations and fourteen low powered translators - carrying VPR News and Information and VPR Classical to our listeners.

Because of technical advances and innovations, and with some infrastructure support in the form of grants from CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) we are also able to provide the new digital HD radio to our listeners. With the capability for 'multi-casting' - putting multiple program streams on one frequency - we are able to serve our listeners better with more of the program services they enjoy. This is particularly important as we continue to expand our VPR Classical network - in areas where there is not an available signal for VPR Classical yet, it can often be heard on the HD-2 multicast channels of our other VPR News and Information stations.

But how does all this get to you - or more importantly, how does this all get into your radio? VPR has the majority of it's transmitters atop many of the high mountain peaks of Vermont. Today, we'll show you a little bit of the WVPS facility atop Mt. Mansfield.

The picture above was taken in late October, shortly after WVPS went on the air with it's new antennas, on a brand new tower atop Mt. Mansfield. The day before, tower riggers had just finished installation of the last panel antenna - it was a beautiful and sunny fall day!

As you can see from the picture, Mt. Mansfield can be a difficult place to work for much of the year, but the high elevation is key to the wide reach which WVPS has across the northern part of our state. When you turn on your radio to 107.9, you can picture the radio waves coming out of those panels at the top of that tower, going through all that ice and snow, and finally ending up at your radio receiver. While it sometimes seems like magic, it is the result of a great deal of hard work by our capable and very talented engineering staff - who sometimes have to go up there to work under less than ideal conditions.

We'll be profiling our other sites as time goes by - I hope you'll stay tuned; and I hope you'll make a pledge - we really couldn't do it without you! For the VPR Engineering staff - Mike Seguin, Brian Marshall, and Asa Sourdiffe I say 'Thanks for your support all these years!' 

Rich Parker, GSEC
Director of Engineering
Vermont Public Radio