MONTPELIER, Vt. — Listeners who want to hear "The Star Spangled Banner" by dawn's early light have persuaded a Vermont radio station to resume daily broadcasts of the national anthem.
Angry listeners bombarded radio host Peter Ferrand with complaints after he stopped playing the anthem each day at 6 a.m. on WRSA-AM in St. Albans in northwestern Vermont.
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Ferrand, who started at the station in February, goes on to claim he didn't know it was supposed to be played...callers tell him not to unpack his bags...one threatend to run him out of town on a rail. Later says other radio station owners/PD's told him it was bad radio and not to play it. Says it doesn't hold anyone's interest. Finally relents and it will be played starting Monday
Yep - Let that be a lesson. Conservative folks are up before the crack of dawn. Those who party may have just hit the sack.
This is the sister station to the one that just started running "Air America". Coincidence? Yeah right!
Here is the local coverage of the story. (Full disclosure: I used to work for the newspaper the story is from)
ST. ALBANS CITY Tessie Bushey incessantly listened to the local AM radio station as a child, as her mother performed housework. The highlight of their morning was a hymn and then "The Star-Spangled Banner" coming over the airwaves.
As years passed, Bushey stayed loyal to the station, enthusiastically supporting it each time it changed owners and call letters (now WRSA, most recently WWSR).
Eventually, station managers dropped the hymn, but the national anthem stayed on the air.
Every morning.
At 6 a.m.
Sharp.
Until now.
Three weeks ago, Bushey was brewing her morning coffee in her Lower Welden Street home, when she noticed something unusual about WRSA's morning programming: On-air personality Peter Ferrand was not playing "The Star-Spangled Banner."
"Gee," she thought. "That's odd."
A regular caller on local AM talk radio for about 50 years, Bushey called Ferrand during his three-hour morning slot last week and asked him to play the anthem.
"No," he said.
She called again Monday and made the same request. She heard the same response.
"Well," she told Ferrand on the air, "don't unpack your bags. You may not stay long. We've got a box car all ready for you, so you can ride out on the rail."
A bit harsh? Not to Bushey, and she isn't alone. Ferrand's decision to eliminate "The Star-Spangled Banner" from his morning show has sparked outrage among WRSA listeners, local veterans and even the city's top elected official.
Bushey said Ferrand explained to her that he cut the national anthem from his program because it "turned off young listeners," and because "no one even remembers the words anymore."
Yesterday, however, Ferrand told the Messenger he made his choice as part of the management team because, unlike network television, radio programs are on 24 hours a day.
When listeners hear a radio station play the national anthem to sign on in the morning, he said, they touch that dial.
"It's more of a tune out than a tune in," he said. "That's the received wisdom."
Ferrand said that during his 35 years working at various stations in New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, he never had an employer tell him to play the national anthem: "They always said, 'No.'"
He carried that philosophy to St. Albans. When he took to the WRSA airwaves in February, he stopped the star-spangled morning ritual on his first day at the mic.
"It's a wonderful song, and it conveys wonderful emotion," he said, "but it does not need to be played on the radio on a regular basis."
Not so, say Bushey and Jim Brouillette, of Swanton. An active member of the American Legion, Brouillette said he hears complaints from veterans and people who never served in the armed forces.
He compared Ferrand's decision to the hot debate about removing the phrase "one nation under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
"I don't know what gets into people's thinking today," said Brouillette, a U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War. "People aren't pleased with this. 'The Star-Spangled Banner' starts my day."
Ferrand has fielded complaints, but "just from the same people over and over again." He will not budge.
"You don't do things because people complain," he said. "You do things because they increase an audience."
Has he?
"I have no way of telling," he said. "How could I?"
Bushey called Ferrand's decision "heartbreaking" but understands he has the right to his opinion and beliefs. Still, she's "disappointed and hurt that he's so stubborn."
She will keep listening, though, because she wants to keep supporting the station. Meanwhile, she has one idea for getting her daily national anthem fix.
"If I have to," she said, "I'll get in the park with a boom box and get permission from the mayor to play it."
Mayor Peter DesLauriers has tuned in to the issue. In an April 6 letter penned to Ferrand, the mayor asks him to reconsider his decision, because the national anthem is important to Franklin County veterans and WRSA listeners.
"Whereas I truly recognize your right to not play the national anthem," DesLauriers wrote, "I remind you that the right to participate in the miracle of 'free radio' is a gift from our veterans. Many sacrifices were made and lives lost so you could speak your mind on the airwaves. Is it too much what they ask in return?"
DesLauriers also hinted that Ferrand's decision could hurt the station financially: "Whereas you do have the recognized right to not play the anthem, please realize that the listeners have the right to not listen to your station and to notify any and all advertisers of their intent to turn off the local station. That is their right."
DesLauriers was a guest on Ferrand's show Tuesday, but no one raised the issue on the air, the mayor said.
Dave Kimel, of St. Albans, said disc jockeys used to play the national anthem once each morning when his family owned the station from 1959 to 1997. He will not second-guess WRSA's decision.
"We had our chance to run the radio station the way we wanted," Kimel said, "and now it's up to the new owners to run it how they see fit."
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Reach Leon Thompson at 524-9771, ext. 112, or
leon@samessenger.com
Does St. Albans qualify as Northeast Kingdom, though? It's kinda far west.
Gosh, I love this part of the state!
Many moons ago--and I mean many, many moons--when I worked as a radio announcer, it was the practice of the stations I worked at to play our National Anthem at the conclusion of the broadcast day. I always thought it was a nice touch.