Cold shoulder

As a rule, the annual awards an industry association gives its members mean a lot to the recipients and less than nothing to everyone else. It’s a plaque and a pat on the back for the honoree, a yawn for the general public.

The Maine Associated Press Broadcasters Association kept this sleep-inducing tradition alive Saturday when it gave out its awards for 1998. Eighty prizes in more than a dozen categories. WTHIS and WTHAT all got to take numerous bows. Yet not one mention, honorable or otherwise, to the one W that used the public airwaves to do something different, remarkable and truly helpful for the public last year — WVOM radio of Bangor.

On a typical day, The Voice of Maine is typical talk radio. They’ve got the charmingly pompous Rush Limbaugh, the endearingly demented Art Bell and Howie Carr, whose redeming qualities are yet to be discovered. They’ve got Tom and Charlie in the morning and a ton of good, down-to-earth Maine folks calling in.

But for the better part of January 1998, WVOM was something special. Actually, icy, dark and cold Maine was something special and WVOM was how we knew it. Volunteers kept this important lifeline on the air by slogging fuel by snowmobile up to the transmitter on Passadumkeag Mountain. People used the lifeline to reach out to each other with food, water, warmth and transportation. And concern, caring and commiseration. Politicians, public safety officials and utility executives waited in line to update listeners. The battery-powered radio was nearly as indispensable as a cord of wood; for many in frozen isolation the human contact it provided was nearly as warming. Sleep-deprived WVOM staff performed in the best tradition of public service; the people of Maine did the rest.

There were plenty of categories that could have accommodated this remarkable partnership: continuing story, spot news, feature, enterprise, public affairs. There were awards, TV and radio, for ice storm coverage, mostly for glossy wrap-ups. Ironically, the winner of the radio station of the year award was off the air during part of the storm. If the judges (Virginia’s broadcasting association) saw nothing special in the WVOM story, Maine broadcasters should have, perhaps with a special citation to WVOM and, most importantly, to its listeners.

At a time when there are increasing concerns about the content of radio and TV programming, Maine broadcasters had a chance to say something important about public service and the public airwaves, about using a common resource for the common good about ordinary folks making an extraordinary effort. Instead, it said less than nothing.