A Station That Sounds Like Asheville
For Dial, the goal isn’t to make WPVM sound like a radio station that could be anywhere. She wants it to sound like Asheville.
She describes the city as a mountain community with a strong personality, where art, history, civic involvement and everyday life all mix together. She calls Asheville an “East Coast Mecca for creatives,” and WPVM tries to reflect some of that character on the air.
The station’s volunteer hosts bring in local musicians, historians, advocates and neighbors. Depending on when you tune in, you might hear music, a discussion about something happening around town or someone simply telling a good story. Even the downtown studio reflects that connection to radio and the community. It includes a small collection of historic equipment that gives visitors a look at how broadcasting has changed over the past century.
Local Voices, Not Algorithms – Asheville Community Radio, Built Around Local Culture
That’s also where the name Radio Asheville comes in. “Radio Asheville is both a description and a promise,” Dial said.
To her, it means that when someone tunes in, they should hear the people, concerns and sounds of Asheville and the surrounding area—not something created hundreds of miles away that could just as easily be airing in another city.
Emergency Preparedness and Public Service
That idea of being there for the community took on a much deeper meaning after Hurricane Helene.
When the storm devastated Western North Carolina, many of the things people depend on every day suddenly weren’t dependable anymore. Electricity went out. Cell service disappeared in places. Internet access was disrupted. Some basic services remained unavailable for an extended period.
WPVM stayed on the air.
Dial remembers standing in the studio afterward and realizing just how important that was.
“One of my most memorable moments was standing in our studio after Hurricane Helene, realizing that we were still on the air while so many other systems around us were failing,” she said.
The experience left her proud of what the station had been able to do, but it also made something very clear.
“It was a wake-up call to realize how important an analog signal is in this time of digital dominance,” Dial said.
When Other Systems Failed, WPVM Stayed on the Air
Put simply, you don’t need the internet to listen to an FM radio station. You don’t need a cellular signal, an account or a subscription either. As long as the station can keep broadcasting and you have a working radio, there’s still a way for information to reach you.
Most of us don’t give much thought to what happens behind the scenes when we turn on the radio. We pick a station, hear a song or a familiar voice and go about our day. But somebody has to keep that station on the air. There’s equipment to maintain, bills to pay, federal rules to follow and, at a small community station, usually a pretty small group of people doing a lot of different jobs.
