Sun City Center’s own FM radio station will celebrate its first anniversary with a free party from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on June 19 at the SCC Chamber Banquet Room.
In the WSCQ studios in Sun City Center are Kevin Goodenow, Peg Goodenow, Vern Hendricks, Peter Swartz and DeeLores Everett. Mitch Traphagen photo.
Radio has endured. Before television, before the Internet, there was radio. And it still not only exists but thrives today — in cars, homes and offices; a human voice speaks into a microphone and is sent out through the airwaves to you. Almost as though they are speaking directly to you, playing music just for you. And best of all, it is free for the taking. Simply tune the radio and you have made a connection.
Big-city radio stations, however, are structured, programmed and planned. In most ways, they are institutions, somewhat removed from any given individual. They are a part of the mass media, serving a mass crowd.
For the past year in Sun City Center, there has been an alternative to that. It is, effectively, the community’s own voice on the air. Sun City Center residents and those with deep ties to the community are running it.
WSCQ 96.3 FM is Sun Radio — the voice over the airwaves for Sun City Center.
Since starting out last year, the station has moved to a larger office and has added some of the latest technology for emergency broadcasts. No one even has to be at the station for the Emergency Broadcast System to automatically take over, providing potentially life-saving information to the people living here.
And they are continually working to adjust the format to suit the incredibly dynamic community that is Sun City Center.
“We are listening to our listeners,” station-owner Peter Swartz said. “We’re in a transition. Ten years from now, we know that this station will be entirely different. It will have to be. But we still call it radio the way it used to be.”
Swartz pointed out that 30 to 40 homes in the community change hands every single month. The city is changing; the World War II generation is handing over the reins to the Vietnam era generation.
It is a transition over which Vern Hendricks and Swartz, a longtime radioman who was particularly involved in Christian radio, sometimes experience friendly disagreements.
The music selection is as dynamic as the community. It likely fits best into an “easy listening” category — the kind of music you can leave on, music to make you feel better. But the format subtly changes on certain days. Swartz at one point described some of the songs being played as “head banging.” Hendricks immediately interjected that music from the soft-rock group Chicago could not possibly be described as head banging, all to the laughter of the staff in the office.
The low-power FM station is non-commercial, meaning that it doesn’t have advertising, it has sponsors. And the sponsors have come from all corners of the Tampa Bay area, lending their names and services to the support of a radio station for Sun City Center. A big difference in that regard are the sponsor messages.
“One of the biggest complaints you hear in both radio and television is the commercial content,” Swartz said. “You have to go through five or more minutes of commercials. Our sponsorships are held down to two or two-and-a-half minutes. So we might have only a few minutes per hour. We might bump it up to three minutes per hour.”
Vern Hendricks in one of the on-air personalities on WSCQ FM. Mitch Traphagen Photo
But that is far less than commercial stations, some of which run 15 to 20 minutes of commercials per hour.
Sponsors allow them to pay the bills — the rent, the equipment they use, are not free. And as their popularity increases in the community, they are constantly looking to grow, something that also requires money.
From a studio in Commercial Center near Sun City Center Boulevard and South Pebble Beach Boulevard, the community voices and music are broadcast from an antenna atop Sun Towers. Music is the mainstay but they make a point of providing the news of any and all of the organizations in the community.
Although things may seem to be in flux, that will likely be a constant for them. A year in, the station and those who work it have developed a comfort level that wasn’t possible with all of the unknowns when they first flipped the switch to begin broadcasting. They are making a difference. They have given their own community a voice over the airwaves. And they invite any and all input from residents.
“We are always looking for ways to have more involvement,” Swartz said. “We want to work with the community and community organizations.”
And there could be no better way to help with that than to throw a first anniversary party. The party will be held on June 19 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Sun City Center Chamber Banquet Room. There will be free hot dogs, free “Sun” glasses for the first 200 attendees and copious prize baskets to be given away, many of which were generously supplied by their sponsors.
“If not enough people show up, we’ll all be eating hot dogs for the next week,” Swartz said with a laugh. “We do appreciate that we are doing this during the summer months, but it’s indoors, it will be cool inside and people can meet their favorite on-air personalities.”
The party is free and open to the public. Additionally, WSCQ will be broadcasting live from the event.
“We’ll have 60 songs that have not yet been played on the station but should have,” Hendricks added, with a quick glance at Swartz.
Fifteen or more people are involved in running the station, volunteers who work to bring the voice of Sun City Center to the airwaves. Now, after a year, it’s party time. When asked if they are having fun with it, Kevin Goodenow, who typically meets and works with the station sponsors, immediately responded, “I’m having a ball.”
Everyone in the studio nodded in agreement.
On Friday, June 19, come out to see the faces of the voices that come into your homes, offices and cars. And if you see Vern Hendricks at the microphone, perhaps put in a request for some Chicago. You may not only get your song, you’ll probably get a very wide smile.
For seasonal residents and others outside of South Hillsborough, WSCQ streams from their website at www.wscqfm.com.
