1 25 1 https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/544017c7d1e83f676c686c4467456b01.doc fd9b5bc2dc3f23645caf5286a829f57b https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/6cb2a1c4632cfd6c4adbcba3afc0309e.pdf 24f7d4588c89f54a95d49142e8d510af PDF Text Text Something in the Air: Friends Radio, Chronicle of DC’s Gay Community 1973 to 1982 radio for and by the gay community �FRIENDS SUNG BY BETTE MIDLER, MUSIC AND LYRICS BY KLINGMAN AND LINHART RELEASED NOVEMBER 1972, ON THE DIVINE MISS M And I am all alone. There is no one here beside me. And my problems have all gone. There is no one to deride me. But you got to have friends. The feeling’s oh so strong. You got to have friends To make that day last long. I had some friends but they’re gone, Something came and took them away. And from the dusk till the dawn Here is where Ill stay. Standing at the end of the road, boys, Waiting for my new friends to come. I don’t care if I’m hungry or poor, I’m gonna get me some of them. cause you got to have friends. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, friends. That’s right you, oh you, yeah you, I said you gotta have some friends, I’m talking about friends, that’s right, friends. Friends, friends, friends. I had some friends, oh, but they’re all gone, gone, Someone came and snatched them away. And from the dusk until the very dawn, you know, Here is where I gotta stay, here is where I gotta stay. And I’m standing at the end of a real long road And I’m waiting for my new friends to come. I don’t care if I’m hungry or freezing cold, I’m gonna get me some of them. Cause you gotta have friends, That’s right, friends, friends. I gotta be me, I gotta be me, I gotta be me, Look around and see all of my friends. Oh, friends, that’s right, friends, friends, Friends, friends, friends, friends, oh, Friends, you gotta have friends . . . For nine years, Midler’s Friends was the theme song of DC gay radio show Friends. �Friends radio tape box circa 1975 �This paper defines but does not exhaust the opportunities for research and discovery in the history of Friends radio show and the collection of Friends radio tapes at the Rainbow History Project. There are many still unanswered questions about the staffing, programming and the end of the Friends radio project. DISCOVERING FRIENDS Shortly after Rainbow History Project organized in November 2000, Bruce Pennington, one of the founders and the project’s first vice-president, invited me to his home and showed me carton after carton of reel-to-reel tapes, some of them nearly three decades old, from a gay radio program called Friends. I’d never heard of it, but then I arrived here in 1990. He had kept the tapes, 252 of them, to preserve the memory and broadcasts of a unique audio chronicle of Washington DC’s gay community in its formative years. Before his death in 2003, Bruce deeded the collection to Rainbow History. The collection also includes audiocassettes on which Friends’ staff initially recorded interviews. Unfortunately, fewer than half of the tapes survived with labels intact so the contents of many of them are still ‘mysteries’. Rainbow History has no machine to play the tapes. Over the years the tapes have been exposed to damp and temperature variations that make these originals unplayable without preservation and copying. Following his death, Rainbow History received nearly $9,000 from Bruce’s estate to begin preserving the Friends tapes, a project that began in early 2004. The documentary evidence of Friends operations is scant. Few program notes or program logs have survived, though Bruce did preserve files concerning the show’s 1976 transition from WGTB to WPFW as well as some of the correspondence and official records. Ken Sleeman, last station manager of WGTB when it was still ‘alternative radio’ has preserved much of that station’s archives, among which are documents concerning Friends. For the rest, research relies on occasional coverage in the Blade and contemporary magazines such as Out. DISCOVERING THE GIFT As preservation began, we discovered that the collection contained interviews tracking the creation of key community institutions such as the first gay health organizations, activist and political groups such as the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the gay Catholic group Dignity and the Metropolitan Community Church, the evolution of the women’s music scene, the creation of the National Coalition of Black Gays, and much more. Friends broadcast live from the annual Gay Pride celebrations, Gay Academic Union events in New York and Houston, the 1979 March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights, the Third World Conference, and still more. The programs, some 400 plus shows over 8 broadcast years of which we have perhaps 60 percent, covered a wealth of topics in community life including police entrapment and harassment, tensions between the lesbian and gay male communities, gay parenting and adoption, coming out issues, and the emerging support of parents of gay men and lesbians. As gay radio in the nation’s capital, the show also took advantage of visitors to the city to record interviews and discussions with personalities such as Quentin Crisp, Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches, Staff Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, Sergeant Skip Keith, Jon Waters and Divine. The preservation process involves cleaning and preserving the original tapes, copying them to a surrogate master and to a gold CD for digital reproduction. To date, we have preserved 76 separate shows and topical discussions. �The Friends collection is gay DC’s radio show of record. It is an audio counterpart of the Blade for the 70s and early 80s. CREATING FRIENDS The Friends radio show, “radio by and for the gay community”, broadcast from the summer of 1973 until 1982. From June 1973 until March 1976, Stonewall Nation Media Collective produced twice-weekly Friends shows on WGTB-FM, 90.1. When Georgetown University shut down WGTB-FM on March 16, 1976 Friends lost its radio home. In March 1977, the show began broadcasting from its new radio home, WPFWFM, 89.3, the new Pacifica Radio outlet in Washington, DC, where it initially appeared on alternate Wednesday evenings at 10 pm. WGTB, describing itself as “one nation underground”, reached out to the gay and lesbian community late in 1972, shortly after its feminist program Radio Free Women had led to the creation of Sophie’s Parlor, a radio forum for women’s music. In the autumn, the station’s first program addressed gay activism and featured a discussion with Bill Bricker, past president of the year old Gay Activists Alliance; Frank Kameny, co-founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington; Paul Breton, founder of the Homophile Social League and the local Metropolitan Community Church; and Glenn Graves of the ACLU. A second program discussed gay employment issues with Nancy Tucker, editor of the Gay Blade, Joe Acanfora, a Montgomery County teacher fighting to keep his job, Chuck Hall, and Rachael Parker. WGTB also approached the gay community to establish a community service radio show in 1973 profiling the resources of the new Gay Switchboard. In January 1973, a call went out in the Gay Blade for volunteers with broadcasting experience to help with a Gay Switchboard project. The plan was to create news programs and profile the activities of the referral service. Deacon Maccubbin, whose openly gay business Earthworks functioned as local meeting place and community bulletin board, was the initial point of contact with the community. Maccubbin’s involvement with the Switchboard and other emerging institutions gave him a useful breadth of contact in the community. According to the Gay Blade, the first of these gay-oriented community service programs, untitled, broadcast at 2:30 pm on March 23rd. Two more programs were to follow in April and plans were for the program to go weekly in May. Following the spring community service broadcasts and WGTB’s own gay community profiles, a new group of organizers coalesced around the creation of a program that would grow well beyond community service announcements. In June 1973, the new program went out over the airwaves from WGTB, 90.1 FM. WGTB’s signal carried Friends to anyone who wanted to hear it in a five mile radius. “Radio for and by the gay community”, as the program tagline described the Friends broadcast, brought news, commentary, interviews, radio plays, and music of interest to the gay and lesbian community. �ORGANIZING FRIENDS RADIO The Gay Blade announced the arrival of Friends in August 19731 in a short article by Tim DeLoach crediting the concept and the initial production to Bruce Pennington, Jon Higginbotham, and Deacon Maccubbin. The article recorded that the three organizers operated the show under the name of the Stonewall Nation Media Collective and ended with a plea for volunteers and suggestions for the new show. The Stonewall Nation Media Collective would produce the show during its eight years of broadcasting. Collectives were a familiar organizing concept in Washington in the late 60s and early 70s. Unlike communes which organized primarily as a living arrangement, collectives organized around tasks, objectives and ideologies. Decision-making was predominately by consensus, often involving lengthy discussions. At WGTB, collectives organized and produced the news programs. According to Ken Sleeman, station manager at the time, the news collective was considered the most radical of WGTB’s collectives.2 Radio Free Women and Sophie’s Parlor were produced by collectives, as was Friends radio. Sleeman has commented that the Friends programs were among the best produced programs at the station.3 The Stonewall Nation Media Collective’s principal organizers and broadcasters were initially Bruce Pennington and David Aiken. Tim Corbett, who would later be a founder of the Gay Men’s VD Clinic, precursor of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, was also an early broadcaster on Friends. In February 1974, Karen Everett and Kathy Nielsen joined the collective to produce programs of interest to the city’s lesbians. Lou Chibbaro, soon to become a reporter for the Blade, joined the collective in 1975, producing interviews and shows on media and political topics. In August 1974, the collective incorporated as a non-profit in Washington, DC listing Bruce Pennington, Dave Aiken and Karen Everett as directors for the incorporation.4 Dave Aiken became the collectives registered agent. Over the next few years, Tim Corbett and Lou Chibbaro were also listed as directors and officers on the annual nonprofit corporation filings.5 THE PEOPLE BEHIND FRIENDS RADIO Though listed as an organizer in early 1973, Jon Higginbotham’s association with Stonewall Nation Media Collective was fleeting and he never appears as a broadcaster on the extant tapes nor does he figure in the surviving documents. Higginbotham was a retired Methodist minister, well-known in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, whose association with the antiwar movement led him into contact with the fledgling Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1970. Though Deacon Maccubbin was involved in getting the show going he did not become a member of the collective and did not broadcast for Friends. Deacon Maccubbin had been in Washington, DC since 1969. He was well-known in the gay and lesbian community for having started the first ‘out’ gay non-bar business, Earthworks, a headshop and de facto community center. Earthworks’ popular book and magazine corner was growing like Topsy and less than a year later would become Lambda Rising, the Dupont area’s gay bookstore. Maccubbin was effectively ‘mayor’ of the Community Building at 1724 20th St NW which housed not only Earthworks but the Panthers 1 Tim De Loach, “Stonewall Nation Media Collective,” The Gay Blade, Vol. 4 No. 11, p. 10 Interview, September 3, 2006. 3 Ibid. 4 Stonewall Nation Media Collective, articles of incorporation, August 7, 1974. 5 Annual Report for foreign and Domestic Non Profit Corporations, March 8 1975 and April 8 1976. 2 �Defense Committee, the Washington Area Free University, off our backs, the Gay Blade, the Gay Switchboard and a host of fleeting left-wing and alternative enterprises. Already involved with the creation in 1972 of the Gay Switchboard, he was a natural contact person as WGTB and the gay community evolved a gay and lesbian radio program. Bruce Pennington and Dave Aiken had both arrived in DC in 1968. Pennington was deeply involved in the radical left, antiwar movement and counterculture, working initially for the Liberation News Service. Aiken came to Washington as a journalist and spent many of his years here as a writer and editor. In the months following the news of the Stonewall Riots, Aiken and Pennington became founding members of the local Gay Liberation Front and organized its first collective at 1620 S St NW. Both men were active in organizing GLF zaps and events, contributing to the organization of the Black Panthers’ People’s Revolutionary Constitutional Convention in 1970, Gay May Day events in 1971 and DC’s first Gay Pride in 1972. Their GLF house was a haven for youth and provided outreach to gays in prison and the homeless as well. Pennington and Aiken were the core members of the collective and their voices were those most often heard on Friends broadcasts. Even thirty years after the show began, Pennington was still encountering people who recognized his voice from the Friends broadcasts. Tim Corbett, another early member of the collective, came to DC from the Gay Liberation Front in Chicago to participate in the Black Panther’s 1970 People’s Revolutionary Constitutional Convention. Arrested during a ‘riot’ over the Zephyr restaurant’s refusal to serve gays, Corbett had to stay in DC and became an active member of the local GLF, joining the second collective, Skyline Faggots, when they organized a house at 1624 S St NW. Corbett’s tenure on the program didn’t last as he became involved with founding and running the new Gay Men’s VD Clinic at the Washington Free Clinic in Georgetown. Ken Rothschild, already at WGTB when Friends started, was a member of the station’s news collective, helping produce alternative news for the DC area. Rothschild also had his own program, Speak Easy, a topical discussion program that lasted until WGTB’s demise and then moved to WPFW. He became a member of the Stonewall Nation Media Collective producing his own interviews and topical discussions for Friends. GAY DC IN 1973 The community in which gay radio emerged in 1973 was still in its formative stages. To its credit, the Friends show chronicled in detail the continuing emergence of that community. In 1972 and 1973, Washington, DC’s gay and lesbian community was beginning unprecedented growth. The impulse for gay civil rights to find a place within straight radical politics and institutions had ebbed as gay liberation itself ebbed. Finding themselves unwelcome in many straight organizations, including the radical left, gays and lesbians began building their own institutions: political, medical, religious, and social. Their community was creating places where it was safe to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. By the end of 1972, new gay and lesbian religious groups had formed: the Community Church, organized in 1970, had become the Metropolitan Community Church in 1971. Dignity, the gay Catholic organization, formed in 1972 at Georgetown University. Gay student organizations existed at GW and UMD. African American gays continued forming private social clubs, such as the Metropolitan Capitolites and the Best of �Washington, as an alternative to segregation in the social scene. Lesbian separatists, disabused of the inclusiveness of gay male-dominated organizations, were forming their own collectives, music performance and production groups, newspapers, and social service groups. Gay peer counseling began that year, followed in short order by the first gay health program, the Gay Men’s VD Clinic at the Washington Free Clinic, and a gay program on alcoholism. Until Friends, the main channels of communication within the gay and lesbian community were the Gay Blade, and off our backs, both of them monthly periodicals, which often made their news and announcements less timely. Though both published to a dependable schedule, their news of local events was limited, often late, and infrequently included coverage following an event. Bulletin boards were the local alternative to print media in 1973. The only other way to find out what was going on in the gay community, other than word of mouth, was through the bulletin boards at the lesbian bookstore, Lammas, on 7th St. SE on Capitol Hill and at Deacon Maccubbin’s headshop, Earthworks, on 20th St NW. Late in 1972, Deacon Maccubbin led the creation of the Gay Switchboard, a phone referral service that greatly increased the odds of finding information about organizations and events in the gay and lesbian community. However, the gay community, both closeted and out, still needed to learn that the Switchboard existed and could answer their questions. At the end of Friends’ first year, Pat Kolar, the Gay Blade’s editor, characterized Friends as “reflecting the idea of a gay Washington community and reinforcing the idea of a gay Washington community helping its own members seek solutions to straight cultural religious medical and other institutions that little served the needs of gay people.”6 PROGRAMMING FRIENDS RADIO Pennington and Aiken’s shared vision for Friends was to depict the gamut of groups, personalities, interests and issues that made up the local gay community. In a 1974 interview with the Gay Blade, Aiken explained that Friends was a program that covered “everything conceivable – from poetry to politics.”7 Pennington, in the same article explained that “The idea behind Friends is to let gay people – all kinds and types and shades of gay people coming from a million different places – learn about each other so maybe there can be a bond of understanding ... so may be they can be friends. ... Some of the people we’ve had on Friends would be considered freaks by a lot of gays and straights alike but the important thing is that we presented these people without apology. We let them be themselves.”8 Their choice of Bette Midler’s song “Friends” as the program’s title and theme song underlined the show’s desire to reach the entire gay community and to promote its members to each other. To answer the loneliness expressed in the opening lyrics: “And I am all alone. There is no one here beside me.” 6 Pat Kolar, “DC Gay Radio Show Comes of Age”, Gay Blade, Vol. 4. No. 11, August 1974, p. 4. Ibid. 8 Ibid. 7 �Friends radio provided the broadcast version of Midler’s answer: “You got to have friends.” In his introduction to a broadcast discussion of gay media in October 1975, Lou Chibbaro spoke of the need to address the “basic problem ... that too many gay people are isolated and still believe, in 1975, that they are the only ones in the world who are gay.”9 Chibbaro also underscored the importance of informing the gay community of political developments and the strategies of gay activists. In Friends’ first year, WGTB put some distance between the station and the radical new gay program by framing the shows within the Ethnic Forum, “a program focusing on the lifestyle of cultural and ethnic minorities.” The program began with a weekly disclaimer: “This program is presented to encourage respect and tolerance between the various elements comprising American society. This week’s program is produced by the Stonewall Nation Media Collective. The views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of Georgetown University or of WGTB-M.” In that first summer, Friends originally broadcast half-hour shows on Fridays and Saturdays at 2:30 pm. The Friday show soon moved to Tuesdays and broadcast times changed to 6:30 pm both nights. The Tuesday and Saturday schedule held through the rest of Friends’ time on WGTB. The twice-weekly shows opened with Midler’s song, followed by the introduction of the night’s topical coverage. Music was an important ingredient of every show, featuring popular music and recordings by gay and lesbian performers chosen to complement the evening topic. With only a half hour show each night, the shows rarely covered more than one interview, performance, or interview topic. Friends shows updated listeners on coming events in the community. Every show ended with an audio bulletin board of announcements that built support and involvement in community events and organizations and provided listeners with contacts for more information. Friends’ programs were fun and often humorous, and broadcasts reflected the enjoyment of the collective member producing the show. Broadcasts reflected the interests of the collective member producing the program. Since many of Stonewall Nation Media Collective’s members had connections with the Gay Liberation Front or radical politics, there was a strong leftist political bias to many of the discussions. In its first year, Friends demonstrated the breadth of its coverage and the fact that there were few issues the collective wouldn’t cover. Pennington created programs featuring Divine and John Waters (including a memorable discussion of Divine eating her ‘present’ at the end of Pink Flamingos), a Halloween show, a discussion of S&M, and interviews with the founders of DC’s new Washington Area Gay community Council. Aiken, whose topics and interests leaned more towards politics, social developments and political strategy, produced shows on Gay Youth support, the Gay Activists Alliance, an interview with Rev. Troy Perry and Rev. John Barbone of the Metropolitan Community Church, protests against the Marcus Welby TV show, and a memorable live broadcast of the attempted take-over of an American Psychiatric Association panel on homosexuality by lesbian separatists. Tim Corbett covered both the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, interracial couples, and the creation of the Gay Men’s VD Clinic. Ken Rothschild, who would remain with the program for many years, produced shows on the 9 “Gay Media”, moderated by Lou Chibbaro, Friends radio, October 28, 1975. �police and crime in the gay community, on gay youth and on the Gay Switchboard. Other shows included rebroadcasts of interviews on lesbian separatism, poetry readings by Tim Dlugos and Lee Lally, and singer Meg Christian telling her story of Miss Potter (the gym teacher) and the Christmas play. The addition of Kathy Nielsen and Karen Everett to the collective in early 1974 produced more programs of interest to lesbians such as discussions of the emerging women’s music scene and issues in lesbian parenting. (c) The Unicorn Times Over its next eight years, at both WFTB and WPFW, Friends’ mix of cultural and political coverage with discussions of emerging local organizations and issues continued without interruption. Friends chronicled the emerging black gay political and social organizations in interviews with founders of the National Coalition of Black Gays in 1979 and a discussion of the local Sapphire Sapphos group in 1980. Marion Barry’s developing relationship with the gay community was tracked through a series of interviews with Barry and discussions about him with political leaders in the gay and lesbian community. Coverage of the activities, political issues, candidate forums and political campaigns of the Gay Activists Alliance, often including commentary by Dr Frank Kameny, provides an audio record of politics as it affected and was affected by the Washington DC political community. �Friends radio script page, Dave Aiken author, circa 1974 �One of Friends’ first shows had been a live broadcast from the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day celebration in New York City. Live coverage continued to be one of the collective’s strengths. In 1975, Friends provided preview interviews with organizers of the impending first official gay pride in the city and live coverage of the event on 20th St NW. With the exception of 1976 (when the show was on hiatus following its ouster from WTGB), Friends broadcast live from each succeeding Pride festival until the show ended in 1982. When the first gay and lesbian march on Washington arrived in October 1979, Friends was everywhere, broadcasting live from the concert and from the rally and providing broadcast coverage from the simultaneous Third World Conference of Gays at Harambee House near Howard University. The coverage of the Third World Conference is one of the few extant sources, apart from articles in off our backs, of the discussions, topics, and personalities that were involved in the first attempt to organize Third World gays and lesbians. In the unexplored 75% of the collection that remains to be preserved and heard, there will be other discoveries and some real treasures. Some of the collection is simply rough takes and unedited interview material, but like what we have already heard, they will help retrieve details and audio impressions of Washington’s gay community between 1973 and 1982. ORGANIZING GAY RADIO By 1975, there were enough gay radio programs around the nation that program producers and gay activists began trying to organize them. Since its founding in mid1973, Friends had been joined by the Sunshine Gaydreams program in Philadelphia, Gayly Speaking in Detroit, Fruit Punch in Berkeley CA, and 4 programs each in Massachusetts and New York. A year later, the list covered 11 US cities with twelve regularly scheduled programs. Informal exchanges of programs and program information had been going on amongst gay radio producers for several years. Friends rebroadcast other stations’ programs including interviews with Christopher Isherwood and Quentin Crisp. Within the first year of broadcasting on WGTB, David Aiken was writing to Mary Sawicki of Detroit’s Gayly Speaking program offering program tapes that might be of interest in Detroit. Aiken suggested two programs: one focusing on S&M and the other an interview with the producer and a star of the new gay film, “A Very Natural thing”. In October 1975, ahead of the national bicentennial celebrations, Washington DC’s Gay Activists Alliance hosted a Bicentennial Conference on Gays and the Federal Government. The meetings provided an opportunity for those involved in gay broadcast media to meet and exchange ideas. The National Gay Task Force, organized in New York in 1973, the Gay and Women’s Alliance for Responsible Media, a Brooklyn NY media monitoring group, and John Zeh’s Philadelphia based Public Interest Media Project all collected contact information from media representatives at the conference. The three organizations subsequently distributed lists of gay and lesbian radio, video, and television projects, of which Friends was a prominent member. Efforts to further organize the gay broadcast media lasted at least through the mid-70s. The National Gay Task Force’s Media Director was Ginny Vida. Dave Aiken served as Friends’ spokesperson and prime contact with NGTF. When Friends’ broadcasts were terminated by Georgetown University’s closure of WGTB, Aiken contacted Vida to inform her of the closure and of Stonewall Nation Media Collective’s plans to move its broadcasts to WPFW, the new Pacifica station starting up in DC. In his letter of April 13, 1976, Aiken noted that “the atmosphere under the new regime at the station is not likely �to be conducive to a program of honest, wide-ranging discussion on gay issues.”10 Six months later, Aiken wrote Vida to announce Friends new radio home at WPFW with hopes that the program would begin broadcasting by the end of 1976.11 WGTB AND THE PURGE Friends radio’s early fortunes were linked closely to the fortunes of alternative radio at WGTB. On Tuesday March 16, 1976 Georgetown University administrators closed down WGTB taking it off the air. The closure put an immediate end to Friends (scheduled to broadcast that evening), Radio Free Women and Sophie’s Parlor. WGTB and the university had been in increasing disagreement over the past year. On December 8, 1975 the university abruptly dismissed station manager Ken Sleeman for “failures to exercise proper control over the operation of the station ... [and] failures to comply with policies promulgated by the University ...”12 Five months earlier, Father Henle, President of the University, had written Sleeman noting in particular that “To promote ... the centers of Gay Liberation is not consonant with the purposes of a Catholic university”13 and noting that he had considered selling the license and getting rid of the station. Though one of the precipitating events had been public service announcements for the Washington Free Clinic, the university had made it plain that it objected to the Friends show being broadcast on Georgetown’s radio station. The day after Sleeman’s dismissal, a notice entitled “Gay Radio Program in Jeopardy” began circulating in the gay community to support Friends at WGTB. Ken Rothschild, of the collective, was the point of contact. Readers were urged to write Father Henle in support of WGTB and noted “University officials have opposed a number of programs in addition to Friends which are generally considered ‘alternative radio’ programs.”14 Petitions in support of the show and the station were kept at the counter at the Lambda Rising bookstore on 29th St NW. As events in March proved, the letters were ineffective. As alternative radio, with an avowedly liberationist and counterculture tone particularly in its news broadcasts, WGTB and Georgetown were an odd couple. The station had been publicly attacked by Vice President Spiro Agnew and complaints over music, news, and program content had been made to the FCC over the preceding years. In its April 1976 issue, the Blade reported the disappearance of Friends and quoted Stonewall Nation Media Collective member Ken Rothschild’s remark that “Friends was representative of the political & cultural outspokenness of the station.”15 Though the Friends collective supported the actions of the Committee to Save Alternative Radio (CSAR) and CSAR’s campaign to recover control of the station or to deny WGTB a license renewal, Friends saw the closure as a hiatus rather than an end and approached the new Pacifica Radio station, WPFW which was expected to begin broadcasting late in 1976. Dave Aiken, also a freelanced for the Advocate magazine, revealed in the March 1976 draft of an article that Stonewall Nation had already approached WPFW. Aiken, Pennington, and the other members of the collective had presented Greg Millard, station manager of WPFW, and Pacifica with a proposal in the late spring of 1976. 10 Letter of David Aiken to Ginny Vida, NGTF, April 13, 1976. Letter of David Aiken to Ginny Vida, NGTF, October 20, 1976 12 Letter of Mary V Parrish to Ken Sleeman, December 8, 1975. 13 Letter of Fr. R J Henle to Ken Sleeman, July 9, 1975. 14 Petition flyer “Gay Radio in Jeopardy”, December 9, 1975. 15 “Friends Off the Air,” The Blade, April 1976, Vol. 7 No 4, page 7 11 �In July, the Friends collective distributed a leaflet, “You still have ‘Friends’,” to let listeners know that the collective was in discussions about moving the show to WPFW. The leaflet explained the hostility at Georgetown Union that precluded any return of alternative radio or gay radio to the campus. Friends’ leaflet asserted that “... university officials have suggested that the only approach to gay concerns they would favor would be one that treated gays only in the context of ‘larger sexual issues’ – i.e. as a deviancy from heterosexuality and not as a part of the normal range of sexual preferences.”16 Initial expectations were that WPFW would begin broadcasting in August. The hiatus actually lasted a year. Pacifica had applied for a license in 1969 but technical difficulties and other problems delayed the station’s opening broadcast which finally came in March 1977. Millard and the staff at WPFW agreed to become the new radio home of Friends and scheduled the show for hour-long broadcasts on alternate Wednesdays at 9 pm from the studios at 7th and H Streets NW. Within a year the program had moved to the 10 pm time slot. In 1980, Friends was on every Wednesday at 10. By 1982 the show had moved to Monday evenings. On March 16, 1977, a year since its last scheduled broadcast, the familiar notes of Bette Midler’s song went out again over the airwaves and gay radio in Washington, DC was back on the air. Three days later, the collective put out a press release celebrating Friends’ return. Pennington, Aiken Rothschild and the other members were back in business. The press release announced the next two shows: April 6th, “Gay and Black”, black lesbians and gay men discussing how they cope with multiple forms of discrimination; and April 20th, “Discovering Gay History,” a discussion led by gay historian Jonathan Katz.17 16 17 “You still have ‘Friends’ ... “, leaflet produced by Stonewall Nation Media Collective, July 1976. Press Release, Stonewall Nation Media Collective, March 19, 1977. �Over the next five years, the Stonewall Nation continued its coverage of local and national gay community events, issues, personalities and events. The collective covered the emerging black gay and lesbian political and social scene, the suit against Metro over display of the Gay Activist Alliance’s “Someone You Know is Gay” posters, interviews with mayoral candidate Marion Barry, and discussions from the 1978 DC Coalition forum on race, and more. New members joined the collective during the years at WPFW. Dave Aiken left Washington and Friends in 1980, returning in 1982 when he became increasingly involved with Black and White Men Together. Ken Rothschild moved on to other projects. By 1980, Stonewall Nation was Bill Bogan, Chi Hughes (a founder of Howard’s Lambda Alliance and the black lesbian group the Sapphire Sapphos), Ron Mealy, Bruce Pennington, Alex Van Oss, and Keith Wismer. As always, the staff was unpaid. In a 1980 interview with local magazine Out, Bill Bogan commented, “The National Gay Task Force estimates that the Gay print media reaches only about 10% of the population, so that makes our work all the more important. We reach Gays and straights alike. We go right into people’s homes.”18 Friends' goals and programming hadn’t changed. In 1980, Pennington could still say that “Friends has never shied away from controversial topics.” (c) OUT Magazine But the world around Friends had changed. The local gay community had matured. Though there were no other radio shows, local gay media had multiplied. The Washington Blade, as the paper was now known, appeared every two weeks now. The Blade had been joined by Blacklight, for the African American community, Out, and other publications. In 1980, for the first time, Friends received a grant of $6,000 from the DC 18 “Friends Gay Radio Spreading the Word,” Darrell Trescott, Out, Vol. 3 No 36, May 29, 1980, p. 22. �Community Humanities Council, It was “the first government support for a Gay radio program that we know of”19, according to Bill Bogan. The gay community was far richer in institutions and opportunities and far more people were ‘out’ than had been the case in 1973 when former members of gay liberation and feminist organizations first created Friends. Communication within the gay community and with the larger local community had more vehicles for delivering the messages that had been Friends. 19 Darrell Trescott, “Spreading the Word Through Gay Radio, part two,” Out, Vol. 3 No. 37, June 5, 1980, p. 10 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Friends Radio Collection, 1973-1982, 3 Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Stonewall Nation Media Collective Collection #3 Description An account of the resource The Friends Radio tape collection at Rainbow History covers nine years (1973 to 1982) of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activism and community building in Washington, DC and around the nation. The Friends collection includes poetry, music, interviews, candidate interviews, social and political commentary and analysis and accounts of the creation of community services and organizations. Rainbow History received a collection of more than 300 1/4inch acetate tape reels of varying diameters from Bruce Pennington, a founder of the Stonewall Nation Media Collective, which produced and broadcast the show at WGTB and WPFW. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stonewall Nation Media Collective Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pennington, Bruce C., 1947-2003 Aiken, David L. (David Lewis), 1945-1986 Stonewall Nation Media Collective (Organization : Washington, D.C.) Access Rights Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies. <span>Some clips play online. <br /><br />To listen to other recordings, </span><a href="https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Rainbow+History+Project%22" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">access the Internet Archive [external link].</a> Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Something in the Air: <em>Friends Radio,</em> Chronicle of DC's Gay Community 1973-1982 Description An account of the resource Presented at the D.C. Historical Studies Conference, 27 Oct 2006. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. "Finding Its Voice: Washington, DC’s GLBTQ Community Creates Its own Media" As it emerged, Washington’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer community lacked media for reaching out to community members and for chronicling the community’s development. Jennifer King discusses the history of The Washington Blade, begun in October 1969 as The Gay Blade. Mark Meinke covers the nine-year run of Friends Radio, which chronicled the life and development of the community from 1973 to 1982 through interviews, investigative reports, and live reporting. John Olinger relates the development in the 1980s of the first TV programs that catered to the GLBTQ community. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Mark+Meinke%2C+Rainbow+History+Project">Mark Meinke, Rainbow History Project</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived This paper was presented at a panel discussion titled "Finding Its Voice: Washington, DC’s GLBTQ Community Creates Its own Media" moderated by Kenneth Jost, National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association, at the 2006 Annual Conference on D.C. Historical Studies. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=27+Oct+2006+%5BPaper+delivered%5D">27 Oct 2006 [Paper delivered]</a> 2000s Conference papers and proceedings Friends Radio Television and radio