On a hill overlooking Salisbury, Robert Kluver is overseeing another broadcasting day on WHYU-FM 89.1, which has now gone full power from a military bunker below their more than 100-foot tall transmitter after nearly a decade as a low-powered station that he said only the “cows in the surrounding pastures” could hear.
His format?
“We like to teach a lot of things about the constitution,” Kluver said. “A lot of people may have read it once in high school.”
Kluver is president and founder of the American Militia Association. His group’s goal: support “we the people”, by training and arming the people of this nation.
But he’s quick to point out that doesn’t mean what you may think it means.
“The American Militia Association is not an actual militia group,” Kluver said. “It’s not a militant organization and we don’t have a command structure or anything like that, what we do is promote community involvement.”
He said that’s accomplished through education, research, public safety and public service.
“Militia has a connotation attached to it that is a negative image because you have all these private militia groups that call them militia, but they aren’t militia in the constitutional sense,”
And the music and talk on the station fit that patriotic model.
“We had some people already who are definitely not going to be on our station who are kind of extremist-related and there will be no extremism on our station,”
While during the day it’s supporting the second amendment, come late night it’s all about the first amendment. That means taking advantage of the FCC’s “safe harbor” period between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
“They are basically a lot of patriotic music and that sort of thing that maybe vulgar or contains some profanity,”
Kluver said that while the low-powered station couldn’t be heard from very far away, it had a loyal audience online. The new full-powered FM station can be heard clearly from a radius between Windber and Deep Creek, Md.
Kluver said they’re working to expand their local programming in Meyersdale to include community coverage and high school sports.
As a non-commercial station, they’re reliant on underwriters, as they hope to take the air from the mountains to the prairies and from sea to shining sea.
“Things are going to get a lot more expensive now, We’re pretty much hoping this station pays for itself so it can stay online and then hopefully get more stations across the nation, this way we can spread that message far and wide.”
The station is also party to an FCC petition against another radio station owner and broadcaster, Roger Wahl, who pled guilty to felony charges in 2020. Kluver said Wahl is hurting the image of local broadcasters.
The FCC has not yet ruled on WAHL’s license renewal.
