WRKL Station

The WRKL Station Collection documents the origin of AM radio station WRKL in Rockland County, New York. Husband and wife Al Spiro and Betty Ramey took out a mortgage on their home and scraped together sufficient funds to start a local radio station. Built on a shoestring and originally housed in two forty-foot trailers located in a swamp at Route 202 on the Mt. Ivy Peninsula, WRKL, Rockland County's first local radio station, began broadcasting on July 4, 1964. WRKL's format consisted of news, call-in shows, and some music. "Hotline," a one-and-a-half-hour call-in show with the purpose of giving a voice to WRKL's listeners and serving as a forum for Rockland County opinion, featured controversial guests and often sparked lively debate. Ramey once described "Hotline" as a "town hall for the community." As a local radio station, WRKL relied upon the local community and interaction with its citizens for its development. 12,000 people attended WRKL's first birthday party in 1965 and WRKL captured over 90 percent of the local audience by that same year.

On July 22, 1967, Al Spiro invited a member of the Rockland County Congress of Racial Equality onto "Hotline" to discuss racial tensions. The station received several threatening phone calls after the broadcast and on July 24, 1967, the station was firebombed. The fire destroyed both trailers that housed the radio station, the record collection and the station's equipment. The presence of two gasoline containers alerted officials to the suspicious nature of the fire that was later ruled an act of arson. The perpetrators were never identified.

...