Arnie's Back On-the-Air [VIDEO]

If you turn on your radio this morning at 11 and tune it to 94.7 FM, you’ll hear something familiar … but new.

Long-time talk show host and Democratic activist is back on the air in Concord and around the globe, streaming on the Internet, thanks to a new community radio station.

WNHN is a low power FM station covering a small area around Concord. About six months ago, a number of members of the community, joining together as New Hampshire's News, Views & Blues, purchased the station from Highland Community Broadcasting, after Highland moved its classic music broadcasting to a new frequency, hoping to create a community station with different political viewpoints and musical offerings than those currently on the air in Concord.

The station broadcasts both talk and music, according to Brian Beihl, a co-station manager, with blues at times, swing and jazz at other times. Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now is rebroadcast at 1 p.m. Soon, Beihl hopes that more local broadcasters will be able to donate their time to produce and broadcast their own shows. He also hopes to add other talkers, like Thom Hartmann, David Packman, and others.

The station has been on the air broadcasting music since late January both on the FM signal and online. Now that Arnesen is on the air, the station will be doing more promotion, using social media to contact fans, and let them know what’s coming up, whether they listen in Concord, N.H., or Concord, California.

“People are listening online, we know that,” Beihl said. “It’s going to be critical.”

March 20, a Tuesday, was Arnie’s second day back on the air at the station and she was clearly a bundle of nervous energy just before show time, running from the studio to an editing room, checking her email, and looking for a news story she printed out about Rick Santorum. It’s not unlike old times for Arnesen, who has been on the air all over the place. Her last stint was hosting the cable access show Political Chowder. Before that, she was doing drive time at WCCM, a small AM station in northern Massachusetts, in 2007. Before that, Arnesen was broadcast on WTPL in Bow and WNTK in New London, who had an agreement to share the costs of her program. Both dropped her show in late 2005.

The station is located on Pleasant Street in the former broadcast studios of WEVO, the flagship station of New Hampshire Public Radio, which adds to the mystique of this fledgling operation that’s ready to soar. Arnesen describes the station as “filling in the gaps on the radio dial” offering listeners things they don’t currently hear now and haven’t heard in many decades, if ever. She hopes to bring in some world news and is working on an interactive relationship with Pacifica, a radio network out of California. However, even though it will offer all kinds of music and news, the primary focus of WHNH will remain local.

“From a New Hampshire perspective,” she said, “it’s really about covering what is going on in the state in a way that’s a little bit more involved, a little bit more edgier, a little bit more … unafraid … I think that’s the word. I think we want to be informed and unafraid.”

Arnesen said it was important for newscasters, broadcasters, and activists to start reaching out to others to share information. It will start small, she noted, but after that, it will expand, with the small group sharing more with others until it builds and builds. Enough people to hear the difference, she said.

“I’ve seen the power of radio,” she said. “I’ve done it before. I know what it can do. The question is that it can’t do it if it doesn’t exist.”

Being in the former WEVO studio is not lost on Arnesen and she said WHNH “truly is a commitment to community” not unlike public radio when it first started, before it became a huge monolith of corporate underwriting and limited community voices. And the community has come out to support the station, underwriting the rent for the studio, the electric bill, and the webstreaming, in order to get the station on the air for others.

“We’re back to fill that gap,” she said. “That’s really what we’re doing. We’re going to do all the things that people yearned for.”