Since reorganizing after the end of WPL-TV in 1993, community media in Wallingford has been part of something larger than itself: the democracy movement that has embraced storytelling, conversation & technology for the people: public access television. The idea was radical then and remains so now—that everyday people deserve tools and a stage to tell their own stories, that free speech belongs to everyone, not just those with printing presses or broadcast licenses. However, Cable TV’s decline forces us to ask this question: “What are we without the TV?” The answer emerged clearly: we’ve always been more than TV.
2025 Treasurer Update: Community media in Wallingford sees another 8% revenue decline. Two percent more than budgeted.
A Mural Reveals the Way
In 2015, we solved a building blight problem with a public mural. Ryan “ARCY” Christenson transformed our north wall into public art, signaling to people in town that something is different about this place. What started as addressing an eyesore became a declaration: this 1924 cow barn at 28 South Orchard Street is intended to be Wallingford’s hub for arts and culture.
The community submitted names in a contest. When our leadership reviewed suggestions like “Tigrrrr” or “Stripes,” they selected Hercules. Not the cute name. The transformational one.
Hercules—the demigod who had to complete impossible labors to become his true self, who descended into darkness before ascending to divinity, who learned that real strength means service—embodied the journey we were beginning. The name declared our belief that has been part of our legacy from the start: ordinary people do extraordinary things here.
The tiger mural marked the first visible step in our evolution from a focus on public access TV into something richer—a space where democracy becomes a creative practice through story crafting, people gathering, and uplifting voices. Like his mythological namesake, Hercules stands guard at the threshold of transformation.
Hercules and the Labors of Community Media
The metaphor deepens when you consider what Hercules actually teaches us about transformation:
Strength through service – Hercules was the strongest man alive, yet his path required serving King Eurystheus, doing tasks others set for him. Similarly, WPAA-TV has power—broadcast capability, production tools, a historic building—but our strength comes from how we serve the community, not from the technology itself.
Penance becomes purpose – Hercules didn’t choose his labors; they were imposed as atonement. Yet through completing them, he discovered his true calling. Cable TV’s decline didn’t happen because we wanted it. But navigating that challenge revealed who we really are: an arts, humanities, and culture organization intrinsically tied to democracy and creative expression.
Cleaning the Augean stables – One of Hercules’ labors was cleaning decades of filth from massive stables—unglamorous, unsexy work. Community media does this too. We don’t chase viral content or ratings. We document. We train people with technical and story coaches. We maintain equipment. We do the daily work that makes democracy function.
Earning divinity – Hercules was born half-divine but had to earn full godhood through mortal struggle. WPAA-TV was born with broadcast power but had to earn our recognition as an Arts Organization through years of service, adaptation, and community building. The Connecticut Office of the Arts didn’t validate us because of our equipment—they recognized us because of our roots in story and transformation into an arts space.
Like Hercules, we’re on a journey where each challenge strips away what’s false and reveals what’s essential. Cable TV declining isn’t our enemy—it’s forging us into something stronger: something the community did not know they needed.
A Different Path Forward
Across the nation, several community media stations are looking at their role in the transforming media landscape. Some are considering expanding resources to cover local news. This was not a logical direction for us. Connecticut and New York are fortunate. While much of America battles against becoming news deserts—those places where local journalism has withered and died—our corner of the country still has newsrooms. The Record-Journal, though no longer family-owned after its purchase by Hearst Connecticut Media Group, continues to publish. Independent nonprofits like the New Haven Independent and CT Mirror are striving and, in many ways, thriving. The Hartford Courant legacy began in 1764, continues. And several platforms redistribute news and provide event and local self-publish articles like Patch.com
Even with the resources devoted to news in Connecticut, the local feel has diminished. People will quickly say; “There is no local news”. As we looked at this perception of a news gap, we recommited to being what news organizations cannot be: a place where the community tells its own stories, in its own voice, on its own terms.
Story vs. News: Understanding the Difference
Here’s what we’ve learned: news tells you what happened. Story helps you understand what it means.
News organizations, even excellent ones like the Record-Journal, New Haven Independent, and CT Mirror, serve a crucial democratic function. They report events, hold power accountable, inform citizens about government actions and community developments. This work matters profoundly.
Community media does something different. We create space for the stories behind the news, around the news, underneath the news. When two community members spoke on camera in 2017 about learning English by watching sitcoms, that wasn’t news—but it was a story that revealed how our neighbors navigate their world. When youth producers in #TeenTigerTV create videos about the first snow or how we love our pets or sunset blessings, they’re not reporting—they’re connecting strangers over shared values.
The Record-Journal might report that a new business opened downtown. WPAA-TV’s “Local Lens”—with rotating guest hosts—explores why the owner chose Wallingford, what they hope to build, how their immigrant grandmother inspired their dream. “MidLife Matters” continues its award-winning run, sharing transformational stories of local women. Both news and story matter. Both serve democracy. But they serve it differently.
The Place-Based Mission
We recently updated our mission to be explicitly place-based:
Democracy is a creative practice in studioW #wpaatv with story crafting, people gathering, and uplifting voices. Our tools & stage yield more than videos when U watch and share. Unity begins with U.
Notice that word: Unity begins with U. This isn’t just wordplay. It’s our operating principle.
Traditional news—vital as it is—maintains professional distance. Community media eliminates that distance entirely. There is no “them” covering “us.” There’s only us, telling our own stories, in our own voices, with our own cameras and editing software, on our own stage.
This is what Hercules understood by his final labor: real power isn’t about being the strongest. It’s about using your strength to lift others up.
What Cable’s Decline Actually Means
Cable TV’s 8% annual revenue decline tells us that the medium is changing, not that the mission is obsolete. The cow barn that volunteers renovated is still standing. The hayloft we call studioW still hosts “Make TV” programs. The tools and training we provide at no charge still empower Wallingford residents, local businesses, and creatives in film, music and more.
What’s changing is distribution. Content still gets viewed on screens—just not necessarily through cable boxes. And the revenue stream is reliably shrinking as a result. Like Hercules facing each impossible task, we adapt. We don’t need to slay the Nemean Lion the same way every hero before us did. We find our own path with ‘U’. It is not about what we need; it is, as it always has been, about what connection as a community means.
The Alliance for Community Media recognized our aspirational efforts to engage and represent with Best in USA small station Hometown Festival awards in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Our StreetshotZ Photobook project won first place in Community Impact in 2020. These honors acknowledge that we’re doing something right, even as the landscape shifts beneath our feet.
Two Systems, One Ecosystem
Connecticut isn’t a news desert because we have multiple information systems working in concert: Hearst-owned papers. Nonprofit investigative journalism. Community media centers. Together, we create an ecosystem where citizens can both consume professional journalism and produce their own community narratives.
When the Record-Journal reports town council decisions, and programs like the now-retired “Citizen Mike Show” interviewed those councilors about their philosophy and vision, democracy got served from two directions. When CT Mirror investigates state policy while WPAA-TV documents how that policy affects individual Wallingford families, understanding deepens.
We need both. We deserve both.
The Road We Took
Robert Frost wrote about the road less traveled. WPAA-TV’s road wasn’t less traveled—it was different entirely. While news organizations adapted to digital subscriptions and nonprofit funding models, we returned to the democracy movement’s original vision: everyday people as media makers, not just consumers.
This October, the Connecticut Office of the Arts officially recognized us as an Arts Organization—validation that our roots and transformation in story are real, not just rhetorical. Like Hercules earning his place on Olympus, we work to earn our place in the hearts and minds of the people we are here to serve as an open, inclusive, creative space.
The high likelihood that our cable TV affiliation will disappear within three years isn’t a crisis. It’s clarification. We’ve been becoming an arts, humanities, and culture organization all along, intrinsically tied to that original public access intent. The brand refresh acknowledges what’s already true.
From WPL-TV to WPAA-TV. From TV station to MoreThanTV. From broadcast facility to arts hub. From “Express Show Perform” to “Democracy is a creative practice.” Each evolution honored our roots while reaching toward what the community needed next.
Unity Begins with U
Our gallery events support food and housing insecure neighbors. Our #in2languages initiative helps families learn by watching. Our #TeenTigerTV program builds media literacy and job skills for young people. Our Nelson ‘Carty’ Ford Memorial Gallery showcases social action art. Our space hosts meetings, performances, and gatherings.
These activities flow from a single source: the belief that when people have tools, training, and a stage, they create connection. And connection is the infrastructure of democracy.
Hercules the tiger watches over all of it from the north wall. His presence reminds us daily: transformation isn’t comfortable. It requires impossible labors. It means descending into uncertainty before ascending to clarity. But the journey—the struggle itself—is what makes us who we’re meant to be.
The Work Continues
News organizations tell us what’s happening in our communities. Community media helps us understand who we are as a community.
We’re all taking roads. Some well-traveled, some emerging as we move ahead. The New Haven Independent and CT Mirror are exemplary news organizations. While Connecticut may not be a news desert, the investment in timely, comprehensive news is a struggle. The news gatherers navigate affordability, ownership, balance, transparency and being of local value. WPAA-TV reimagines what community media means as cable fades.
The difference is this: at WPAA-TV, you’re not reading about the road. You’re walking it with us. Camera in hand if you want one. Your voice, your story, your town.
Because unity—the kind that sustains democracy—really does begin with U.
And because, like Hercules, we know that the labors never truly end. They just reveal more clearly who we’ve always been: brave enough to transform, strong enough to serve, and just foolish enough to believe that democracy is still a creative practice worth pursuing.
WPAA-TV | studioW | MoreThanTV 28 South Orchard Street, Wallingford, CT Where democracy is a creative practice #wpaatv #CelebrateWallingfordEveryDay
