WPKN
I don't remember how the game was played, but it had a complex structure which was the main attraction. At the appropriate point in the game one of the players would roll a ball down a chute, which would cause a see-saw to flip, which would cause a wheel to turn, etc., until the cage descended over the hapless mouse.

I remember that we never actually played the game by the rules because it was more fun to just watch how a series of events could connect two unrelated events, ie, rolling a ball and trapping a mouse. We didn't care about the outcome, we were interested in the process. Programming at WPKN is much the same. When a programmer plays a recording, reads a poem, or reports a news story, they can only be concerned with the process, because he or she has no idea what the outcome is going to be.

My car broke down on I-95 one night, and the man who stopped and repaired my radiator recognized my voice from WPKN and asked me for the name of a fiddle teacher, because he had always wanted to learn. The last time I checked, he was still playing.

I discovered many years ago that some of the Jai Alai players in Bridgeport were taping bluegrass gospel music from WPKN and sending the tapes back to the Basque Country in Spain, where their relatives loved this unique form of American music.

How could I have known that broadcasting at 89.5FM would cause these outcomes? We all have similar stories, but think about the endless possibilities for things to happen that we will never know about when we perform an act with no attachment to the outcome. Even if you have a desired result in mind there is no guarantee that it will happen, so there is no point in doing anything else except programming for its own sake. This can only happen at places like WPKN where programmers don't have to worry about selling ad time, or how they are doing in the ratings, or what the boss thinks, or even what the listeners think. If we had to be concerned about the outcome it would compromise the process.

The next time you listen to WPKN, remember that the person that you are listening to is performing a selfless act; sending a positive message to whoever will receive it, with no possibility of reward and no way to know all of the potentially good things that may come from it.

And, as with playing Mousetrap, it enables us to ignore the rules.
- Chris Teskey, programmer and member of the WPKN Board of Directors.

Return to WPKN ÿÿ