HILLMAN – After several years’ worth of planning and hard work, Hillman Community Radio is up and broadcasting music programming to the Hillman area 24 hours a day. The station, WXHR 103.5 FM, is a low power station playing 1950s through ’80s music for the time being, but hopes to add special programming in the near future to its broadcast.

“We are still working out a few little bugs, but we wanted to get on the air and get people interested in the radio,” Post said. “We’re scheduled to broadcast music 24 hours right now, and hope to add some different programming soon.”

The station broadcasts throughout downtown Hillman and reaches a few miles into the surrounding area. Because of the season and position of the antenna on the water tower, the radio waves travel further, but the exact range of the station is not known.

“There are a lot of programming opportunities available for the station,” Post said. “Programming is volunteer, and can be for anytime. We’d like to have a morning, afternoon and evening show, and some different shows to fill the in-between all based on the community. We are a community radio station and a nonprofit, so we’d like to keep the shows clean and provide the community with some fun entertainment and information.”

As far as programming, anyone interested is encouraged to propose their ideas for the station by emailing the station manager for information at stationmanager@hillmancommunityradio.org, or calling 742-2782.

“Anyone who has ideas can talk with us about what they’d like to propose, and fill out a program sheet, and we can get started from there,” Post said. “We have some people here to help out as far as getting used to the equipment to do a show, and we’re also planning to put in a production room.”

The production room would allow the station to do training and newsroom activities with studio equipment and help those who want to do programs learn more about how to do them and train them to operate the equipment to run the radio.

Anyone interested in the station is encouraged to call or email and discuss their ideas to add more community programming to the radio, and everyone is invited to “tune in” to 103.5 FM WXHR and enjoy listening to Hillman Community Radio.

Nicole Grulke can be reached via email at ngrulke@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5687. Follow Nicole on Twitter @ng_alpenanews.