Kentucky’s Real People Radio

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For World Radio Day 2026, we visit WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky, one of many small community radio stations in the US existentially threatened by cuts to government funding. At a moment when news has become increasingly polarised, these stations are even more needed, often providing communities with their only source of essential information and emergency warnings. WMMT was founded in 1985 with a mission to “be a voice of mountain people’s music, culture and social issues.” Known to listeners as "Possum Radio" or "Real People Radio," WMMT broadcasts to the coalfield communities of eastern Kentucky and neighbouring Appalachian counties, home to people whose voices are among the least heard in the United States. Station manager Jared Hamilton is scrambling to raise funds to keep it on the air. At this critical moment in America's history, the station is helping to keep the community steady with one foot in Appalachia’s traditions and the other in the future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.5	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:09.1	I'm Maria Margaronis, visiting a community radio station in Whitesburg, Kentucky,
0:13.6	that challenges all the stereotypes of Appalachian people.
0:16.5	I want to go where things are beautiful, where I know I'll never grow, where them was all made of Jasper and that street are all paint with gold.
0:49.3	You go rolling mountains as far as I can see up here.
0:53.3	It's the only place in eastern Kentucky where you can watch the sunset
0:56.2	and it be like really, really beautiful, you know.
0:59.9	You can't see it from the valleys like you can't appear.
1:02.9	In the morning sometimes, it looks like you're in heaven.
1:06.6	Like there's fog down there and you're above the clouds up here.
1:09.8	This is WMMT, Watsburg, Broadcasting 2, Horsepin, Cranes Nest and Little Wild Dog Creek.
1:25.0	We've pulled off the road high up in the Appalachian Mountains.
1:28.7	The sky is clear, the air is crisp,
1:31.2	and down below miles and miles of billowing hills bristle with bare trees like needles.
1:37.3	Jared Hamilton is the general manager of WMMT or Real People Radio,
1:42.1	and a fiddle player too.
1:44.7	He's taking us to an old mountain resort to help us understand what this place is all about.
1:51.2	This is Wiley's Last Resort. This is down, we're at the pond right now. We've got these
1:56.5	awesome pavins up here. Everything's like really whimsical because, you know, Jim was a poet and he loves puns.
2:04.1	So that's the walled-in pond, and it's held up by the We Give a Dam.
2:08.6	Yeah.
	...

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