‘The Greatest Radio Station in the World:’ WPKN celebrates 60 years with a new documentary

WPKN, the righteously independent Bridgeport-based freeform radio station broadcasting at 89.5 FM or online at wpkn.org, has had its praises sung by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation and countless loyal listeners over the years.

Now, the beloved non-commercial radio station is the subject of a new documentary, “The Greatest Radio Station in the World,” premiering Saturday at 7 p.m. as part of WPKN’s annual gala fundraiser, The screening will take place at the Bijou Theatre, in the same building at 275 Fairfield Aveue, Bridgeport, where the station now resides.

Tickets for the gala are $150. Besides the screening, there will be tours of the WPKN studios and food from the nearby Miss Thelma’s Soul Food Restaurant. There will be a Q&A after the screening with the documentary’s creator, Cob Carlson.

“The Greatest Radio Station in the World” can also be seen at the Bridgeport Film Festival in July. A trailer for the documentary can be viewed at vimeo.com.

The documentary features interviews with longtime DJs and former administrators, plus footage of local musicians such as Daphne Lee Martin playing live in the studio and remarks by U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and others.

WPKN was founded as a student radio station at the University of Bridgeport in 1963 and was given its first paid station manager in 1967. The station always encouraged participation from outside the school, with the full support of the university. In 1989, WPKN became independent of the University of Bridgeport. It is supported by donations from listeners, does not sell commercial time and does not accept corporate sponsorships.

Decidedly non-mainstream in its approach to programming, WPKN distinguishes itself with deeply felt playlists that range from folk to jazz to rock to funk to hip-hop to “esoterica” and beyond, and also features in-depth current affairs news shows, talk and a variety of other sounds.

“The Greatest Radio Station in the World” notes that the stable of WPKN DJs includes two members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — Talking Heads drummer Chris Franz and Paul Butterfield Blues Band keyboardist Mark Naftalin — and several music industry veterans. Some WPKN voices are especially familiar because they have hosted shows for 30, 40 or 50 years.

Carlson says the documentary project came about rather casually. “Five years ago, I had to spend time in Bridgeport, so I reconnected with the station. I was asked to do a film but said no. Then I started teaching in Connecticut and it made more sense to do it.”

Carlson says the documentary was largely a one-person operation because of COVID. Most of the interviews were done during the pandemic but were able to be captured in a safe, distanced and well-lit manner using the Bijou stage. Toward the end, he says he was able to enlist some Eastern Connecticut State University students.

Carlson currently lives in the Boston area and teaches digital media production at ECSU. He has worked throughout Connecticut, including teaching at Martin Luther King Middle School and serving as president of the Hartford Food Co-op in the late 1970s. He first got involved at WPKN as a volunteer for their fundraisers back in the 1980s. He says that one of his first film projects was done on a camera lent him by Harry Minot, who was WPKN’s general manager from 1978 to 2008 and still hosts a show on the station.

This was a “no-budget project,” Carlson says, which inspired him to dress up the documentary creatively with comical old black-and-white movie clips he found copyright-free in the Library of Congress archives. The archival footage is appropriate when illustrating an institution that’s been around for nearly 60 years and celebrates a media format (terrestrial radio signals) that’s been around since the beginning of the 20th century. The images also jibe nicely with the photos of long-haired hipster WPKN staffers in the 1960s.

Carlson also used footage shot for a never-realized WPKN documentary project in the 1990s by Bryan Konefsky, an experimental artist from Bridgeport who moved to New Mexico. “He sent me tapes. He really saved my butt,” Carlson says.

Some of the biggest moments in recent WPKN history are subdued in the narrative. Last year, the station made a major move to the 275 Fairfield Avenue address, but talk of that transition is mostly kept until the documentary’s closing credits sequence, which includes footage of the ribbon-cutting ceremony when the new studio opened.

“I was not going to put the move in at all,” Carlson says. He preferred to concentrate on the station’s illustrious history, community spirit and independent attitude. He sees WPKN as “an interesting cultural phenomenon.”

Another milestone that’s underplayed is an August 2021 story in the New Yorker magazine by David Owen, which heaped praise upon WPKN and labeled its music library “a quirkily dendrochronological register of new and old music during the past six decades or so.” A line from the article gave the documentary its title, “The Greatest Radio Station in the World,” yet Owen’s work isn’t mentioned in the documentary, other than a brief image of that page of the magazine.

What “The Greatest Radio Station in the World” captures best is the personalities of the station’s on-air talent. Many bring very specific musical passions to their shows.

“The one thing that’s consistent about everybody’s show,” current general manager Steve DiConstanzo says, “is that each of them thinks they have the best show at WPKN.”

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com .