"Don't Stop Believin'"

A mystery shadowed the radio waves. The music, messages floated so comfortably in place. 

“Where do they come from? Who puts them there?”

Driving in his car, Ross Landy asked himself those questions while he tuned in to a cool, new sound several years ago. He discovered a radio station that grabbed him but he didn’t know who was behind it. 

“You just stayed on (for) the next song,” Landy said. “Frank Sinatra followed by Nirvana.” 

As a hobby, Richard Rodgers manned the station from his home.

“For the fun of it,” Rodgers said and added that one day he identified himself on the air. Landy happened to tune in at that point and contacted Rodgers. “Ross liked what I had on … sent me an email.”

The guys met, discussed their passion for airwaves and a common dream to create a community station.

“I’ve loved radio since I was a kid,” Landy said. “My favorite toy was my turntable and my (45s). I wanted to be on the radio … It’s being part of something larger than yourself.” 

Meanwhile, WPAZ, the former Pottstown radio station, went off air and up for sale.

“Then the lightbulb went off,” Rodgers said.

Great Scott Broadcasting founded the station -- a source of oldies music and talk radio -- in 1951 and maintained the company until 2009 when it stopped broadcasting in a middle-of-the-night Baltimore Colts kind of way. The company essentially abandoned the station, its four-acre site, license, equipment, transmitter and all.

That didn’t sit well with listeners in the community. 

“This was the flagship station,” Rodgers said. 

“Clearly, their heart wasn’t in Pottstown,” Landy said of the station’s former owners.

“Ross and I got together to see how we could form a community station in Pottstown,” Rodgers said.

Landy, Rodgers and partner Brian James raised enough money for a down payment. They sold the idea to investors, took a huge risk in a bad economy and bought the place.

“We got the keys on December, 30, 2010,” Landy said. Roughly a week later, they started programming.

Today, Rodgers, general manager, focuses on the technical side of the station’s operations while Landy, station manager, specializes in entertainment. 

Recently, Landy sat in one of the station’s offices and described his reasons for pouring his heart and soul into WPAZ.

Physically, the station is an acoustically-soft, rather Bohemian ski lodge type building with cloth covered walls, natural lighting and textured ceilings. 

The guys refer to the place as “Broadcast Lodge.”

The station flirts with “WKRP In Cincinnati” but has its own cast of characters. 

“We’re not corporate radio people,” Landy said. “We’re here for Pottstown.” 

There’s no denying the station’s passion to bring Pottstown back to life.

“We want to be a main force in revitalizing Pottstown and (reestablish) pride, show the art and culture and beauty, drive people back to local businesses,” Landy said. “We want to wake people up … Pottstown can explode and we’re gonna be part of that.”

But it will take the whole town to make that happen, Rodgers said. “Pottstown has a lot of people who want to revitalize the town and now they have a voice.”

Downstairs at the station while Journey’s “Don't Stop Believin'” played in the background, Dave Devlin -- DJ, news and sports director -- described the station’s day-to-day operations.  

A lot of work hours go into the place, he said.

“It’s a pure startup business,” Devlin said. “We’ve had to reestablish ourselves from the ground up.”

But he wouldn’t trade his job with anybody.

“There are disc jockeys in Philadelphia that envy what I can do right now,” he said, smiled and talked of how the rebellious AM station plays alternative rock -- or anything it wants for that matter. 

“It’s a freedom that you don’t have in a lot of places,” Devlin said. “We are working against the normal formula for AM radio.” 

Fast facts:

• WPAZ, 1370 AM -- 2224 Maugers Mill Road, Pottstown -- reaches a roughly 40-mile radius, broadcasts at 1000 watts during the day and 52 watts at night.

• The station’s signal is more powerful in winter than summer.

• WPAZ also has an internet streaming signal available 24 hours per day.

• Call the station at 610-326-4000, FAX 610-326-7984, email wpaz@wpazradio.com, Facebookwww.facebook.com/WPAZRADIO or visit www.wpazradio.com.