Name: Heather Niday
Station/Affiliation: Allegheny Mountain Radio
Position: Program/News Director
Relevant Experience:
Hello, I’m Heather Niday and I am the Program and News Director for Allegheny Mountain Radio. AMR is a small network of stations serving Pocahontas County in West Virginia and Bath and Highland Counties in Virginia. We have three physical studios, six transmitters and one FM translator. We straddle the state border in the Allegheny Highlands and serve a largely rural population in an area dominated by agriculture, timber and tourism industries. I’ve been a volunteer for AMR since 1998 and joined the staff in 2007. When I joined the staff at AMR, I felt like I had finally discovered my true calling in life, and over 16 years later, I still feel the same, if not greater passion for community radio.
Prior to my radio career, I had worked in computer operations and banking for many years, including branch management and training of new front-line staff. When my husband was hired by the Green Bank Observatory (formerly the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank) in 1997, we left the city behind and moved to Green Bank, WV. I then spent almost 10 years at Snowshoe Mountain Resort, one of the top-rated ski and mountain biking resorts in the Mid-Atlantic region. At the time I left the resort for AMR, I was the manager for the retail warehouse, overseeing a three-quarter million-dollar inventory that supplied up to ten retail outlets spread out across the resort. I was also the resort lead on a year-long, multi-resort project to improve efficiencies and flow of products through the warehouse.
In my current capacity as Program/News Director, I oversee all programming, including news, music, local sports broadcasts and volunteer shows through coordination with our three Station Coordinators. I also help coordinate remote broadcasts and automation programming.
I wish to become an NFCB Board member, not only to represent and advocate for the many rural NFCB member stations across the country, but also for the LPFMs who are struggling to grow their audiences, for the urban stations who are doing amazing things with youth, and to support the NFCB organizational goals to the best of my ability. I wholeheartedly support the NFCB in meeting the challenges of keeping community radio in our communities, of programming for an ever-changing audience that has so many choices when it comes to news, sports, entertainment, and connection, and to fostering the unparalleled peer-to-peer connections that make community radio such an incredible business to be part of. I would be honored to serve as a board member of the NFCB and I ask for your vote.
Thank you!!
