An Arlington-based FM radio station survived a hard deadline this summer and is back on the airwaves, but it has yet to become fully operational.
WERA 96.7 returned to broadcasting on July 28 after getting special temporary authority from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and has been broadcasting only music.
“If you’ve tuned into WERA 96.7 FM, you’ve probably heard the bare minimum of a broadcast — station identification and perhaps some overlapping programming from other stations,” the station’s new leadership team wrote in an email to supporters yesterday (Wednesday).
Bringing WERA back was a challenge because Radio Arlington was created in March 2026, receiving the broadcasting license for WERA from Arlington Independent Media in the last days of that nonprofit.
Becky Meiers, who co-founded Radio Arlington alongside Ted Schneider, told ARLnow that getting WERA up and running required some operational legwork. The organization had to receive 501(c)(3) documentation and put together organizational documents such as bylaws and a business plan.
“Even before we started making radio, we had to do a bunch of work,” Meiers said. “And then the negotiation of being on the rooftop where we are took time, as well as putting together a schedule of programming.”
WERA isn’t broadcasting at full power so far, even though it received authorization from the FCC to broadcast with a different antenna. Meiers said that Radio Arlington wants to use its original antenna, installed during the first iteration of WERA in 2015 at 2300 Clarendon Blvd.
She said the team continues to face difficulties in accessing a radio room controlled by the county — an issue that organizers have struggled with for over a year.
Meiers said that WERA will eventually produce programming about community happenings in Arlington, using a volunteer-driven model.
“If there’s somebody interested in, say, having a talk radio show that discusses School Board things and what’s happening in local Arlington schools, that would need to be a volunteer who is interested in doing so and has the kind of commitment and follow-through to be able to do it,” she said.
Meiers said that although funding remains an obstacle, WERA intends to be fully online by October .
“We’re very focused on making a sustainable radio station and that requires community input,” she said.
The last time the FM radio station broadcast new content was in 2023, after which it changed to a continuous loop of lo-fi beats.
