"IT'S ALIVE!" Author Stephen King's Personal Vintage FM Broadcaster To Go Back Online In Ghana, Africa

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Vintage Stephen King FM Station Broadcaster “Rises Again” for Halloween—Bound for Accra, Ghana to Champion Reuse & Recycling

IT’S ALIVE!

Middlebury, VT & Accra, Ghana — [October 28, 2025] — In a season made for re-animation, a piece of broadcasting history is getting a second life. A 1980s-era FM radio broadcast station once used by author Stephen King has been recovered in Maine by Matthew Strong, a retired electronics recycler, collected and conserved by Good Point Recycling of Vermont, and purchased by BridgeSolarPower.com CEO Emmanuel Nyaletey of Ghana. The vintage gear will be co-owned by BridgeSolarPower.com and Good Point Recycling and installed in Accra for community programming that spotlights electronics reuse, safe recycling, and circular-economy jobs.

Broadcast Electronics FM10 10Kw FM transmitter with qty 4 4CX7500A tubes

“Finding this equipment felt like uncovering a time capsule,” said Matthew Strong, who recognized the significance of the station and preserved its key components. “It’s satisfying to know the next chapter won’t just be museum glass—it’ll be on the air, creating public value.”

The project pairs BridgeSolarPower.com’s energy-access mission with Good Point Recycling’s fair-trade reuse ethos. “Stephen King helped make Maine famous for stories that travel,” said Robin Ingenthron, spokesperson for Good Point Recycling. “Sending this gear responsibly to Accra—where radio still stitches communities together—turns a great story into a working system. It proves that reuse, when done right, is not a horror show—it’s the hero of resource conservation.”

BridgeSolarPower.com will host the restored studio as part of a public-interest broadcast initiative focused on right-to-repair, safe handling of end-of-life devices, technician training, and the economics of reuse in African markets. The programming will include interviews with local repairers (“the real experts”), call-in shows on product longevity, and segments demystifying environmental compliance and downstream accountability.

“This isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake,” said Emmanuel Nyaletey, CEO of BridgeSolarPower.com. “Ghana’s tech sector runs on ingenuity and repair culture. A functioning broadcast studio gives us a megaphone to share practical advice, highlight good actors, and inspire young people to turn reuse into careers. It’s about jobs, access, and dignity—and doing it transparently.”

To Matt Strong, it was not immediately evident that Stephen King’s broadcaster had survived since it was decommissioned.  “When we arrived at the transmitter site, it was obvious that nobody had been there for quite awhile… the door stuck… And as we got it open, it erupted into the Sargasso Sea of ticks. They were everywhere, outside, inside the equipment, and began to crawl all over us!  We all agreed it could be a theme for a Stephen King story.”

The partners emphasized that all international movements are being managed with proper documentation and that the equipment, once commissioned in Accra, will operate as a teaching platform for electronics testing, safe refurbishment, and compliant materials handling. “We want trade readers to see the model: verify demand, document flows, elevate local technicians, and measure impact,” Ingenthron added. “That’s how reuse outperforms disposal.”  The three businesses are aligned under the mission of FairTradeRecycling.org, an international NGO based in Middlebury, Vermont.

Specifications

STEPHEN KING’s Broadcast Electronics FM10 10Kw FM transmitter with qty 4 4CX7500A tubes, one installed and 3 spares (all filaments test good). Complete manual, large box of (new) spare parts, spare blower motor (new in box).  Tuned @ 103.3 (was WKIT in Bangor Maine) 

Made in October of 1987.

About BridgeSolarPower.com

BridgeSolarPower.com develops community-scale energy and technology solutions in West Africa, bridging access gaps with practical, locally serviced systems. The company invests in training, local supply chains, and circular-economy practices to keep equipment in service longer.

About Good Point Recycling

Good Point Recycling (American Retroworks Inc.) is a Vermont-based, ISO/R2-certified electronics reuse and recycling company known for Fair Trade Recycling partnerships and transparent downstream management. GPR supports right-to-repair, technician training, and data-driven environmental compliance.

Media Contacts

Good Point Recycling (Vermont)
Robin Ingenthron, Spokesperson
(802) 382-8500 | press@goodpointrecycling.net | GoodPointRecycling.net

BridgeSolarPower.com (Ghana)
Media Relations
info@bridgesolarpower.com | BridgeSolarPower.com

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Halloween kicker: From the King of horror to the kings of reuse, this station isn’t haunting the attic anymore—it’s back on the air. In recycling, we don’t fear the afterlife… we call it a second life. 👻📻

Electronics Recycling Conference 2017 Presents Jim Lynch Lifetime Achievement Award To

Scary Times in New Orleans...

What a great time I had last night, here in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I'm here to attend the 2017 ERC conference, run now by Sarah Cade of Chicago.  The annual international conference is a unique group of people, which took off from the launching pad of an organization, TechSoup, run by my pal Jim Lynch of San Francisco.  Jim's a legend, and each year this electronics reuse conference presents an achievement award in his name.

While the Bourbon Street Halloween Parade was truly a sight to behold, and Jazz Saxophonist Gary Brown was giving rare encores late into the night, the pinnacle of the evening, for me, came early.  At 6PM, I was presented a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for alleged contributions to the field of electronics repair and reuse. The honor was bestowed on me by Jim and Sarah, based on a vote of past Jim Lynch honorees, such as the distinguished Nancy Jo Craig of Baton Rouge, Charles Brennick of InterConnection in Seattle, Kyle Wiens (founder of IFIXIT!) and others.

Thanks.

Not cultural appopriation b/c photo snapped by Swiss woman? Oh and Halloween. That.

Jim Lynch himself introduced the award.  I was touched that he spoke about the several hour drive he and I shared together coming back from Retroworks de Mexico. He hit the sweet spots of my career, and my passion for defending reuse techs in emerging markets.

Halloween Images Of E-Waste (Scary Black People)

Sweet Mother, I no go forget you... 

This was what I remember dancing to at my farewell party in Ngaoundal, Cameroon, in 1986.   Prince Nico Mbarga's small tabletop TV would have been at least 9 years old by then, probably older.  Prince Nico Mbarga was born in 1950 of a Cameroonian father and Nigerian mother,  he died in 1997.  He was considered a bit of a "one hit wonder" for his iconic tune "sweet mother", sung in pidgin English, which has become the "happy birthday" of mothers day music in my family (embedded towards the bottom of this post).

I'm a white man, with a little black used television.  Here is a black man, with a little white used television... How does poetic language make us afraid to trade with one another?

While I think that a Prince Nico Mbarga outfit would be a fantastic Halloween costume, I cannot say that I find it scary.  But his little white television set has been labelled a big, big, e-waste problem, worthy of laws to keep the next Prince Nico Mbarga from ever buying another used RCA.   Today I want to look closely at the TV in the 1977 photo, and ask how poetic language can make something seem more ghoulish, more noble, more scary, or more heroic.

The United Nations Environmental Program has definitively shown that 85% of used electronics imported to Nigeria are reused (70%) or repaired (15%), and the remaining 15% is a figure very close to the 11% of new-in-box returns at Wal-Mart.  The trade in used electronics, like the trade in used cars here in the USA, was found to be... um... dull.

But the legislation HR2284 finds the trade in used electronics to be anything but dull.... It declares them harmful and dangerous.  HR2284 would put a stop to this.  Why are we sooooo afraid of Prince Nico Mbarga's little white television?

It's Sunday, and sometimes my blogs go off on a tangent on Sunday.  As I listen to Prince Nico Mbarga, and I recall the pidgin English of my years in Cameroon, I'm struck by the similarities in emotions I feel to the first poem I ever learned by heart.  H.W. Longfellow, The Village Blacksmith, was about hard work done by hand.