“The Maine Outdoors,” an outdoors radio show hosted by former Bangor Daily News Managing Editor V. Paul Reynolds, will not continue on WVOM after three decades on the air.
The show will be replaced by a national radio show, as first reported by The Maine Wire.
Sunday’s taping was the final broadcast of the show that became an institution for many outdoorsy Mainers and left Reynolds, the 86-year-old host, saddened because he won’t have a way to properly end the show, he said. The decision to stop the show wasn’t contentious, but was a disagreement over how it should be taped and aired.
“I’m not angry. I’m just sad and disappointed,” Reynolds, whose weekly columns are published in the BDN and other Maine outlets, said. “I’m heavy-hearted that the show is coming to such a screeching halt.”
This is the second major change to WVOM’s programming this year after long-time host George Hale was fired in March after more than two decades with the station.
A meeting last Thursday started the process of the show ending, Reynolds and Blueberry Broadcast CEO and President Louis Vitali said.
Reynolds and his co-host Catherine Gordon, who did not attend the meeting, were asked to prerecord their show and move it to a Sunday morning timeslot instead of the 7 p.m. time they have occupied for decades.
Other shows are prerecorded and delivered to the station, while “The Maine Outdoors” was broadcast live from the station, Vitali said. Reynolds said pretaping would have taken away the “meat and potatoes of the show” and fun that live callers brought.
“It was a good participative type program. And the type of program Louis was proposing didn’t allow us to have any call-in activity at all, and was the type of thing where we would pre-record it at home, email it to them and they would broadcast it,” Reynolds said.
One million dollars of new equipment has been installed in the station that requires extensive training, Vitali said. That training, coupled with Reynolds’ show being run by non Blueberry Broadcast employees, meant how it was recorded wasn’t going to work anymore, Vitali said.
The technical aspects of the show were run by an unpaid volunteer, Reynolds said. Reynolds and Gordon were also not paid, he said.
The show needed to move its broadcast time in the station’s lineup because the content didn’t fit the surrounding programming, Vitali said. Vitali offered Reynolds an 8 a.m. time slot on Sundays instead of the 7 p.m. slot the show was in, he said.
Vitali said the move would be better for the program because it would be at a time “when hunters are up eating their flapjacks” instead of when they’re home “watching the NFL.”
“That’s absurd. That just doesn’t pass a straight face test. I can give you a whole list of very loyal listeners who would tell you the opposite,” Reynolds said about the time change.
The station has “juggled the entire weekend lineup” to make it flow better, Vitali said.
It’s unclear how many listeners the program had or how popular it was, but the Maine Association of Broadcasters selected Maine Outdoors as “The Best Locally Produced” program of the year in 2025.
Reynolds didn’t think to ask for a farewell program or final show before leaving last week’s meeting, but did later ask Vitali and the station manager for a final show. He has not received a response yet, he said.
Vitali was expecting another meeting to be held with Reynolds and Gordon this week to talk about off-site recording, but one was not held, he said.
The show would have likely been passed on to Gordon later this year, Reynolds said, but now he doesn’t have that option. Gordon was offered the role of hosting but did not accept it, Reynolds said.
“I feel sad most of all for two things: one, I can’t pass the show on to Catherine because she’s good at it. She’s a wonderful broadcaster. She’s a natural. She’d love to have the show. I would love to have seen her take it over eventually. And the other thing is, I just feel bad that I couldn’t say goodbye to good folks that listened to us all these years.” Reynolds said.
“Wreaths Across America,” a military-centered show for veterans, will replace “The Maine Outdoors,” Vitali said. Like the other programs, the show is prerecorded and delivered to the station.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated what time “The Maine Outdoors” aired.