The 2026 WVPB PBS KIDS Writers Contest has begun! Submissions are due by March 31, 2026.
Find videos, resources and activities for teaching civic education in WV classrooms.
On Demand
On Demand
Watch locally produced documentaries & more.
On Demand
On Demand
West Virginia Morning
Inside Appalachia
West Virginia Week
Mountain Stage
Us & Them
The Legislature Today
The Legislature This Week
Send us your comments and questions.
Stream our board meetings.
Check out the latest WVPB news.
Sign up for our newsletter and get weekly updates.
Meet the WVPB staff.
WV Educational Broadcasting Authority, the WVPB Foundation, and the Friends of WVPB.
Come work with us!
Sponsor impactful and engaging media and entertainment.
Use your IRA to make a gift to WVPB.
Become a member with your gift of $1,000 or more.
Make WVPB part of your legacy.
Manage your membership account.
Learn how you can Protect and Sustain West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
By Dan Schultz and Traveling 219.
It’s Saturday night and the dance floor of the American Heritage Music Hall is crowded with couples swinging, stepping, and shaking to live country and rock ‘n’ roll music.
The music hall is spacious and makes a perfect venue for live music. Its walls are strewn with banjos, guitars, and photographs of early country music stars.
A lot of the folks in attendance are regulars, like Marjorie Hamrick, from White Sulphur Springs. “I’ve been coming to the music hall, probably about 10 years. I love the people, and the dancing, and the music.”
Charlie Massie founded the American Heritage Music Hall back in 1998. “We started, Jeannie Crane and I and Fred Bolt. The three of us started jamming in her family room, my basement, and Fred’s garage. We kept inviting musicians in, and we outgrew our basements and family room,” Charley remembers.
Tonight’s band is Nashville Departure, from up the road in Alderson, West Virginia. At set-break everyone in the venue grabs a seat at a table or files to the back, where a potluck dinner of pastas, pizza, and salad is served.
Randy Goodson sings and plays guitar and keyboards with the band. After Music Hall co-founder Jeannie Crane passed away in 2013 Randy was asked to become vice president of the organization.
“We’ve had this place packed. It’s a lot of fun,” says Randy.
Despite the older makeup of the crowd here, the music hall still draws lively crowds. In a way, Charlie and the music hall organization are looking to Randy and his wife Renee to continue the tradition of the venue and possibly help inject new life into it, too.
“The people here are just really nice. It’s so family oriented, it’s like one big family.”
This week, we’re revisiting our episode “What Is Appalachia?” from December 2021. Appalachia connects mountainous parts of the South, the Midwest, the Rust Belt and even the Northeast. That leaves so much room for geographic and cultural variation, as well as many different views on what Appalachia really is.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsIf you feel under the weather, how do you know when it’s time to see a doctor? Also, a growing movement to make Appalachia the “truffle capital of the world,” is being led by a small-town farmer in southern Kentucky.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsOn this West Virginia Week, health care in the state may see transformation, Gov. Patrick Morrisey wants to bring out of state foster kids home, and we explore the origins of a popular American hymn.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsThis week, too often, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder wind up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, changes to the Endangered Species Act could benefit big business. They could also kill animals like the eastern hellbender. And, in troubled times, a West Virginia writer says to find peace in nature.
Continue Reading Take Me to More News
