November 5, 2026 Submitted By WBCN
“The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution” screens at Patriot Cinemas at the Hingham Shipyard.
The acclaimed documentary The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution, about the Boston radio station that helped define a generation’s music, politics, and counterculture, will screen at Patriot Cinemas at the Hingham Shipyard on Wednesday, November 11, at 7 p.m.
A question-and-answer session with Executive Producer Robert Sennott and Sam Kopper, WBCN’s original program director and one of its original announcers, will follow the screening.
Watch the trailer: https://vimeo.com/1172742488
Tickets and information: https://www.patriotcinemas.com/movie/wbcn-and-the-american-revolution
In 1968, a bankrupt classical music station in Boston went back on the air with a new format and essentially one rule: play whatever you want, say whatever you think. What followed was a radio station that, along with dissent and rock and roll, helped end a war, drive an unpopular president from office, and give a voice to people who had never had one.
WBCN gave Bruce Springsteen his first radio interview and first live in-studio radio performance, and Patti Smith her first live radio broadcast with her band. The film also revisits the night Springsteen played the Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge in 1974, opening for Bonnie Raitt. That performance prompted critic Jon Landau to write, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen,” leading to Landau becoming Springsteen’s manager and producer.
David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jerry Garcia, Jane Fonda, and Abbie Hoffman also came through the station’s studios.
But the music was only part of the story. WBCN ran the phone lines for Boston’s antiwar movement, broadcast from the middle of demonstrations, and gave a platform to the civil rights, women’s, and gay rights movements when almost no commercial outlet would.
The film is built from more than 100,000 pieces of archival audio, photographs, film, and memorabilia from the era, much of it donated by people who were there. The collection includes never-before-exhibited footage shot by Andy Warhol.
“At a time when many Americans feel powerless, the film is a reminder of how media, dissent, music and collective action can bring real social change,” said director Bill Lichtenstein, a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker who started at WBCN in 1970, at age 14, as a volunteer on the station’s Listener Line. He later became a newscaster and announcer with his own program.
The documentary had a successful festival run in 2018, winning Best Documentary at the DC Independent Film Festival. Its theatrical release in 2020 was cut short when COVID-19 closed theaters, and it was subsequently broadcast on PBS stations nationally.
Because of its timeliness and relevance to today’s political climate, the film has returned to theaters and is booked into 40 theaters in 12 states, with a goal of reaching 104 — one for every point on the dial at WBCN’s 104.1.
Director and producer Bill Lichtenstein and Executive Producer Rob Sennott, who is overseeing the film’s theatrical distribution, have appeared at more than a dozen screenings for post-film question-and-answer sessions. Audiences routinely stay an hour or more to discuss both that era and the present day.
The documentary has received strong reviews:
“I watched the movie with awe.” — Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
“Timely as all hell.” — Jared Rasic, Source Weekly
“A countercultural tonic for our times.” — The Bridge
Lichtenstein is also the author of the companion book, WBCN and the American Revolution: How a Radio Station Defined Politics, Counterculture, and Rock and Roll (MIT Press).
Executive producers include Richard Barna, Mitchell Kertzman, Jay Rooney, and Robert Sennott.
Screening Details
Patriot Cinemas at the Hingham Shipyard
25 Shipyard Drive
Hingham, MA 02043
Wednesday, November 11, at 7 p.m.
Tickets: https://www.patriotcinemas.com/movie/wbcn-and-the-american-revolution