Chamber hears from Smoked Meat reps. and KVPI at recent meeting

By: TONY MARKS
Associate Editor

The Ville Platte Chamber of Commerce at its monthy meeting Wednesday was updated on several events coming up in the area.
Stephanie Ware, whose morning show on KVPI recently won the Morning Show of the Year Award, wowed the meeting as she shared a story from that morning’s “Non-Blonde Cafe.”
She told a story about Roxcee Cashburn from Canada who sent a Facebook message in response to that morning’s The Impossible Question. Ware used this story that the local radio station is reaching new listeners worldwide because of new media.
“It’s so awesome because people have so many avenues to listen,” she said “It used to be you had a certain area that you could listen to KVPI or other stations. Now you can listen anywhere in the world. If they’re listening to us, I feel priviledged for that.”
General Manager of the Radio Station of the Year Mark Layne updated the members on a recent decision of the Federal Communications Commission.
“The FCC has approved KVPI to go up in power,” he stated. “The FM has always been 6,000 watts, and our dream and our goal was to increase in power so we would go out further. We’d have more listeners and more possible clients. The FCC has approved us going from 6,000 to 25,000 watts, and the board of directors at the last board meeting a month ago decided to pay for the equipment.”
“We’re accepting the new technology such as the Internet and social media for our listeners to hear us in different ways, so we’re excited. We see nothing but good things ahead.”
The Chamber also heard from representatives of Viande Boucanee, Inc., who discussed the upcoming 25th Annual Louisiana Smoked Meat Festival taking place this year from June 2 through June 3.
Renee Brown went over big changes coming to the festival. “We are now under the big beautiful pavilion, and we are shaded from sun and weather,” she stated. “We also have one of our board of directors that has done something in conjunction with the City of Ville Platte that we are very excited about and proud of. Mike Ardoin has built a beautiful permanent stage at the Civic Center under the big beautiful pavilion that will be available for all organizations to utilize for all events in the area.”
“It’s big,” she continued. “It’s beautiful. Even Aaron Tippin and his band gave it the big go ahead because it’s a great size for even a Nashville artist to come on and utilize.”
Samantha Guillory briefed the Chamber members on this year’s opening ceremonies.
“It’s the 50th Annivrsary of The Vietnam War, so I went to The Virtual Wall and found the nine names of the Evangeline Parish soldiers that died in Vietnam,” she said. “I’m contacting their family members to do a presentation for them during the opening ceremonies.”
“For the opening ceremonies this year, our guest speaker is going to be Louisiana Department of Veteran Affairs Secretary Colonel Strickland.”
She went on to go over changes to the pageants. “For the children’s pageant, normally we buy just the generic crown because it is so expensive for the festival crown; however with some rearranging of my little budget, we are able to make some festival crowns for all the children,” she said.
“In the Mrs. Division usually (the contestants) had to be married, divorced, or widowed,” she said. “We redid it to where it’s 18-plus years of age regardless if they are not married, divorced, or widowed.”
As Brown said in closing, “So y’all will see new changes coming every year because there are things that we want to do and incorporate into this festival to keep it strong and alive and to bring something back to our community.”