At 300 Simonson Boulevard in Deerfield Wisconsin sits the building that houses both Deerfield Middle School and Deerfield High School. Currently in the middle of an extensive remodeling project tentatively set to be completed in fall 2026, the school is home to approximately 325 students in grades 7-12. The building is also home to the most famous janitor’s closet in Wisconsin community media history.
That janitor’s closet was the birthplace of WDEE, Deerfield’s community television station, which has been broadcasting since 1998. And while the station has thankfully outgrown the closet, WDEE’s home is still within the friendly confines of the school where it all began.
Since the summer of 2021, WDEE has been managed by Max Alexander, a 2015 UW-Whitewater electronic media graduate who says he owes his career in community media to one man: Jim Mead, the school’s director of television operations.
“Jim was one of my instructors,” says Alexander. “He referred me to Watertown TV, which I didn’t even know existed. At the time the station was run by Jill Nadeau.”
Nadeau soon put the obviously talented and curious Alexander to work, doing – as is often the norm in community media – everything from running cameras to scheduling to editing to whatever other production work needed to be done.
Watertown TV was a great fit for the multi-talented Alexander, and Alexander maintains a job there as a part-time production assistant to this day. One of his pandemic-era productions, “Home Exercise,” which demonstrated how to stay fit without having access to a full gym, was honored with a Best of the Midwest Media Fest Excellence Award.
When Deerfield’s WDEE needed new leadership in July 2021, Alexander was happy to add station management to his resume, and WDEE veterans were happy to bring him onboard. “It’s time for some young blood,” said Deerfield’s Lyn Meyer in 2022. “New ideas. We’re very glad Max is here.”
WDEE currently has two channels, 985 and 986, on Charter Spectrum. While channel 985 is primarily home to bulletin board announcements, channel 986 is home to a gamut of unique Deerfield community programming. Since WDEE serves both the Village of Deerfield and the Township of Deerfield, WDEE provides live coverage of both village board meetings and town meetings, with the village board meeting twice monthly and the town board meeting monthly. WDEE is also home to Deerfield School District meetings which meet monthly and which are sure to be of continuing interest as the middle/high school renovation project continues.
But it is the wide variety of Deerfield Demons high school sports programming that the station is best known for and for which Alexander is most proud. WDEE annually provides extensive coverage of Demons football, volleyball, girls’ and boys’ basketball, baseball, softball, wrestling, and more. “We get a lot of positive feedback for our sports broadcasts,” says Alexander. “We’ve gotten emails and phone calls from people in Florida that are watching their grandchildren or nephews and nieces and they all say they enjoy the broadcasts and the commentators.”
It's those sports productions that provide the biggest thrill for Alexander, as well as perhaps the most work, since Alexander is typically on-site running camera at those events. But he says that there is no place else he’d rather be: “I just usually enjoy myself being in that place at the same time as I'm recording them,” said Alexander. “Especially when it comes to sports, I enjoy it when the commentators put on a good show. I just can't stop listening to it.”
When it comes to sports announcing, Alexander has some words of advice for anyone looking to call games on WDEE: “Well, no dead air for one thing. I think that’s the key; just nonstop talking. Our Deerfield announcers are great. They just always have something to say. A little good humor is important as well.”
In addition to live coverage of sports and meetings, WDEE provides weekly coverage of services from the village’s St. Paul’s Liberty Lutheran Church as well as a variety of community events, one of the most popular being the annual Chili Fest. WDEE also makes it a priority to cover student concerts held at the middle and high schools. There are a ton of archived videos available for viewing at the station’s website, 986.wdee.org. And when we say a ton, we mean it – the village board meeting archive on 986.wdee.org dates to 2014!
For Alexander, it’s the hyperlocal aspect of community media that makes him the proudest of his work in both Deerfield and Watertown: “It’s just cool having the stations there. To give local people something about their local community to watch on television on our local broadcast. Seeing peers just kind of doing their thing and everyone being able to see it.”
Alexander knows there are challenges facing community media, particularly in terms of staffing and getting younger people involved. He says that although he’s based in a school, it hasn’t been easy to get students active at the station, even for a station that devotes so much time and energy to covering high school activities.
“We can always use more people interested in covering events,” said Alexander. Anyone interested should call WDEE at 608-764-2514 or email at wdee@wdee.org.
And the working conditions for Alexander, his beloved sports commentators, his six-member media center board, and any potential future volunteers have improved considerably since the dawn of WDEE. “I promise,” said Alexander to anyone interested in helping at WDEE, “we won’t make you work out of a janitor’s closet!”
