Tucked away in a shed in a northwest Seattle neighborhood was perhaps the tiniest radio station that I’d ever seen: community radio station KBFG-LP. Part of the most recent wave of low power FM stations, it launched in December, 2017 and broadcasts for a 2.5 mile radio to a potential FM audience of around 250,000 […]
The FCC just proposed a series of changes to help make it easier for low-power FM stations to move their transmitters and to fill in weak signal areas. We review this proposal along with a suggestion from the Commission to whittle away at protections for the few dozen remaining analog low-power TV channel 6 stations, […]
Radio Survivor celebrates 10 years on the internet and four years podcasting with our 200th episode. Matthew Lasar joins Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel for this review of the last decade in radio that matters. Matthew tells the Radio Survivor origin story that sprang forth from his I.F. Stone inspired research deep into […]
Alaska’s unique geography and way-of-life leads to unique radio. Raven Radio is a public and community station serving the city of Sitka, along with seven other small towns in Southeast Alaska. The station is not just a source of news, music and culture, but also a lifeline for people living in remote communities where there […]
For most people living outside Alaska, if they’ve heard of Sitka it’s because they’ve been on a cruise ship that stopped there. This small city of just under 9,000 people in the Southeast of the state, near the capital of Juneau, balloons in size when ships dock to give passengers an opportunity to take in […]
My 5th and final radio station visit at the end of a long day of Seattle touring brought me to an interesting arts enclave in Warren G. Magnuson Park in northeast Seattle. My destination, the newish low power FM (LPFM) community radio station SPACE 101.1 (KMGP-LP), which is a project of the Sand Point Arts […]
It’s become somewhat of a station tour cliche for me to write about the homey feel of the radio stations that I visit. But, Bellevue College’s public radio station KBCS 91.3 FM in Bellevue, Washington takes that vibe to another level, as its station is located inside an actual house. Entrance to KBCS. Photo: J. […]
Every weekday an all-volunteer reporting staff produces an hour of original, hyper-local news for WOOC-LP’s “Hudson Mohawk Magazine,” serving the Troy, NY area. A focus on mission and a concentration of resources on journalism helps the station accomplish this daily feat. Steve Pierce is the Executive Director of Media Alliance, which operates WOOC inside the […]
Most press coverage of low-power FM focuses on particular stations, or the flourishing of the medium in the last half-decade. Not unexpectedly, rarely do articles delve into the deep history, which goes all the way back to 1948, with mileposts in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, leading up the FCC’s eventual creation of the […]
This week our guest is Brian DeShazor, an independent radio researcher and founder of the Queer Radio Research Project. Formerly the Director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, DeShazor has taken a special interest in uncovering and highlighting the LGBTQ voices that have graced the community radio airwaves. On the episode, we discuss the history of […]
