Community Radio Resources

The Early Days

From the time that regular radio broadcasting began around 1920, commercial stations have dominated US airwaves. Non-commercial broadcasting didn’t really start until FM radio became technically and economically feasible after World War II. In the post-war years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided that the lower part of the FM band, from 88.1 FM to 91.9 FM, would be reserved for educational stations. While the commission probably meant for all of these frequencies to be given to schools, colleges, and universities, some visionaries saw the possibility of other kinds of stations.

The First Community Station

The first station that we would recognize as community radio was started on the West Coast by journalist Lewis Hill and a group of radio professionals, pacifists, and intellectuals. In 1946 they incorporated themselves as Pacifica Foundation and began working to make a radio station dedicated to “a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, creeds, and colors…[and] to…the full distribution of public information.”

They were well aware of the control sponsors exercised over the programming of commercial stations. Instead, its listeners would support their station – an idea that was very radical in the 1940s. After three years of hard work and fundraising, KPFA signed onto the air in Berkeley, California, on April 15, 1949. It is still broadcasting as the world’s oldest listener-sponsored radio station.

The Quiet Fifties

During the fifties, FM radio was mostly ignored by broadcasters. A number of college-based stations went on the air, and some commercial broadcasters picked up FM licenses so that they could rebroadcast the signals of their AM stations. Not much happened with community radio until the end of the decade, when the Pacifica Foundation put two more stations on the air, KPFK (Los Angeles) in 1959 and WBAI (New York) in 1960.

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