Like many of you,
I’ve always dreamed about having my own personal radio station. When I was in
my early teens I had a .001-watt mini-station I built from a kit. It had a
very, very small coverage area, maybe 100 feet or so. My neighborhood pal,
Wicked Chuckie, and I played the hits and made more than a few fart jokes. However,
the lack of listeners sunk the station after a couple of weeks.
Now a handful of
LPFM stations and other new local noncoms are broadcasting from homes. Some are
doing quite well. Today we will tell you about two of them.
KSOI, MURRAY, IOWA
Murray is community
of around 800 people, 40 miles south of Des Moines. This is If they build it,
people will come territory. That can-do spirit also powers KOSI 91.9 FM, Southern Iowa Community Radio.
I first heard of
KSOI on the NBC Nightly News in March.
Here is a YouTube video of that story:
KSOI [link] is a
passion project of Murray resident Joe Hynek.
Hynek did the prep work and filed an application in 2007 with FCC for
what became KSOI. The FCC granted the construction permit in 2011. KSOI signed
on August 1, 2012. Since then Hynek has operated KSOI for no compensation.
KSOI also has a
very nice Facebook page [link] that the station uses to forward promote
upcoming programming.
According to KSOI’s
2015 IRS 990, the station has only one paid employee, a part-timer who does the
books and pays the bills. In 2015 KSOI had annual revenue of around $66,000.
Today KSOI
broadcasts from Hynek’s living room. The
front porch of his house is a live music venue. Hynek recruits volunteers and
trains them for air shifts and “specialty reporting.” According to KSOI’s
website, volunteers produce local reports such as these:
Murray High School Announcements
By Future Farmers
of American students • Weekdays at 6:50AM
 |
| The Weather Lady |
The Weather Lady
Staring Grandma
Perry • Weekdays Hourly
Fishing and Hunting News
By Michael Miller •
Monday through Saturday 7:15AM and 4:30PM
Funeral Announcements
By Angie Hynek
(Joe’s mom) • Monday through Saturday 6:45 and 9:45AM
Almost all of these
special reports are underwritten by local businesses.
Most of the
programming on KSOI falls into two categories: music and sports. Volunteers play
a wide variety of music styles: Classic Rock, Country and specialties such as
Bluegrass, Jazz and Big Band.
The “unique selling
proposition” of KSOI is the series of Front Porch Concerts. They are broadcast
live weekly (during the warmer time of the year, weather permitting) from the front
porch of Hynek’s house.
KSOI works because
they are hyper-local and focused on the community.
FWIW, I believe Radio Malibu couldn't join NPR not because KPCC or KCRW, but because NPR requires a minimum number of five full-time staff from an affiliate station.
ReplyDeleteAlso, that's a studio in his spare bedroom???? WOW. Those wooden wall baffles are usually a sign of Russ Berger Design Group, and he's not cheap! It looks rilly, rilly nice but I wonder how an LPFM could afford that.
KSOI resides in a 1890's mansion built by a railroad speculator/surveyor (hence all of the wood in this house). The house was in need of significant repair when I bought it in 2007, but it had good bones and with a lot of elbow grease, got it back into shape. Fun fact, KSOI started broadcasting at the end of summer in 2013, the old boiler system with cast iron pipes and grand cast iron radiators had failed and I was working to replace/restore all pipes with Pex and install a new boiler simultaneously with getting KSOI on the air. Our first and only employee started in October, had to use a space heater and blankets while at the station. I don't think I got the heat working till about December. Now all is good and keeps getting better, I just got AC installed last year.
DeleteIt's quite rewarding to see the many LPFM stations that serve their communities with pride by giving a voice to those towns and cities which may not be served by a larger, corporately owned radio voice. It's also interesting to note the author's commented about their teen years with Part 15 radio. While nowhere near the coverage of an LPFM there's a growing population utilizing legal, license free Part 15 AM radio to serve their neighborhoods, school campuses and special business applications such as shopping malls and tourist attractions. This growing subset of microbroadcasters legally fill the niche where there's a lack of spectrum to acquire a construction permit for even the most modest LPFM facility.
ReplyDeleteKSOI is a full power 19kW FM station. We serve a 12 county rural area in Southern Iowa and brush into Northern Missouri. We are grateful for our supportive community and continue to broadcast a unique locally generated broadcasts in the US tailored to the listeners of Southern Iowa.
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