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Community Radio

The history of American community radio is a story of social struggle over media technology. From the earliest radio broadcasters to the present, questions of who can own a radio station and whether or not that station should be based on commercial support continue to be a source of public debate and government policy decisions. Community radio emerged in response to commercial radio, attempting to offer diverse political viewpoints as well as a wide range of musical and cultural products. News and information on community radio often challenges mainstream journalism and politics while providing an outlet for local public affairs programming.

Development

Community radio is a product of the media system established through the combination of government policy and private enterprise. From the Radio Act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), to the Communications Act of 1934, establishing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, tensions between commercial and nonprofit broadcasters have been central to the policy debate around media regulation in the United States.

The debates around media regulation are in large part based on the concept of spectrum scarcity. The limited broadcast spectrum restricts the number of radio stations that can operate in any one location. The radio spectrum has historically been seen as part of the public domain, and any station granted access to this spectrum was using a public resource and, therefore, in the words of the Communications Act of 1934, had an obligation to operate in the “public interest.” How this interest is best served—through the market forces of commercially driven radio or through nonprofit, listener-sponsored radio—remains an active area of debate.

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, other countries were working to reconcile the debate between commercial versus noncommercial radio. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) became a state owned but independently operated entity in 1927. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was established in 1932 as a publicly owned and operated radio network that would later expand to television. These models inspired a media reform movement in the United States, composed of educational broadcasters, organized labor, farmers, religious groups, and others who were dissatisfied with radio's domination by commercial interests like the NBC and CBS networks. The noncommercial broadcast advocates largely lost the debate in the United States, resulting in the current system of commercially dominated radio punctuated by a small number of public and community radio stations.

Pacifica and the Rise of Community Radio

Lewis Hill is considered the father of community radio. As a pacifist and conscientious objector to World War II, Hill had firsthand experience with minority viewpoints that were shut out of the mainstream commercial media system. In 1946, Hill founded the Pacifica Foundation with the goal of promoting pacifism through education. In 1949, the foundation launched KPFA, the United States' first listener-supported community radio station. It rejected funding from both corporations and the government, relying instead on listener donations. KPFA's programming was politically and aesthetically diverse, creating a model that other stations followed.

With the help and coordination of the Pacifica Foundation, the KPFA model was extended to a second San Francisco Bay station, then replicated in 1959 with the introduction of KPFK in Los Angeles and in 1960, the network expanded across the country to include WBAI in New York. KPFT Houston was added in 1970 and WPFW in Washington, D.C., was added in 1977. These five stations form the Pacifica network, along with a series of affiliate stations that rebroadcast syndicated programming.

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