For the last two and a half years, KRFP has been operating as a volunteer-based, community radio station, providing listeners with locally produced news, discussion and entertainment programming, as well as a variety of syndicated shows that would not be otherwise available on the local airwaves. The New Voices grant enabled the station to purchase production and portable equipment necessary to launch an evening newscast called “The KRFP Evening Report.”
The newscast is produced live on FM and streamed online Monday through Thursday, pre-recorded Fridays and holidays, and posted and archived on the website. News stories produced for the KRFP Evening Report are often updated or re-broadcast the following morning.
In June 2007, more than 3,000 individual users downloaded the audio or podcast of the KRFP Evening Report. That’s because the station offered sound files of local public hearings on a very hot issue: a proposed Super Wal-Mart in Moscow, and the city’s “big box store” ordinance regulating large retail establishments.
KRFP has trained University of Idaho students and other community members in interviewing, writing, remote recording, and sound editing. The training has paid off: Seven volunteer reporters worked at least four days per week during the grant period, while about a dozen others contributed occasional stories. One has even sold a couple of stories to a national network.
“The impulse to inform the community has rubbed off on some at our station who aren’t in the news operation,” says News Director Leigh Robartes. On the night of May 19, a man sprayed the sheriff’s office with automatic and semi-automatic gunfire, killing a police officer and two others before killing himself. Larger local radio stations were operating on automation and did not broadcast information to the community until morning. But KRFP was on the air and on the ball; its DJ gave listeners police updates every 15 minutes throughout the night. Robartes says one resident sent a letter to the editor thanking the radio station for its “exceptional community service” during the sniper crisis. It said, “when our son, a University of Idaho student, called us from Moscow after midnight to tell us about the shooting, I was able to learn what was going on by listening to KRFP.”
“One woman who lived across the street from the church where the gunman was holed up called to thank us for providing information all night long as she huddled with her daughter in a room away from windows,” says Robartes. This small low-power station was a critical source for a community in a time of crisis.
KRFP News is most proud of its election coverage. “Although difficult to measure, we have anecdotal evidence that many people tuned in for our reporting and were moved to vote and otherwise become involved,” says Robartes. KRFP coverage included full broadcasts and highlights of nearly every local candidate forum. The station also produced its own shows, giving citizens a chance to publicly question candidates by phone. Most of this programming was soon made available for download on-line.
That station also covers city and county public meetings in depth. “Listeners love hearing their neighbors sound off, and our coverage is not limited to short stories with single sound bites,” asserts Robartes. He says the news staff get a lot of bounce from covering these events; they often produce multiple stories from a single government meeting that has a lot on its agenda. “Although a couple of commercial stations in the area cover these events, their coverage tends to be brief. Our status as a low-power station sometimes works to our advantage, as we can focus our coverage on Moscow when needed, while larger stations have to spread their coverage more thinly,” says Robartes.
KRFP has paid attention to regional concerns, such as the ongoing impact of heavy metal pollution from mining in Idaho’s Silver Valley. Through its involvement in a new Northwest Community Radio Network (another New Voices project), KRFP will be able to acquire and contribute more content of regional interest.
Although the New Voices funding has expired, Robartes expects the Evening Report to continue. The station may add on-air fundraising to support the effort. But perhaps the best hope for future financial stability lies in the FM signal itself.
A recent FCC rule change would make it easier for full-power stations to encroach on Low Power FM stations. So, KRFP has decided to apply for a full-power non-commercial broadcast license. The station needed to raise at least $4,000 for an engineering study that would help its chances of getting the license. If the station is lucky enough to win the coveted frequency, says Robartes, “it will increase the range of our signal to the point where we will be serving Pullman, Washington and a larger portion of Latah County. At full power, Radio Free Moscow will more than double the population it can reach on the FM band, and therefore more than double our potential fundraising base.”
