The Cohort
The thirty stations in the Local News Catalyst cohort reflect the remarkable range of local public media. From Alaska to the Gulf Coast, they include tribal and community radio, public television, university licensees, and organizations with staffs ranging from one to dozens. Each serves a distinct community, with its own history, priorities, and vision for the future. Meet the stations below.
Alaska
McGrath, AK
Serves about 1,200 people across seven remote-village repeaters in Alaska’s interior.
Run by one full-time employee, the self-described Alaska Radio Nerd.
Petersburg, AK
Community radio for a fishing town with deep Norwegian roots, and the region’s designated emergency broadcaster.
The call letters come from Fisk, the Norwegian word for fish.
Broadcasts from the ancestral territory of the Unangax̂ people, who have lived in the region for more than 9,000 years.
Ketchikan, AK
Southern Southeast Alaska’s primary source of local news, owned by Rainbird Community Broadcasting.
KRBD stands for Rainbird Broadcasting, a nod to a local Ketchikan mascot.
The oldest Indigenous-owned public broadcasting station in the country, airing local news in Yup’ik three times daily.
West / Pacific
Redding, CA
PBS station for Northern California’s North State, covering ten counties from Redding to Chico.
Got its start on the Chico State College campus in 1964 and aired Ken Burns’s The Civil War in 1990.
Highlighted as a Bridge Fund station for the region.
Fairfield, CA
An internet-only streaming station built for Pacific Islander communities across the Bay Area.
The only cohort member with no FCC broadcast license, streaming only, with a built-in podcast platform.
Point Reyes Station, CA
West Marin’s community station, broadcasting on three frequencies across Point Reyes, Bolinas, and the San Geronimo Valley.
More than 300 volunteer programmers of all ages have hosted shows in its twenty-four years on air.
Its studio runs partly on 11.4 kilowatts of solar power and also houses the tribal newspaper, Spilyay Tymoo.
Mountain West
Fort Collins, CO
Volunteer-powered community radio for Northern Colorado, deliberately unaffiliated with NPR or Pacifica.
Its 50,000-watt signal reaches from the Wyoming border to the Denver suburbs.
Ignacio, CO
Runs two services, Four Corners Public Radio and Southern Ute Tribal Radio, out of one studio. Tami Graham is Executive Director.
When it signed on in 1976, it was one of only eight tribal radio stations in the country.
Midwest
Marquette, MI
Northern Michigan University’s PBS station and a Michigan Learning Channel partner. Patrick Lakenen is General Manager.
In 2017 it became the first public broadcasting station in the country to move from proprietary broadcast automation to off-the-shelf PC hardware, cutting capital costs by more than sixty percent.
Rhinelander, WI
Serves Wisconsin’s Northwoods and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Jessie Dick is CEO and General Manager.
Recently joined the new Wisconsin News Collaborative.
South / Plains
Claremore, OK
Rogers State University’s public television service, branded KRSC-TV until 2013.
The only full-power public television station in Oklahoma licensed to a public university.
Lawton, OK
Cameron University’s NPR station, with sister signals reaching Altus, Ardmore, and Wichita Falls, Texas. Mike Leal is General Manager.
Started in 1989 playing classical music before expanding into NPR news and jazz.
Went off the air in 2008 after the university pulled funding, and returned only after sustained student and alumni pressure.
Lafayette, LA
Radio Acadie, the primary broadcast home of Louisiana French and Creole-language programming, licensed to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Started in 1963 with ten watts covering about six city blocks, and now broadcasts at 100,000 watts across twelve parishes.
Appalachia
Dunmore, WV
A three-station cooperative serving Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and Bath and Highland Counties, Virginia. Federal funding covered sixty to sixty-five percent of its budget, the highest share of any cohort member.
The region sits inside the National Radio Quiet Zone around the Green Bank Telescope, so these are the only radio signals reaching all three counties.
Tennessee
It ran classical, jazz, and news until 2016, when it flipped to all-Americana and became, by its own account, the region’s only channel dedicated to the genre.
Mid-Atlantic
Lancaster, PA
Radio Centro, a bilingual Spanish and English station run by the Spanish American Civic Association. Claudia Galdamez is Vice President for Broadcasting.
One of only about thirty-three Hispanic public radio stations in the country.
A separate and much smaller operation from the university’s NPR affiliate, Delmarva Public Media.
