KPFA (94.1
FM) is an American listener-funded talk radio and music
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
located in
Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, broadcasting to the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on the air April 15, 1949, as the first
Pacifica Radio
Pacifica may refer to:
Art
* ''Pacifica'' (statue), a 1938 statue by Ralph Stackpole for the Golden Gate International Exposition
Places
* Pacifica, California, a city in the United States
** Pacifica Pier, a fishing pier
* Pacifica, a conceiv ...
station and remains the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network.
The station's studios are located in
Downtown Berkeley
Downtown Berkeley is the central business district of the city of Berkeley, California, United States, around the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, and extending north to Hearst Avenue, south to Dwight Way, west to Martin Luther Ki ...
, and the transmitter site is located in the
Berkeley Hills
The Berkeley Hills are a range of the Pacific Coast Ranges that overlook the northeast side of the valley that encompasses San Francisco Bay. They were previously called the "Contra Costa Range/Hills" (from the original Spanish ''Sierra de la C ...
.
History
Launched in 1949, three years after the Pacifica Foundation was created by pacifist
Lewis Hill, KPFA became the first station in the Pacifica Radio network and the first listener-supported radio broadcaster in the United States.
Previously, non-commercial stations were licensed only to serve educational functions as extensions of high schools, colleges, and universities. This departure into listener-oriented programming brought many detractors as KPFA aired controversial programming. The first interview with anyone from the
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
political movement was broadcast by KPFA, as well as
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
's poem ''
Howl
Howl most often refers to:
*Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species
*Howl (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg
Howl may also refer to:
Film
* ''The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film
* ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 American arthouse b ...
'' in the 1950s. In 1954 the broadcast by a group of marijuana reform advocates extolling the pleasures of cannabis resulted in the tape being impounded by the California Attorney General. In the 1960s KPFA and Pacifica were accused of being controlled by the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
, and several challenges to its license were waged, none of them successful.
KPFA was the first station to broadcast a radio show specializing in
space music
Space music, also called spacemusic or space ambient, is a subgenre of new-age music and is described as "tranquil, hypnotic and moving". It is derived from ambient music and is associated with lounge music, easy listening, and elevator music.
...
, with the debut of
Stephen Hill and
Anna Turner's ''
Music from the Hearts of Space
''Hearts of Space'' is an American weekly syndicated public radio show featuring music of a contemplative nature"When you listen to space and ambient music you are connecting with a tradition of contemplative sound experience whose roots are anc ...
'' in 1973. Ten years later, the show – now known by the shorter title ''
Hearts of Space
''Hearts of Space'' is an American weekly syndicated public radio show featuring music of a contemplative nature"When you listen to space and ambient music you are connecting with a tradition of contemplative sound experience whose roots are an ...
'' – was syndicated in the U.S. to
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
stations, while remaining at its first home at KPFA.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it broadcast a weekly long-running radio program called ''
Fruit Punch
The term punch refers to a wide assortment of drinks, both non-alcoholic and alcoholic, generally containing fruits or fruit juice. The drink was introduced from the Indian subcontinent to England by employees of the East India Company in the ...
'' for gay and lesbian listeners.
Labor disputes
In 1999 the station was effectively taken over by KPFA's governing Pacifica Foundation, after Dennis Bernstein, the long-established host of the station's ''
Flashpoints'' news magazine, was forcibly removed by police for airing grievances on air over a labor dispute. A broad cross section of protesters joined in
direct action
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
outside of the station in a weeks-long lockout during which station management spent over half a million dollars on security measures.
At one point, listeners created a separate fund to accept listener pledges that would be directed away from the Pacifica Foundation.
In 2007, KPFA derecognized its Unpaid Staff Organization. The staff claimed that Pacifica Radio had been making network more corporate, softening its voice of dissent, and attempting to get rid of some of the volunteers at the station. In 2008, a forcible removal by police of a KPFA volunteer highlighted the concerns between management and volunteer staff.
A member of the KPFA board suggested that it was problematic that there was no grievance procedure for unpaid staff at the station.
In November 2010, the management of Pacifica laid off most of the staff of the popular KPFA Morning Show. The union representing the paid staff of KPFA claims that the lay offs were done in violation of the union contract. Pacifica management says the lay offs were financially necessary and done according to staff seniority. Pacifica management replaced the paid staff of the Morning Show with an all volunteer crew.
Affiliated stations
KPFA's sister stations are
WBAI
WBAI (99.5 FM) is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station licensed to New York, New York. Its programming is a mixture of political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning, liberal or progressive viewpoint, and eclectic music. ...
New York,
KPFT
KPFT (90.1 FM) is a listener-sponsored community radio station in Houston, Texas, which began broadcasting March 1, 1970 as the fourth station in the Pacifica radio family. The station airs a variety of music, news, talk, and call-in programs, ...
Houston,
KPFK
KPFK (90.7 FM) is a listener-sponsored radio station based in North Hollywood, California, United States, which serves Southern California, and also streams 24 hours a day via the Internet. It was the second of five stations in the non-commerci ...
Los Angeles, and
WPFW Washington. Pacifica continues today to be a listener-supported network of stations. The main KPFA transmitter is a 59
kilowatt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...
class B, though there is a
booster
Booster may refer to:
Amusement rides
* Booster (Fabbri ride), a pendulum ride
* Booster (HUSS ride), an evolution of the Breakdance ride
* Booster (KMG ride), a pendulum ride
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Booster, a cha ...
KPFA-FM3 in
Oakley. KPFB 89.3 is a smaller station, also in Berkeley, that covers areas of Berkeley that are shielded from the main KPFA signal by the Berkeley Hills. It also carries some separate programming specifically for its Berkeley audience. KPFA programs are also rebroadcast by
KFCF
The KFCF (88.1 FM) is an American radio station broadcasting a community radio format. Licensed to Fresno, California, the station is currently owned by the Fresno Free College Foundation. KFCF gets over 85% of its programming from KPFA in Be ...
in Fresno.
KZFR in Chico also carries KPFA's programming from 2:00-6:00 a.m. daily.
KZSC
KZSC (88.1 FM) is a college radio station broadcasting from the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California. It is a student run, community, non-commercial college radio station that serves as a training ground fo ...
Santa Cruz simultaneously broadcasts KPFA's Pacifica Evening News on weeknights. In the Bay Area,
Comcast
Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...
carries KPFA's broadcasts on cable channel 967, as part of its digital radio offering. The channel is labelled "Variety/Berkeley".
See also
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
KPFA official websitePacifica Radio Archives*
*
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20041010222025/http://www.w9wi.com/articles/grand_fm.htm List of "Superpower grandfathered" FM radio stations in the U.S.KPFA: A Historical Footnote (Seventy five hours of programs and interviews from the 1960s)
{{Authority control
Pacifica Foundation stations
Culture of Berkeley, California
Mass media in Berkeley, California
Counterculture of the 1960s
PFA
Radio stations established in 1949
1949 establishments in California