“We average about 40 to 50
calls during the 60-minute pro-
gram,” he said. “They come
from surrounding communi-
ties, the Anchorage area and
often from displaced Alaskans
living in the lower 48.”
Yet another group of sta-
tions that fit the “radio for a
wide range” description is the
High Plains region of western
Kansas, eastern Colorado and
the Texas and Oklahoma pan-
handles, all served by High
Plains Public Radio, which
holds the licenses for nine sepa-
rate radio stations.
HPPR – in operation now
for more than 30 years – has
offices in Garden City, Kan.,
but its main offices are in
Amarillo. It maintains towers
and repeaters across 10,000
square miles in Kansas
(KZNK, KZNA, KZAN and
KANZ), Oklahoma (KGUY)
and Texas (KTOT, KJJP and
KTXP) plus a translator in
Colorado. Its programming,
streamed as well as broadcast
throughout the area, speaks
specifically to and through folks
from the High Plains – such as
part-time staffer Skip Mancini’s
“Growing on the High Plains,”
a weekly gardening advice pro-
gram, and “High Plains
History,” another Mancini
offering that highlights events,
places, people and humorous
incidents from two centuries of
human High Plains settlement.
Mancini used to live in San
Francisco, but she returned to
the High Plains area and joined
the HPPR community of some
60,000 listeners. An HPPR vol-
unteer, Ruth Beasley, adds
soundscapes crafted to help lis-
teners learn and remember the
songs of birds that live in or
pass through the High Plains.
John Stark, general manag-
er at KNAU in Flagstaff, Ariz.,
said his station’s listening area
counts perhaps eight persons
per square mile. “We maintain
13 transmitters across a huge
geographic area. Flagstaff is in
Coconino County – the size of
Maryland, including the
Chesapeake Bay – the second
largest in the country geo-
graphically. But our coverage
goes beyond that – it includes
the Grand Canyon and the
Navajo nation.”
Financial support from
Northern Arizona University
allows the wide-ranging station
to operate “at a much higher
level than we would if we were
entirely independent of the
university,” Stark said. Focusing
on “our sense of place,” he
added, means public radio
becomes “a glue that unifies the
region.”
“Everyone in northern
Arizona faces issues of water
scarcity, threats of forest fire, of
the economy, of limited jobs,
and those become somewhat
universal subjects. There’s no
other media outlet that speaks
directly to the people of north-
ern Arizona as we do. Towns
and cities in our region have
newspapers, often weekly news-
papers, but people in Flagstaff
don’t read the Prescott or the
Kingman newspaper.”
For its Navajo Nation listen-
ers, KNAU calls attention to
such scientific news as a recent
study documenting that eating
canned meat such as Spam
increases the risk of diabetes
among Native Americans. And
catering to an international
population of people who have
migrated to the desert regions,
the station includes BBC World
Service news and classical
music programs in the morn-
ing and in the afternoon.
KAXE, in sparsely settled
northern Minnesota, was a pio-
neer in community-based
radio, beginning in the early
70s. It now has stations in
Grand Rapids, Bemidji,
Brainerd, Hibbing and Bagley.
As more of its listeners begin to
listen online, early this year it
pitched its fund-raising to near-
ly 30,000 online audio-stream
listeners.
KRTS Marfa Public Radio
became a reality in February
2006, when former CBS news-
man and native Texan Dan
Rather flipped a switch from
the studio in Marfa, a gesture
heralded in New York Times cov-
erage of the event as filling “the
last black hole” for NPR service
in the West.
Last year, KRTS gained
national fame through its cov-
erage of area wildfires that
destroyed 40 homes in Fort
Davis and left much of West
Texas looking “like the news-
reels of Baghdad,” a headline
in the Austin American-Statesman
said.
KRTS’ listener loyalty was
clearly part of a recent decision
by the KOCV station at
Odessa College in Odessa to
accept the Marfa station’s pub-
lic auction bid to take it over. In
late spring the Marfa station
will expand its listening area as
far west as Sierra Blanca, in the
Mountain Time Zone, as far
east as Marathon (KDKY,
under management agreement
with KRTS), to the south in
Presidio and to the north in
Midland/Odessa, where the
new Midland/Odessa station,
KXWT – the XWT initials sig-
nify “across West Texas” – will
erect a tower in Gardendale to
better service the area.
All the “wide-range” radio
stations rely on pledge drives to
boost their funding, but fund-
ing from the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, repeated-
ly threatened in Congress, is
also important. Said Deb Oyler,
executive director of HPPR: “If
we were to lose CPB funding
that would really be tough.”
Stark of KNAU echoed
Oyler’s concern. “It’s been
threatened numerous times over
the years, but there’s never been
a more serious threat than now.”
Bruce Theriault, CPB’s sen-
ior vice president of radio,
acknowledged in a telephone
interview that “some in
Congress have proposed to
zero us out.”
Though public radio contin-
ues to be threatened with cut-
backs in funding, its listeners
clearly consider it a necessity.
And perhaps the question is
worth asking: Is less than $1.35
per person per year from feder-
al funding (the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting contribu-
tion to national public radio)
worth erasing?
Marathon Motel
& RV Park
Private Bath/Cable TV
Full Hookups/30 & 50 amp Pull-thrus
432.386.4241
HWY 90 W • Marathon • www.marathonmotel.com
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2012
19