THE GRASSROOTS RADIO MOVEMENT
IN THE U.S.

By Marty Durlin and Cathy Melio

(1524 words)

 

What is Grassroots Radio?

You can recognize a grassroots community station anywhere in the country. There is a freshness you’ll not hear elsewhere due largely to the variety of voices and connections the station has with its community . . . Local programming is the backbone of community radio, [but] another element that connects grassroots stations are the independendently-produced national programs many of us broadcast, including Alternative Radio . . . WINGS (Women’s International News Gathering Service), National Native News, and Making Contact.

These national programs connect the grassroots stations, while our local programs ground us in our own communities . . .Sometimes the performances of inexperienced programmers are rough…[but] those new voices become competent and creative broadcasters before our very ears . . . It is insulting the intelligence of people to think that they can not accept or appreciate variety of programming . . . We believe in expanding the audience for the variety, not reducing the variety to expand the audience . . .

Important principles to maintaining a community involved grassroots station are: participatory governance, with active committees involved in decision-making, community and volunteer involvement in all major decisions, openness on the air (no gag orders!), elected volunteer representatives serving on the board of directors, open access to the airwaves, active recruitment and ongoing training of volunteers, commitment to diversity, consideration of those under-served by other broadcast media, and diverse programming. . .

We broadcast call-in programs about important community issues and decisions, as well as station issues and decisions . . . Our stations encourage people to become more active citizens. The programming often fosters and stimulates activism . . . [The programs] facilitate and activate culture . . .

You’ll hear a wide range of music from all parts of the world. You’ll hear music produced by small labels and independent artists . . . You’ll hear live music and interviews with musicians regularly . . .

Our stations will take chances . . . We broadcast original comedy and satire. Our airwaves sing with poetry, drama, music, and dreams. People of all ages become involved and excited . . . Some grassroots stations cover large areas and create cross-pollination between counties.

Access is key in community radio, and . . . when there is a climate of accessibility, you’ll find that the community itself fosters access to the airwaves. People think of [the station] when issues come up that they feel should be explored or aired, because they know that access is not only possible there, but also necessary . . .

That grassroots stations can be competitive with radio stations with much larger budgets speaks well of what that access represents. There is a wealth of knowledge, creativity, and passion in every community . . . Many times a person who calls in to a community radio program or is on the air as a guest will become a volunteer and before long a producer or programmer.

In areas with grassroots radio, everyone knows someone on the radio . . . The fact that these roles are so accessible and flexible demonstrates the organic nature of these organizations as well as their ability to grow, change, and flower in their communities.

HOW GRASSROOTS RADIO CAME ABOUT

The Grassroots Radio movement in the U.S. grew organically within community radio over the past ten years, as it became evident that community radio was [under attack] . . . The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) . . . [began] altering grant criteria and policies, rewarding the creation of new funding streams (more and longer underwriting announcements, entrepreneurial ventures and so forth), funding programming which would appeal to a greater segment of the American public (read ‘mainstreaming’), and encouraging consolidation to cut costs . . .

CPB stopped giving the five percent credit for volunteer hours that used to count as income (which gave volunteer-based stations more CPB grant money), and began using Arbitron figures as one of the measures for whether stations would even qualify for CPB funding . . . [These policies] focus mostly on the bottom line . . . [They] shifted the burden of financial support away from listeners and federal funds and toward the commercial sector . . . rewarded . . . bigger stations swallowing smaller, state networks competing with local community stations, and non-local programming . . .

Staff of community radio stations operating under a grassroots, volunteer-powered, consensus-oriented, community-involved model found themselves gravitating to each other at public radio gatherings . . . Two of those stations were KGNU FM of Boulder, Colorado, and WERU FM of East Orland, Maine . . . [which] hosted the first Grassroots Radio Conference together in Boulder in 1996 and co-founded the Grassroots Radio Coalition (GRC) . . .

One of the issues for some stations was The Healthy Station Project conducted by National the National Federation of Community Broadcasters . . .WERU was one of the stations tapped for the Healthy Station Project in 1993-94 . . . At that time, NFCB was under the direction of Lynn Chadwick, who later went on to be the Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation . . . WERU [did] what any truly healthy community station would do: opened up the dialogue for discussion and debate among the entire community, having open meetings and on-air call-in programs on the topic . . .

[HSP] Radio consultants . . . criticized the eclectic programming and urged homogenization. The HSP tried to dismiss the importance of volunteers by excluding them from decision-making and discounting their importance as programmers . . . The project also favored closed-door meetings which excluded volunteers and some staff members. WERU went against the grain of the HSP, exposed its weaknesses and its skewed priorities, and ended up more committed to the diverse programming and collaborative governance that the project had ridiculed. NFCB never finished the HSP at WERU . . .

[For] example, the HSP favored carriage of ‘World Cafe,’ a daily music program produced at WXPN in Philadelphia. WERU resisted, because it had a fine local program of eclectic music called ‘On The Wing,’ hosted by five different volunteers . . . [with] the ability to bring local information within the music program and to respond to listener input and community concerns.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Most of the stations involved in GRC are Pacifica Affiliates and we have informed our listeners of problems within Pacifica for the past five years or more. When Pacifica switched to the Ku Band for satellite distribution in 1996, affiliates were offered a three year contract which included a "gag order," preventing the stations from broadcasting critical comments about Pacifica. KGNU and WERU refused to sign and negotiated a change in the contract to eliminate the gag order. In 1997, Pacifica touted the potential of the Ku for enabling affiliates to distribute our own local productions and share productions with each other. However, with the total lack of communication from Pacifica to affiliates, even discussing the possibility of uplinking our programs is impossible.

The grassroots radio movement has saved stations from the rush to homogenize programming and disempower volunteers and we’ve developed measures of success beyond the financial bottom line. Active members include stations such as WORT of Madison, Wisconsin, KMUD of Garberville, California, WMNF of Tampa, Florida, KCSB of Santa Barbara, California, KZMU of Moab, Utah, KUNM of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and KDUR of Durango, Colorado.

We see micro-broadcasters as collaboration rather than competition and they have participated from the beginning. As reported in last month’s Folio, the fifth Grassroots Radio Conference was held this summer.

Grassroots community radio stations are in a position to share information in new ways thanks to new technology. No matter how many great new music and news streams become available to the public, grassroots radio . . . [is] a natural tool for grassroots organizers and set apart by the sheer number, variety, knowledge, and talents of the community volunteers who make it all happen.

Because of webcasting, we are able to listen to other grassroots stations from around the country, which has brought us to another level of kinship and we may be moving toward a more formal structure.

In the meantime, Grassroots radio will continue to work in collaboration with alternative press, cable access television, Internet media, micro-broadcasters, and other non-profits. As Pete Seeger says, "I hope you’ll support this community radio station and if you do, maybe the 21st Century will be the Century of the Democratization of Technology.. . . don’t forget to make music yourselves."

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Most of this article comes from a much longer paper which is available from the authors.

Marty Durlin has been Station Manager of KGNU in Boulder, CO for the past 13 years. Contact: P.O. Box 885, Boulder, CO; 303-449-4885; marty @kgnu.org.

Cathy Melio hosts a weekly program at WERU in East Orland, ME where she was general manager from 1995-1999. Contact: RR2, Box 55-4, Stockton Springs ME; 207-567-3344; cath@mint.net