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KPFA Radio history
KPFA Radio company history timeline
Founded in 1949 by Lewis Hill, a pacifist, poet, and journalist, KPFA was the first community supported radio station in the USA. KPFA broadcasts on 94.1 FM and KPFB 89.3 FM, Berkeley, KFCF 88.1 FM, Fresno, California and 97.5 FM K248BR in Santa Cruz.
Since 1949, KPFA has investigated the contemporary intersections of class, race, distribution of wealth and it’s affects on the citizens of our Northern and Central California coverage area.
Pacifica launched KPFA in 1949 largely through volunteer labour.
1951 Pacifica receives the first major foundation grant (Ford Foundation) for the support of a non-commercial broadcast operation.
1956 Pacifica wins its first broadcast awards for a program on the First Amendment by Alexander Meiklejohn and a children’s series of -Robin Hood- by Chuck Levy and Virginia Maynard.
1957 Pacifica/KPFA wins its first George Foster Peabody Award for “distinguished service and meritorious public service” for programming that takes strong issue with McCarthyism.
1958 Nuclear war and the arms race are debated on the air by Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and Edward Teller, the “Father of the H-Bomb.”
KPFK’s Terry Drinkwater (later to join CBS) produced a provocative interview in 1959 with notorious anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith.
New initiatives, 1960–80FM growthPirates and public-service radioRadio in developing markets
1962 Pacifica trains volunteers to travel to the South for coverage of the awakening civil rights movement.
1963 I. F. Stone and Bertrand Russell take to the Pacifica airwaves, leading a long list of luminaries to oppose the war in Vietnam at this early stage of direct United States involvement.
1964 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) renews the licenses of all three Pacifica stations after a three-year delay.
1966 Leaders of organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Southern Christian Leadership’Conference (SCLC) discuss the future of civil rights over Pacifica stations.
1967 Pacifica broadcasts a live interview with Latin American leader Che Guevara months before he is killed in Bolivia.
In 1968 Pacifica’s alternative radio news service began to expand its audience as community radio stations proliferated across the country.
1970 KPFT in Houston goes on the air and is bombed off twice during its first year by Ku Klux Klan attacks on its transmitter tower.
In 1972 Larry Bensky’s live coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions was sent to two dozen community stations via telephone connections.
Early in 1972, the idea to establish a radio station for the Fresno Free College Foundation came from Professor Everett Frost.
1973 Pacifica provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings.
When KPFA was new On April 15, 1974, exactly twenty-five years after KPFA went on the air, Larry Josephson hosted Pacifica is 25 to celebrate the event.
KPFK manager Will Lewis is jailed for refusing to turn the tapes over to the FBI.1974 In the summer, KPFA staff and programmers go on strike to demand more democratic decision-making process, the reinstatement of the fired Third World staff, and the firing of station management.
The financial (donations), legal (volunteer attorneys), and technical (Stover) aspects of the project were overcome and the inaugural broadcast took place on June 9, 1975.
1975 Joel Kugelmass becomes Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation.
1977 WPFW/Washington DC goes on the air, after winning a six-year competitive process for the last available frequency in the nation’s capital.
1977 Jack O’Dell becomes Chair of the Pacifica Foundation.
1978 The Pacifica Radio News begins to distribute news services to 20 non-Pacifica stations across the United States and Canada and expands international coverage by establishing correspondents in a number of foreign capitals.
1979 Pacifica, the League of Women Voters, and congressman Henry Waxman (D, CA) challenge the constitutionality of the prohibition on editorializing by non-commercial broadcasters.
1980 Pacifica interviews Sister Ita Ford a few days before she is murdered in El Salvador.
1981 KPFT/Houston becomes the first public radio station to broadcast special programs in 11 different languages, serving the multi- ethnic Texas Gulf Coast communities.
1981 KPFA/Berkeley creates a Women’s Department with a paid director and control over some airtime.
1982 Pacifica provides the only continuous live national coverage of one million people demonstrating for jobs, peace, and freedom in New York’s Central Park during the U.N. special session on disarmament.
1982 After years of development by women and people of color, the KPFA Apprentice Program is formally established as an intensive training program in broadcast skills.
1983 WPFW heads up the all-Pacifica team which covers the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington with Julian Bond and Justine Rector as hosts/commentators.
1984 The United States Supreme Court rules in Pacifica’s favor that non-commercial broadcasters have a constitutional right to editorialize.
1985 Pacifica broadcasts its first editorial, condemning the apartheid South African government.
1985 WPFW helps launch the Capital City Jazz Festival in Washington DC.
1985 WBAI/New York organizes the now-annual Listener Action for the Homeless project to mobilize aid for New York’s homeless.
1986 The National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) radio archives are consolidated with Pacifica’s, making the Pacifica Radio Archive 30,000 tapes strong.
1987 Lady Smith Black Mambazo makes their first live United States radio appearance, on KPFK/Los Angeles.
In 1987 Pacifica and Bensky were acclaimed for their live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate’s Iran-Contra hearings.
1988 Pacifica stringers provide on-the-spot coverage of the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising, despite great personal danger.
1989 The Pacifica Radio Archive completes restoration of 7,000 one-of- a-kind recordings from the early
1990 Pacifica declines two NEA grants because of content restrictions attached to the funds.
1992 KPFA’s Noel Hanranhan begins recording the commentaries of Pennsylvania death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.
1992 Senate Republicans put a hold on funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, claiming “liberal bias” on a host of issues, including environmental coverage.
1996 Pacifica launches Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s Democracy Now! as the only daily election show in public broadcasting.
Pacifica followed suit in 1997 with a Ku band service that distributed a wide variety of programs to community radio stations, including Marc Cooper’s Radio Nation, Michio Kaku’s Explorations in Science, and the Pacifica Network News (PNN).
1999 Larry Bensky starts a new weekly talk show, Sunday Salon, in January.
1999 On July 31, 10,000 Bay Area residents demonstrate in Berkeley, demanding the reopening of KPFA, which had been shut down by Pacifica’s then Chair Mary Frances Berry and Executive Director Lynn Chadwick in a dispute over control of the station.
In 2000 many reporters affiliated with PNN reorganized themselves as Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), an independent service.
2001 On December 12th the Pacifica board and dissident groups sign a settlement that leads to the democratization of the Pacifica radio network.
2001 KPFA programmers Davey D, Weyland Southon, Anita Johnson, and Tsadae Abeba Neway inaugurate “Hard Knock Radio,” a daily hip hop public affairs and music show.
2002 Bonnie Faulkner and Yarrow Mahko’s Guns and Butter, a one hour weekly public affairs program, begins broadcasting.
2003 C.S. Sung and Sasha Lilley’s Against the Grain, a noon interview show, begins in March.
In 2005 the network launched its Internet-based distribution system, the Pacifica AudioPort.
Rand Leroy Stover, one of the founders of KFCF passed away on December 27, 2012.
The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 24, 2021
© 2022 KPFA & PACIFICA. All Rights Reserved.
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| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corporation for Public Broadcasting | 1967 | $14.0M | 100 | - |
| Democracy Now | 1996 | $11.4M | 2 | 2 |
| KBOO | 1968 | $999,999 | 6 | - |
| Pacifica Foundation | 1934 | $42.0M | 50 | - |
| The Daily Californian | 1871 | $7.5M | 100 | - |
| Kpft 90.1 Fm | - | $2.2M | 15 | - |
| WDSU | 1948 | $22.0M | 350 | - |
| WBUR | 1950 | $21.0M | 271 | - |
| KPRC | 1994 | $15.0M | 255 | - |
| NewTV | 1990 | $7.5M | 60 | - |
KPFA Radio history FAQs
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KPFA Radio may also be known as or be related to KPFA Radio, Kpfa and Kpfa Radio.