Montrose - Daily Press

Billie Stanton
Straight Shootin’

Nothing beats a community radio station for entertaining and enlightening the masses in rare and wondrous ways �” whether with treasured tunes by local musicians, community news in English and Spanish, the hilarious iconoclasm of Jim Hightower or the cutting-edge journalism of Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now.”

These features aren’t found on the usual commercial stations. But all these and many more are presented regularly �” and commercial-free �”� on the Western Slope’s very own KVNF-FM Mountain Grown Community Radio.

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In order to broadcast its rich programming throughout our rural region �” from the Black Canyon to the Utah line and from Grand Mesa to the foothills of the San Juans �” KVNF needs powerful, reliable transmitters.

But its 89.1 transmitter, serving Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, doesn’t meet those criteria. The 3,000-watt unit is 14 years old, and its remote Raspberry site is accessible in winter only by a 15-mile snowmobile trip. When the transmitter broke down in January 2009, it was silenced for more than a week, followed by weeks of operating at reduced power.

That’s unacceptable for a station as addictive and useful as KVNF. So the transmitter for Montrose-area listeners is set to be replaced with a digital-compatible, 8,000-watt transmitter.

That means better reception, access for more listeners, protection of our local signal from interference, and reliability for not only music and news, but also for the national Emergency Alert System.

Nearly half of the $80,000 cost will be covered by a grant from the Public Telecommunications and Facilities Program.

The rest of the tab? That’s where we come in.

As commercial-free, listener-supported radio, KVNF is counting on all of us who tune in to 89.1 to help raise $40,000 for the new transmitter. The station has only until October to generate the money to match its grant.

(The 90.9 transmitter on Wakefield Mesa, serving the Paonia area, needs work, too. But that’s a smaller project.)

KVNF has plenty of listeners on different frequencies. Paonia people punch in at 90.9; Crawford, 98.3, Ridgway, 88.9; Ouray, 90.1; Lake City, 88.7 and Grand Valley, 99.1.

But we Montroseans keep our dials tuned to 89.1. And it is our transmitter that must be replaced.

Community radio is a critical component of our culture, especially in rural areas.

“Our democracy doesn’t function without an informed, enlightened citizenry,” notes KVNF General Manager Sally Kane. “Public airwaves are to serve the public interest, and they’re not for sale. We are the guardians �” and more and more, we need to be able to tell our own stories from our region.”

KVNF tells those stories in a wide variety of ways �” from its Saturday morning “Pot o’ Gold” children’s music and story hour to its frequent weather and avalanche reports, bulletin board community updates, entertainment and visual arts calendars, even its “Mystics Almanac.”

On www.KVNF.org, listeners also can tune in to more than 100 stories of Western Slope residents, recorded in interviews last summer by KVNF and the StoryCorps national oral history project. (These interviews eventually will be archived as well in the Library of Congress.)

But largely, KVNF’s stories ride across the airwaves in musical form. While commercial stations play the same top tunes of today �” over and over and over again �” KVNF knows no such constraints. Whether jazz, classical, blues, musica Mexicana, bluegrass, soul, world electronica or the zydeco and Cajun strains of New Orleans, our community radio station airs them all.

KVNF also provides a platform for one of our richest community resources: our local musicians.

Our “Mountain Grown Community Radio” truly brings to life the authentic voice of the Western Slope.

We’re most fortunate to have the nonprofit KVNF on our wavelength. Its crew �” mostly local volunteers �” has been serving our region for 30 years.

Now we have an opportunity to demonstrate our appreciation through magnanimous Montrosean means.

Tax-deductible donations specified for our 89.1 transmitter can be mailed to KVNF Community Radio, P.O. Box 1350, Paonia, CO 81428 or pledged at www.kvnf.org.

Reach Billie Stanton at billies@montrosepress.com or 252-7030.

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