Long Beach’s local radio station KLPB uses donations to rent temporary transmitter; will soon be back on the air.
With a volunteer staff and shoestring budget, local radio station KLBP has aired music and discussions curated by and for the community on 99.1 FM since 2020.
“It really has been worth it,” said Kris Kosach Wellen, general manager of KLBP. “It really has been, it’s been a headache for sure. But it’s really absolutely been worth it. And that is why the station is really worth saving. There’s something incredibly good and something incredibly different and something uniquely Long Beach here.”
Loyal listeners will have noticed by now that 99.1 FM has gone silent over the past few weeks. KLBP sent its transmitter off for maintenance with a company in the midwest, and after it was shipped back to Long Beach, the team discovered it was in an even worse state than before, and was now unusable.
For a couple weeks the station’s next steps were unclear, and volunteers began raising funds through an online campaign to buy a new transmitter to replace the damaged one.
However, Daniel Brezenoff, secretary and member of the board of directors for KLBP, told the Signal Tribune on Tuesday that the repair company is taking responsibility for the damages and replacing the original transmitter. Since that process could take weeks, the money from the online fundraiser will be used to rent a temporary transmitter to get KLBP back on the air in the meantime.
As of Thursday, the online campaign has raised $2,006 of its $6,600 goal. Brezenoff said the temporary transmitter was set to be installed on Thursday.
This is just the latest hurdle that KLBP’s volunteer team has had to jump. Brezenoff and Wellen said the radio station’s growth was severely hampered by the pandemic. The station celebrated the grand opening of its studio in early March 2020, days before the nationwide lockdown began.
During the pandemic, the owner of the donated space the station was operating out of asked them to move their operations to an adjacent property, which required volunteers to disassemble and reassemble the entire studio.
“Just trying to launch a radio station is very challenging, trying to do it when you’re also managing COVID, you know, that was brand new for everybody,” Brezenoff said. “It was a lot. It was hard to have meetings. It was hard to stay connected with people, it was hard for people to see a workable model. […] This was the worst timing in the world.”
The station is run by a handful of stalwart volunteer members, with over 50 more people producing their own shows for the station. The vast majority of independent radio shows aired on KLBP focus on different genres of music, including darkwave, indie, electronic dance music, hip-hop and more.
The station is seeking more talk shows, and its current lineup includes American Indian Airwaves, which is a show discussing Indigenous issues, as well as the interview show Artbeat Radio, created by members of local nonprofit Able ARTS Work.
While listeners wait for 99.1 FM to come back on the air, they can visit klbp.org/listen/ to listen to the live broadcast virtually.
“They need to do something a little bit different than what we already have,” Wellen said. “[…] It’s got to be a little different. It’s got to be truly independent. I don’t mind if it’s a little bit weird. I don’t want anybody copycatting commercial radio, that’s a ‘no no.’ If anybody comes to me and says I want to play Green Day and Coldplay, sorry, I don’t want you. You can find that anywhere. We want really different stuff. Blow me away.”
KLBP is one of only two radio stations based in Long Beach. The other one is run by Cal State Long Beach’s college news organization 22 West Media.
Even before the pandemic arrived in the United States, KLBP opened during a time when radio stations across the nation were either shutting down or making cuts. In January 2020, the country’s biggest radio company which owned over 850 stations at the time, iHeartMedia, announced mass layoffs among its local radio stations. The same company laid off another 2,000 radio station employees in 2009.
According to an article published by Britannica, Americans aged 18 to 24 listened to the radio 25% less in 2007 than they had in 2000.
According to data gathered by Nielsen Media Research and published by the Radio Advertising Bureau, 89% of Americans ages 12 and older listened to the radio in any given week in 2019, which declined to 83% in 2020, and 82% in 2022.
KLBP is entirely funded by donations and grants, and is always in need of more volunteers. Kosach Wellen said there’s currently around 10 volunteers, and that KLBP needs around 70 to run optimally.
To contact KLBP about volunteering or starting a show, email info@klbp.org. To keep up with the radio station, visit its website klbp.org or its Instagram page, @klbpfm.
