Progressive talk is coming back to Seattle’s airwaves: Welcome, KODX-LP 96.9 FM!

With bad news in abun­dance these days, it’s always a relief when we have good news to share. And we have some real­ly good news to pass along and cel­e­brate: Seat­tle is gain­ing a new inde­pen­dent media out­let that will air pro­gres­sive news and views over our pub­licly owned airwaves.

KODX-LP 96.9 FM will be a low pow­er FM radio sta­tion broad­cast­ing ²⁴⁄₇ out of the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict. It will be pos­si­ble to pick up the sta­tion over the air in a large swath of Seat­tle, extend­ing to both sides of the Ship Canal, and for those out­side of the cov­er­age area, it’ll be pos­si­ble to lis­ten online via livestream.

The sta­tion is being put togeth­er by Earth On-the-Air Inde­pen­dent Media, which has been around since the late 1980s. Earth On the Air got its start pro­duc­ing a radio mag­a­zine; since the 1990s, it has col­lab­o­rat­ed with grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers on media lit­er­a­cy projects.

“KODX’s pur­pose is to be a forum for rad­i­cal, pro­gres­sive voic­es, issues, and per­spec­tives,” its orga­niz­ers say. “Shows will be pro­duced both local­ly and nation­al­ly with con­tent that builds toward eco­nom­ic, racial and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, and peace. Com­mu­ni­ty groups and local vol­un­teers will be trained to pro­duce shows, air con­tent, and help with run­ning the radio station.”

Although Seat­tle is one of the most pro­gres­sive cities in the coun­try, pro­gres­sive voic­es are not as well rep­re­sent­ed in the region’s media land­scape as they ought to be. That’s espe­cial­ly true with respect to the ter­res­tri­al broad­cast seg­ment. Greater Seat­tle has not one, but two radio sta­tions spe­cial­iz­ing in right wing talk (KVI, KTTH) and a third (KIRO) that airs mul­ti­ple right wing shows as part of its lineup.

From 2004 until 2013, greater Seat­tle had a pro­gres­sive talk radio sta­tion air­ing nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed pro­gram­ming — AM 1090 KPTK, orig­i­nal­ly an affil­i­ate of Air Amer­i­ca Radio. But at the end of 2012, KPTK was con­vert­ed into KNFQ “The Fan” by its own­er, CBS Radio, after exec­u­tives in New York decid­ed that mak­ing the sta­tion part of a nation­al sports talk radio net­work would be more lucrative.

With most exist­ing licens­es for broad­cast­ing ter­res­tri­al radio con­trolled by big cor­po­ra­tions with far­away head­quar­ters, efforts to res­ur­rect pro­gres­sive talk in Seat­tle haven’t amount­ed to any­thing more than talk. But thanks to the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the Oba­ma years, bar­ri­ers to set­ting up low pow­er FM sta­tions were removed. That prompt­ed Earth-on-the-Air Inde­pen­dent Media to apply for a license from the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Commission.

KODX-LP FM
Licensee: EARTH ON-THE-AIR INDEPENDENT MEDIA
Ser­vice Des­ig­na­tion: FL Low Pow­er FM (LPFM) sta­tion or application
Channel/Class: 245L1
Fre­quen­cy: 96.9 MHz (Con­struc­tion Permit)
File No.: BNPL-20131029AGJ
Facil­i­ty ID num­ber: 192326
CDBS Appli­ca­tion ID No.: 1630982

If you’d like to learn more about the effort to start up KODX-LP FM, you may want to RSVP for the sta­tion’s launch par­ty, tak­ing place on Thurs­day, Octo­ber 5th from 6:30 — 9 PM at the Uni­ver­si­ty Tem­ple Unit­ed Methodist Church.

More details are avail­able here.