"KRTS 93.5 Marfa Public Radio" Texas, USA
Posted by: linkys
N 30° 18.600 W 104° 01.240
13R E 594161 N 3353542
Marfa Public Radio serves the Big Bend and West Texas area with listener-supported public radio that informs, educates, and entertains.
Waymark Code: WM3EHC
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/23/2008
Views: 81
It may be listener supported public radio, it is in the middle of a remote region of Texas, and when it launched in 2006, newsman Dan Rather was on hand to ceremoniously flip the switch, the next day Willie Nelson played a benefit concert, and The New York Times covered the events. There is obviously more to the story behind Marfa Public Radio KRTS - 93.5 FM than meets the eye.
What happened reads more like work of fiction, local nonprofit literary arts organization, The Desert Mountain Institute, works to bring public radio to the region, the bidding battle for the station license starts at several thousand dollars but escalates to the hundreds of thousands. Winning bidder, big Texas media firm that realizes it can never make money after paying so much for the license, so joins forces with nonprofit to create public radio station, pushed along by the rather inventive and unique ways the people of West Texas showed their displeasure towards the winning bidder. Delays in FCC approvals plague the project, then due to a "miscommunication" with the FCC, the station mistakenly broadcasts a low-power signal, further delaying the FCC approval process and initiating an investigation. Eventually the station and tower are constructed, and today KRTS - 93.5 FM's 100,000 watt signal brings community radio to West Texas.
To read some of the stories behind the story as they say, here are several links: The New York Times, The Austin Chronicle, The Big Bend Gazette. There are still more articles and a Google search will turn them up if you haven't gotten enough already. Guess you could say that the Marfa Lights aren't the only strange things that happen in Marfa, Texas.
While the outside of the building may look somewhat nondescript
Inside it is up to date in every way as this broadcast studio shows.