KBMF is a community radio station which offers a variety of programming which seems to be mostly music. The music selection is somewhat eclectic, but appears to contain a lot of R&B, blues, fringe country, fringe rock & roll and hard rock, all mostly contemporary. They will throw in some older R&R now and again.
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In a different vein, the station is presently producing a series of hour long documentaries on local history, taken from taped oral histories at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. KBMF has received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to aid in producing this series. The Montana Standard ran an article on the KBMF project, excerpts from which follow.
Butte indie radio station foundation
receives $30,000 grant to create documentary series on Mining City history
ANNIE PENTILLA | Aug 10, 2017
Soon area residents will be able to listen to Butte history from the comfort of their living rooms.
This is because the Butte America Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the independent, low-power radio station KBMF at 102.5 FM, aims to resurrect voices of the past through a radio documentary series featuring oral histories from the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives.
The foundation, or BAmF, is getting a $30,000 matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create the series, called “Verdigris.”
A portion of the grant will also go toward continuing efforts to digitize the oral histories, many of which exist on cassette tapes, according to an NEH news release.
KBMF Station Manager Clark Grant said the NEH funds will be administered over the course of three years to create three serial programs on Butte history, each produced by a different Mining City resident.
Grant is producing one of the series, “Life Underground,” which will consist of 20 one-hour episodes, each drawing from the archives’ oral histories.
The archives possesses hundreds of oral histories, and Grant has joined a group of volunteers who have been helping to convert the recordings into digital audio.
“The goal is to produce this radio series that will tell the story of Butte history from the mouths of the people who lived it,” said Grant.
This isn’t the first time Grant has worked on a radio documentary.
Despite Grant’s experience, creating the new series won’t be without its challenges, one of which will be distilling the hours of audio into a coherent series of stories.
“I’ve listened to hundreds of tapes,” said Grant. “I think the challenge will be deciding what to leave out because there’s so much good content.”
To narrow it all down, Grant says he’ll focus on the role Butte played in the global economic, social and political scene.
From the Montana Standard