In 1970, on Suzi’s 24th birthday, five friends sat around Sandie Anderson’s kitchen in Minneapolis and signed incorporation papers for what would become Northern Community Radio.  All of us, Dave Molvik, Dale Constantine, Sandie, Suzi and I had been “utility infielders” at WCAL, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota doing engineering, production, announcing and news.  We had an idea to build a community radio station in Northern Minnesota to reflect local culture and attitudes.  Rural public radio (then called educational radio) existed but it was either affiliated with a land grant university or a repeater station bringing big city culture to rural areas.  We wanted to build a grass roots organization based on the model of a cooperative, where listener members would have a vote for the board of directors and help direct programming.  We had no idea what we were doing.

We started by having Dave and Dale build a studio in the front room of our mobile home, later moving it to Oliver Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in St. Paul and producing programs for WCAL and several stations and institutions that, in those days before deregulation, needed to fill their FCC mandated public service obligation.  Marc Cox, pastor of the church, joined our board. We developed a good enough reputation that NPR, which went on air 4 months after we incorporated, commissioned us to produce programs.  That earned a little seed money that helped us get started.

We were inspired by the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1967 and by the federal Educational Television Facilities Program (ETFP later the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, PTFP) which funded capital expenses for public broadcasters.  ETFP/PTFP turned down our requests during four different rounds.  One program officer told us they were in the business of serving people not gophers and there were not enough people in rural Northern Minnesota to support a standalone station without institutional (university or college) support.  To be frank, on those first attempts I was not a very convincing grant writer, more passion than fact, but on one occasion we did take the program officer to Hibbing to see the giant gopher holes (open pit iron mines.)

Dave and I set out across Northern Minnesota to find transmitter sites.  We looked at sites ranging from Thief River Falls to the hills above Grand Marais.  We wanted high ground so we would not have to spend as much money on a high tower and looked for an economy that was most likely to support a station.  We initially considered Bemidji, Brainard and Hibbing because they were the larger communities, but Dave suggested Grand Rapids because its economy was more diverse.  Its economy had a three legged stool, timber, mining and tourism.  So, we focused our search there.

It was the right choice.  As soon as we started talking people got excited.  Leo Keskinen, Dean of Itasca Junior College, joined the board and offered us space in Daily Hall.  Bill Marshall, the county Land Commissioner, offered to rent us land at a dollar a year on a terminal glacial moraine in Trout Lake Township.  It had the height we needed.  The Blandin Foundation came up with an initial seed grant of $20,000.  Soon we had local volunteers Doug Veit, Edna Shepard and Marie Janacek working with us.

We also connected with people at the KRAB Nebula in Seattle, who were helping folks all over the country build community stations using Lorenzo Milam’s book “Sex and Broadcasting” as a handbook.  Suzi and I went to KDNA is St. Louis to meet Tom Thomas and Jermy Lansman who gave us lots of practical advice.  Jeremy especially knew how to cut corners and do things on the cheap.  In the summer of 1975 Dave, Suzi, and I, along with our 2 year old Brian, attended the National Alternative Radio Konference sic (NARK) in Madison, Wisconsin.  Out of that grew the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, which provided lots of guidance and moral support. 

In Minnesota, a group of us, led by KUOM Program Director Marion Watson, formed AMPERS, the Association of Minnesota Public and Educational Radio Stations.  Led by Marion, Scott Brice at St. Cloud State, and Paul Peterson at WCAL, AMPERS helped us, along with KFAI and WMOJ in the Twin Cities, fight to get on the air.  And it was a fight.  Not only did ETFP/PTFP not want to fund us, but Minnesota Public Radio threw roadblocks in the paths of all three of us.

But by April 1976, we were ready to go on the air.  We never got funding from PTFP, but we did get a private loan.  Our tower location was prime, and we contracted to rent tower space to KXGR, a new radio station being built in Grand Rapids, as well as to the Forest Service and Motorola for radio repeaters.  The rent income secured the loan.  We went on the air April 23, 1976.  Our struggle had just started.

We were provisionally qualified for support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  Clyde Robinson, who we met at NARK, was the program officer.  He had been in the Air Force stationed in Grand Forks and knew a little about the region.  I suspect he interpreted the regulations as liberally as possible to squeeze us in.  We were provisionally qualified, based on staff size (we needed five staff) and budget (we needed $75,000) and we would get a grant after we were on the air for a year and “proved up.”  We could carry NPR programming during that year. 

That first year we did prove up, after the audit we made the budget goal by just $117.  We had five staff by the grace of the CETA program (a federal job’s program, I don’t remember what CETA stands for, but while it helped us qualify by staff numbers it did not count toward our $75,000 because it was federal money.) CETA got us Michael Goldberg, Dick Brooks, Terry O’Brien, Rick Simon, Kurt Hoffman, Bud Carlson Mary Ann Kenjalo, Joe Miltich, and Rick Simon among others at various times. 

We met the financial qualification because Russ Miller, one of our early staffers, came up with the idea of KAXE bidding on a tree planting contract and having volunteers staff the hodad crew that Russ ran.  At about 3 months we were sure we were cooked but we went to the Winnipeg Folk Festival and watched the community they built under similar financial hardships.  That gave us inspiration and strength.

Someone gave the station a gong to hit whenever we got a pledge during a drive.  Mary Ann’s dog accidentally hit it with his tail.  That set off a round of tail wagging and gong ringing that, if each strike meant a pledge, would have set us up for the year.  The dog then turned on the gong and barked.  The gong set up a sympathetic vibration and answered the bark.  The barking and good vibrations escalated.  I opened the mic and got a pledge.  The gong is now at KBXE.

After that first year we got our first CPB Community Service Grant, which enabled us to hire some of the CETA folks after they timed out on their grants.  We were off and running.

While KAXE was a team effort we consider it our middle child.  Coming back this summer made us proud of the institution we helped foster.

The community built the station without any federal support and ran it for a year without CPB funding. It happened because the community pulled together.  It wanted KAXE.  Northern Minnesota did it before.  It can, and will, do it again.  Let that dog at the gong!

Below are photo galleries from KAXE in Grand Rapids in its purpose built building on the Mississippi River, now 20 years old, and Northern Community Radio’s Bemidji station, KBXE.