Strong signal for local music

Musicians get new venue when KZME starts broadcasts

By Anne Marie DiStefano

The Portland Tribune, Jul 3, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

JIM CLARK / Portland Tribune

Dennise Kowalczyk (left) and Rob Brading of MetroEast Community Media, the Gresham-based cable access station, discuss MetroEast’s acquisition of a noncommercial radio license. The company’s location outside of Portland’s saturated radio market was critical to securing the license for KZME, which will begin broadcasting in 2009.

Local music is what KZME (91.1 FM) is all about – or rather, will be all about when it begins broadcasting some time in 2009.

Based in Gresham, the venture will be a full power, noncommercial station, dedicated to local music on local airwaves. The station is the result of a coalition of music and media activists seizing a rare opportunity.

“There hasn’t been an opportunity like this in 20 years, and it may have been longer,” says Rob Brading, a key player in the process and the CEO of MetroEast Community Media, the Gresham-based cable access station.

MetroEast is the home port for the radio station, which will send a signal from a tower on Mount Hood. MetroEast’s location outside of Portland’s saturated market was crucial to securing the license. A translator, now in the works, should make the signal readable throughout the metro area.

“We’re pretty confident about that,” Brading says, “That’s the premise of our planning – that we will reach most of the metropolitan area.”

With its application approved by the Federal Communications Commission, the radio station could launch any time in the next six to 18 months. KZME will follow the structure of most noncommercial stations, with a mostly volunteer staff. There will be some public affairs programming, but the main thrust is to showcase the region’s diverse, thriving music scene.

“We are dedicated to doing local music,” Brading says. “There isn’t another station in the area that is doing that, and we think it is a huge opportunity.”

He adds, “We probably could have spent a lot of money doing a lot of market research, and I’m absolutely convinced that we would have ended up in exactly the same place.”

Local commercial music stations are owned by media conglomerates and the days of local DJs spearheading regional hit songs are over.

Local artists don’t get much airplay, beyond the occasional niche hour or two scattered across the dial, unless, of course, they succeed on the national charts (for example Everclear in the ’90s, or the Shins now).

“It’s got a certain homogeneity to it,” Brading says of commercial radio. “It’s real unfortunate, but it’s not surprising,”

Bruce Fife, the president of Local 99, Portland’s branch of the American Federation of Musicians, agrees.

“This is something that’s really needed,” he says of KZME. “I think there’s going to be great support from the music community for it, because we’ve got this great music scene, and this is a component that’s been absent that needs to be there.”

Fife’s involvement began back in 2004 when the musicians’ union was one of the participants in a town hall meeting on the future of media. That got him thinking about local radio, and how it could better serve the musicians for whom he advocates.

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