KPFA

KPFA (94.1 FM) is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, U.S., broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15, 1949, as the first Pacifica station and remains the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network. The aims of the station are to promote cultural diversity, promote pluralistic cultural expression, contribute to a lasting understanding between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colours. It also promotes freedom of the press and acts as a forum for various viewpoints.

The station's studios are located in Downtown Berkeley and the transmitter site is located in the Berkeley Hills.

History

Launched in 1949, three years after the Pacifica Foundation was created by pacifist Lewis Hill, KPFA became the first station in the Pacifica Radio network and the first listener-supported radio broadcaster in the United States. Previously, non-commercial stations were licensed only to serve educational functions as extensions of high schools, colleges, and universities. This departure into listener-oriented programming brought many detractors as KPFA aired controversial programming. The first interview with anyone from the gay political movement was broadcast by KPFA, as well as Allen Ginsberg's ground-breaking poem Howl in the 1950s. In 1954 the broadcast by a group of marijuana reform advocates extolling the pleasures of cannabis resulted in the tape being impounded by the California Attorney General. In the 1960s KPFA and Pacifica were accused of being controlled by the Communist Party, and several challenges to its license were waged, none of them successful.