{"id":136696,"date":"2025-09-06T08:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T08:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136696\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T08:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T08:47:09","slug":"why-a-new-grassroots-radio-station-is-coming-to-eastern-san-fernando-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136696\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a new grassroots radio station is coming to eastern San Fernando Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n

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You might think everything is going the way of streaming and YouTube podcasts when it comes to audio entertainment these days.<\/p>\n

But it turns out there are people tenacious enough to bring a new radio station to life.<\/p>\n

Solomon Bothwell is a terrestrial radio guy. Back in 2011, he co-founded KCHUNG<\/a> radio in Chinatown. That hyper local AM station became a nexus for L.A.\u2019s music, arts and culture scene with its diverse range of hosts and programming<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why a new grassroots radio station is coming to eastern San Fernando Valley<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the biggest thing I ever did, for sure,\u201d Bothwell said.<\/p>\n

His new project, KPBJ 95.9 FM,<\/a> grew out of a love for his neighborhood and a bit of luck.<\/p>\n

Radio nerds might know that the FCC opens up what are called low-power FM channels<\/a> to nonprofits offering non-commercial programming.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they do is they look around on their maps, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh in this particular neighborhood, we can squeeze in a smaller station on this frequency that won\u2019t interfere with the larger commercial stations,\u201d Bothwell said.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago, with the help of a friend at Common Frequency<\/a>, a group that supports grassroots radio stations, Bothwell learned that 95.9 FM would be opening up. The broadcast area would serve a pocket of the eastern San Fernando Valley and neighborhoods like Shadow Hills, Sunland-Tujunga and Burbank.<\/p>\n

He had to form a nonprofit to apply, and then waited anxiously to see if he would get the channel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out nobody else applied for this channel, so I got it by default,\u201d Bothwell said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

He calls this part of L.A. home and has a deep appreciation for its quirky scrap yards, backyard carnitas places and horse people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this part of Los Angeles. East Valley I think is one of the coolest parts of L.A. And it\u2019s kind of underappreciated in a lot of ways, I think… I really love the idea of sort of creating more local, regional content and community projects and this area I think is really interesting and deserves more attention,\u201d Bothwell said.<\/p>\n

A lot of people have shown interest in the station, Bothwell said. And that\u2019s good, because he\u2019s looking for volunteer audio engineers, hosts and more to come make the station sing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love it if there was a good healthy mix of music and talk content on all sorts of topics with all sorts of perspectives. I wanna be able to have someone being like, \u2018Slow down on Glenoaks!\u2019 or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bothwell is hoping to kick off the KPBJ 95.9 FM broadcast by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Fundraiser<\/p>\n

KPBJ will host a fundraiser Friday, Sept. 5, from 6 p.m. to midnight<\/a>. It will be hosted at 2526 Studios, 2526 N. Ontario St., Burbank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keep up with LAist. If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[17210,88,216,85652,85654,85653,85655,85656],"class_list":{"0":"post-136696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-burbank","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-radio-station","12":"tag-pacoima","13":"tag-san-fernando-valley","14":"tag-sunland","15":"tag-tujunga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}