A better signal, but what about content?

Last week, the Gazette ran a story about upgrades to NET radio that would include a new station in McCook, KNNE at 90.7. A kind gentleman at NET provided further detail saying, “The current timeline is that the transmitter will tentatively launch in the Fall of 2024. The transmitter site is not moving from where it is now.”

My best guess was that the referenced “where it is now” site is that of translator K224CH, at 92.7 FM (and Digital TV Channel K21OI), northwest of Culbertson. If I am reading the FCC database correctly (easier said than done), the construction permit for the new station at 90.7 shows an 11,000-watt transmitter, compared with the current translator at 92.7, which is a modest 140 watts.

As I tool around McCook in my car, I can pick up poor to moderate signals from the Culbertson translator, as well as that of KLNE at 88.7 out of Lexington (65,000 watts) and KPNE North Platte (88,000 watts). One of the three usually works depending on what bank drive-thru I’m in, but we are fortunate to have had the pick of all three, even if none are particularly great signals.

In the house, it becomes a bit harder. I find that not just any radio will receive those stations. Unless I’m in my ham shack with the benefit of an oversized antenna, the more sensitive capabilities found in shortwave receivers (or some older table-top radios) are required. Consequently, over the past thirty years I have amassed a collection of Grundig and CCrane radios for that purpose.

An 11,000-watt transmitter pointed in our direction might make all those extra efforts unnecessary, which can only be a good thing, but it comes at a time when my feelings about public radio are somewhat ambivalent.

NPR and I go way back. Long before I moved to McCook, I listened to Bob Edwards on my 30-minute commute to high school in the 1970s and have spent countless hours in the decades since listening and learning from programming unavailable elsewhere. Back in the day, when radio news segments seldom ran over fifteen minutes, NPR offered two two-hour news programs in the morning and two more hours in the afternoon. It was all serious national and international content and usually very well-produced.

While NPR has always leaned to the left of my worldview, they usually delivered their news from a relatively measured, mainstream perspective. Unlike today’s overtly partisan newscasts, they made an honest effort to report news fairly despite their leanings.

There was a minor flap in 2011 when a few members of Congress called for NPR to be defunded, citing partisan content. The effort failed, but NPR acknowledged those concerns and seemed to move back toward the center.

All was good until Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, then the news turned ugly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly fond of the guy either, but unlike NPR, it’s not an obsession for me. Overall, it appears the network has chosen to follow the cable news model of targeting a single constituency. That would be their prerogative as a commercial station, but it’s not a good look for a publicly funded entity–and while NPR is by no means the only provider of content on public radio, it is the 800-pound gorilla that anchors the majority of public radio stations throughout the US.

NPR steadfastly claims that only 1% of its budget comes directly from Federal funding, which is technically accurate, but conservatives wonder why we are funding what they consider propaganda–and the market is now providing alternatives.

On the television side, I can recall the three-network days when PBS offered educational and cultural programming that would not otherwise have been available. That was true until the cable television industry exploded, offering a wide variety of channels, many of which filled educational TV needs with History, Science, and Discovery-channel type programming. We now have enough diversity to call the role of educational television into question.

As for radio, the advent of network streaming and podcasting offers an even wider variety of audio news. The multitude of alternatives, combined with a predominance of agenda-driven news coverage, causes me, reluctantly, to wonder if the best days of public radio are behind us as well.

I certainly hope not. It would be like losing an old friend and a particularly poignant loss when we finally have a more robust, local signal.