Why a new grassroots radio station is coming to eastern San Fernando Valley

You might think everything is going the way of streaming and YouTube podcasts when it comes to audio entertainment these days.

But it turns out there are people tenacious enough to bring a new radio station to life.

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

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“It’s the biggest thing I ever did, for sure,” Bothwell said.

His new project, KPBJ 95.9 FM, grew out of a love for his neighborhood and a bit of luck.

Radio nerds might know that the FCC opens up what are called low-power FM channels to nonprofits offering non-commercial programming.

“What they do is they look around on their maps, and they’re like, ‘Oh in this particular neighborhood, we can squeeze in a smaller station on this frequency that won’t interfere with the larger commercial stations,” Bothwell said.

A couple years ago, with the help of a friend at Common Frequency, 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.

He had to form a nonprofit to apply, and then waited anxiously to see if he would get the channel.

“It turned out nobody else applied for this channel, so I got it by default,” Bothwell said with a laugh.

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

“I love this part of Los Angeles. East Valley I think is one of the coolest parts of L.A. And it’s 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,” Bothwell said.

A lot of people have shown interest in the station, Bothwell said. And that’s good, because he’s looking for volunteer audio engineers, hosts and more to come make the station sing.

“I 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, ‘Slow down on Glenoaks!’ or whatever.”

Bothwell is hoping to kick off the KPBJ 95.9 FM broadcast by the end of the year.

Fundraiser

KPBJ will host a fundraiser Friday, Sept. 5, from 6 p.m. to midnight. It will be hosted at 2526 Studios, 2526 N. Ontario St., Burbank.