On Monday, college radio station Radio Free Kokomo announced that Indiana University, Kokomo will be shutting down the streaming radio station. According to a post on the Radio Free Kokomo page,
Radio Free Kokomo is sad to announce that the university has decided that they will no longer be supporting the station as part of the IU Kokomo experience. What this means is that at the end of this semester, we will be shutting down.”
What’s particularly unfortunate about this turn of events, is that the school holds a construction permit for a new low power FM (LPFM) radio station. This would have been a tremendous opportunity for the college radio station to expand its reach beyond campus. According to Radio Free Kokomo’s Facebook page announcement,
RFK announced last year that the FCC had approved our application for an FM broadcast license, and we were truly looking forward to taking that step, for the program, its current participants, and for the university. Now it seems that not only will that not happen, but we will cease our current broadcasting activity at the end of this semester.”
Indiana University was granted a construction permit for Radio Free Kokomo’s new LPFM station on May 21, 2014. The station is asking for supporters to reach out to officials at Indiana University in the hopes that radio can continue on campus.
As Radio Survivor readers may know, many schools applied for new LPFM licenses in the fall 2013 application window. So far, nearly 70 colleges and universities have been granted construction permits for new LPFM stations and others are awaiting final word from the FCC.
