KYOURADIO - Open Source Radio in San Francisco

KKHI, at 1550 on the San Francisco AM dial, was, from the early 1960s to 1994, a classical music station.

That year, CBS/Infinity Broadcasting purchased a cluster of San Francisco stations including KKHI. Music formats had already abandoned the AM band. The 1550 frequency drifted from all-news to talk to, for lack of anything else, a simulcast of co-owned FM country station KYCY. Very few listeners tuned it. Infinity needed something for its station at the top (low signal) end of the AM broadcast band that, for many younger listeners, represented the past, that would attract an audience.

On May 16, 2005, KYCY became the first terrestrial radio station to go all-podcast, as "KYOURADIO."

The KYOU call sign already belonged to the Fox TV affiliate for Ottumwa, Iowa. But KYCY can still use it, with permission, any time except legally on the hour when its assigned call letters must be used.

A format was born: Open Source Radio.

"There is a profound shift underway in the way we use technology that allows everyone to have a voice," said Joel Hollander, chairman and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting. "KYOURADIO harnesses that power by serving our listeners with content developed by them for them and offering a platform to share it with the rest of the world."

Listeners in the Bay Area who appreciate the irony life offers could hear the latest thing in broadcasting on yesterday's technology - AM radio -- on their old tube sets.

Whether or not something that isn't downloaded to an I-pod can be a podcast is open for debate. KYCY still became the first traditional broadcast radio station to use exclusively content created by its listeners and submitted in the form of sound files.

As 2008 began, KYCY aired several CBS/Infinity talk shows than contractually needed an affiliate in San Francisco, and streamed the podcast format, using it to fill on AM. Now, instead of the AM station simulcasting on the website, it's the other way around.

Contributors to KYOU give the station and site (from the User Agreement):

the royalty-free . . . irrevocable, non-exclusive right . . . and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, retransmit, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, communicate to the public, publicly perform or display such content (in whole or in part), and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, for so long as any rights exist in such content.

Podcasters retain rights to their content. They just don't get paid. In the meantime, KYOURADIO can use their content in promotions and print advertising, and possibly place it on other Web sites where more people will hear it.

Whether or not non-exclusive rights assigned royalty-free is good depends on how one feels about giving one's work away.

Non-exclusive rights to a podcast given for free is like writing for a non-paying print market. You aren't paid, but your work is read. Or heard.

The radio station can be a platform for an established broadcaster; free advertising for other stuff for which they've already been paid. (Among the podcasters on KYOURADIO is Rick Steves, author of the popular "Back Door" series of travel guides.)

Audio content producers attracted to KYOURADIO may also be be fans of a particular genre of music who just want to tell the world about their favorite artists, or folks who always wanted to be deejays but never got the break that landed them a show on traditional radio.

Now they have a voice, without the hassle of setting up an Internet radio station, from anywhere in the world.

It's possible for someone in South Africa to record a show and send it to KYOURADIO in California via FTP, and hear it on the station's audio stream.

Broadcast radio has arguably had it. The old boy is barely breathing. AM is a wasteland of talk. FM is dying but doesn't know it. When was the last time you got really excited over something you heard on either band?

Open source stations like KYCY might be what proves that the heart of radio is still beating.