About Us

Background

Our Vision

The Boulder Community Broadcast Association, Inc. envisions an actively engaged global community rooted in mutual respect, working together to advance a more equitable, just, and environmentally sustainable society that ensures all peoples access to and participation in independent media.

Our Mission

KGNU is an independent, noncommercial community radio station licensed in Boulder and Denver and dedicated to serving its listeners.

We seek to stimulate, educate and entertain our audience, to reflect the diversity of the local and world community, and to provide a channel for individuals, groups, issues and music that have been overlooked, suppressed or under-represented by other media.

The station seeks to expand the listening audience through the excellence of its programming without compromising the principles stated here.

KGNU Serving Boulder and Denver for Over 40 years

KGNU depends on community volunteers, coordinated by paid staff,to produce quality programming. It relies on its audience for financial support. The Board of Directors of the Boulder Community Broadcast Association, Inc., is the licensee and is legally responsible for the conduct of station activities. The Board hires a manager who is responsible for managing the station and hiring other staff. The Board, Staff and Volunteers are committed to collaborating with each other.

Team + Staff

Explore who is behind KGNU operations and day-to-day activities.

Board of Directors

Meet the board members who help keep KGNU part of the community.

Committees

Learn about our committees, when they meet, and how to join one.

Origin Story

Our Story

The early 1970s. Boulder, the town missing a radio station. Sure there were other stations, two had been providing radio service for decades. Another was standing by quietly, waiting to make a few people rich on its way to fame and rating points. But in the early 1970s it just seemed that something was missing. Where, for example, was the university radio station? Did any school this size not have some sort of college radio station? And if there was no university station, how about one of those emerging public radio stations?

It was these conditions which motivated a few visionary folks to take matters into their own hands and create the station we now know as KGNU. This is a humble volunteer’s short history.

Roots, Rock, Reggae

Some of the underlying motivation for this endeavor can be found in the social ferment of the 1960s. Access to media was a big issue in those days and during the early ’70s there was a proliferation of “alternative” print resources including magazines, catalogues, brochures, newspapers, and books. It also became obvious that the electronic media were powerful tools of communication and social transformation, yet the question was: how to seize this form of communication?

It was during this period across the United States that young social activists identified the “how” as non-commercial, listener-sponsored radio. On the federal level the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service, and National Public Radio were developing a network of stations, a result of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television and pioneering work of the Ford Foundation. On another level, colleges and universities were shoring up existing on-campus radio and television stations as well investigating possible new broadcast outlets. It is in this context that the media activists of the counterculture jumped into the fray, inspired by several factors — including their own experience of the past few years, mutual interests, the history of the Pacifica radio stations, and a book titled Sex and Broadcasting.

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