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Citizens Radio ReviewCommunity radio and low-power FM, explained

On the air

Community radio studio console at night with a mixer full of lit channel faders, an amber VU meter glow and headphones resting on the desk

An independent magazine of community radio

The people’s band, from 92.1 to 107.9

Citizens Radio Review follows low-power FM and the stations around it: how a 100-watt signal is licensed, what the FCC rules mean in plain language, where community radio came from, and how it carries on online through podcasts and emergency alerts.

2026 edition · Stations · Rules · History · Podcasts · Emergency

On the air

  1. 01

    Stations Near You

    Finding the local, licensed and often tiny stations hiding between the commercial signals.

  2. 02

    Start a Station

    From a founding group to a construction permit: the paperwork and the buildout, step by step.

  3. 03

    LPFM Rules Made Simple

    The rulebook of low-power FM, translated from regulatory English into plain sentences.

  4. 04

    Radio History

    Armstrong’s band, the pirates, the listener-sponsored experiment and the law that finally licensed the small signals.

  5. 05

    Podcast Corner

    The online afterlife of community programming, from RSS enclosures to hyperlocal feeds.

  6. 06

    Emergency Broadcasting

    EAS, weather wires and the night the schedule stops mattering.

01-06The six desks of the magazine

Six doors into the same dial, from the neighborhood signal to the alert chain.

  1. Round receiver dial lit in a dim room with the red tuning needle resting near the top of the FM band and a lamp behind it

    01

    Stations Near You

    Finding the local, licensed and often tiny stations hiding between the commercial signals.

  2. Volunteers wiring a small broadcast studio with a mixer on a folding table, coiled microphone cables and a hand written channel plan taped to the wall

    02

    Start a Station

    From a founding group to a construction permit: the paperwork and the buildout, step by step.

  3. Open federal rulebook beside a hand drawn diagram of two radio towers and a ruler marking the distance between their channels on a desk

    03

    LPFM Rules Made Simple

    The rulebook of low-power FM, translated from regulatory English into plain sentences.

  4. Vintage valve radio chassis open on a workbench with glowing tubes, cloth covered wiring and a leather punch tool resting beside the chassis

    04

    Radio History

    Armstrong’s band, the pirates, the listener-sponsored experiment and the law that finally licensed the small signals.

  5. Two volunteers recording a talk show around a kitchen table microphone with coffee mugs, a laptop showing sound waves and a window with daylight behind them

    05

    Podcast Corner

    The online afterlife of community programming, from RSS enclosures to hyperlocal feeds.

  6. Battery radio and a weather radio receiver side by side on a shelf with a flashlight, spare batteries and a hand written phone tree taped to the wall

    06

    Emergency Broadcasting

    EAS, weather wires and the night the schedule stops mattering.

LOGThe program log

Every guide the magazine publishes, dated, from the six desks.

  1. A black laptop from the late 1990s open on a wooden desk beside a stack of CD-ROM cases, lit by a single window on an overcast afternoon, shot from a slight angle so the keyboard and screen edge fill the frame.

    · Stations Near You

    SyBrowser: a Mac SQL client from 1999

    SyBrowser was a shareware SQL client for the Mac, first released on August 17, 1999 by MacSOS Pty Ltd, the Sydney software workshop of Dr Gerard Hammond.

  2. A cluttered workbench at night, an open desktop tower on its side with a RAM stick resting on the case edge, a multimeter probe touching a 24-pin connector, warm desk lamp light from the left, tight medium shot.

    · Stations Near You

    Reading SMART, RAM and voltage sensors

    A memory test, a SMART readout and a voltage sensor each answer a narrow question, and none of them declares a machine healthy on its own.

  3. A programmer’s desk at night, a laptop screen showing a code editor with uppercase keywords and a trailing period on each line, a printed dictionary table listing on paper beside the keyboard, warm desk lamp light from the left, medium shot from slightly above.

    · Stations Near You

    ABAP basics: syntax, data types, keyword index

    ABAP statements follow a fixed pattern: a keyword first, then operands, then a period.

  4. An open desktop computer case on a wooden table in daylight, side panel removed, a can of compressed air and a small screw container beside it, dust visible on the heatsink fins, shot from a slight angle above.

    · Stations Near You

    Diagnose a slow PC before replacing it

    A slow or noisy computer is not automatically a dead one.

  5. A wooden table by a window in late morning light, a size 6.0 mm aluminum crochet hook resting on a half-finished cotton dishcloth, a ball of light worsted yarn beside it, shot from slightly above at a close angle.

    · Start a Station

    Crochet basics: hook, chain, and pattern reading

    Hold the hook in your dominant hand the way you hold a pencil or a knife, with the thumb and index finger pinching the flat grip just below the head.

  6. A quarter sheet of cold press cotton paper taped to a tilted board on a wooden table, with a one-inch flat brush resting in a ceramic water jar and a row of three drying wash bands visible under window light.

    · Start a Station

    Watercolor washes, glazing, and muddy color

    A flat wash is laid on paper that is already damp or on dry paper with a fully loaded brush, working in even bands from top to bottom and never going back over a band that has started to dry.

  7. A blacksmith’s coal forge in a dim workshop, the fire glowing orange under a layer of coke, with a pair of tongs resting on the anvil’s face and a hammer just out of focus in the foreground.

    · Start a Station

    Hot Iron: Stretch, Upset, Bend, Punch, Forge Weld

    Hot iron work is the set of moves a smith makes while steel is above its recrystallization temperature: drawing out, upsetting, bending, punching, and forge welding.

  8. A printed tartan swatch book open on a wooden table beside a measuring tape and a pencil, with soft window light falling across the cloth from the left.

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    Reading the Scottish Tartan Register

    The Scottish Register of Tartans is the national collection of tartan records, kept by the National Records of Scotland.

  9. A village hall table in soft morning light, covered with a white cloth, holding five evenly sized runner beans on a white plate and a vase of seven sweet peas, with a handwritten class number card in front.

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    Local Produce Show: Entry, Bench, and Flower Prep

    Local produce shows are open to amateur gardeners who grow their own.

  10. A wooden church pew in late morning light, a worn hymnal open on the seat with a ribbon marker, and a printed order of service resting beside it.

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    What Lutherans Believe and How Worship Works

    Lutherans teach that salvation comes by grace alone, received through faith, not earned by good works.

  11. A carved pumpkin with a candle inside sits on a wooden porch step at dusk, warm light spilling from the cut face onto damp floorboards, shot from a low angle with the house door soft in the background.

    · Radio History

    Samhain to Halloween: how the holiday began

    Halloween comes from the old Celtic festival of Samhain, a late-autumn marker in Ireland and Britain that later met the Christian feast of All Saints and the American habit of carving pumpkins.

  12. A public library computer terminal in a quiet reference room, a text-only menu glowing on an older monitor, afternoon light from a side window, medium shot from behind the chair.

    · Radio History

    Free-nets: when communities ran their own networks

    A free-net was a community computer system that anyone in a city could dial into, usually for free, to read local news, send messages, join forums, and look things up.

  13. A wooden table by a north-facing window, daylight falling across a stack of mounted black-and-white studio portraits and a handwritten letter, with a magnifying glass resting on the nearest photograph, shot from slightly above at a close angle.

    · Radio History

    Reading old portraits and letters with care

    A photograph and a letter are not neutral records.

  14. A wooden desk in late afternoon light, an open Italian-edition manga volume beside a pair of reading glasses and a small stack of dubbed-series DVD cases, shot from a slight angle with the window light falling across the pages.

    · Podcast Corner

    Tezuka, Otomo, Shirow: anime’s founding authors

    Classic anime and manga rest on a small group of Japanese authors.

  15. A narrow Marais street at mid-morning, a ground-floor gallery window with a single painting visible behind the glass, soft overcast light, shot from the pavement at eye level.

    · Podcast Corner

    Inside a Paris gallery: what visitors never see

    A gallery owner spends most of the week not selling art.

  16. A wooden shelf clock on a pine table in a Vermont farmhouse kitchen, morning light from a side window falling across its painted dial, shot at a slight angle with the case and pendulum visible.

    · Podcast Corner

    Antique clocks: how to start, date and restore

    Start with one clock that runs. A weight-driven shelf clock or a simple spring-driven mantel clock from the 1840s to the 1920s is common, repairable, and cheap enough that a mistake does not hurt.

  17. A GIS analyst’s desk at dusk, two monitors showing a Sentinel-2 tile of the Mekong Delta beside a QGIS window, a paper field notebook and a mug within reach.

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    Satellite images of Asia: a buyer’s guide

    Choosing imagery for a project in Asia comes down to three numbers and one licence.

  18. A living room at dusk, a soundbar sitting on a low wooden shelf below a wall-mounted television, one HDMI cable curving from the TV’s side port toward the bar, warm lamp light on the left.

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    HDMI ARC, eARC and soundbar wiring, explained

    ARC and eARC are the two audio return channels built into HDMI.

  19. A home office desk at midday, a laptop open to Task Manager’s Startup apps tab beside a coffee cup, a router on the shelf behind it with two small status lights lit, shot from slightly above at a three-quarter angle.

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    Windows upkeep: startup, updates, Wi-Fi

    Most Windows slowdowns and connection complaints trace back to three chores: too many programs launching at sign-in, update errors that never get read, and Wi-Fi that drops for reasons the router did not cause.

  20. A marshaller in a high-visibility vest stands on a concrete apron at dusk, orange wands raised, guiding a small business jet toward a painted stand line while a fuel truck waits at the edge of the frame.

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    VIP Aviation: private jets at Warsaw, 2005

    On August 1, 2005, Warsaw’s Okęcie airport added private aircraft service at its VIP Aviation terminal.

  21. Record shop shelf of independently pressed vinyl beside a community radio turntable with a handwritten playlist card in warm shop light

    · Stations Near You

    What community radio can learn from France’s independent record culture

    A small station and a small label are the same institution wearing different licenses: both exist to keep a local scene audible when the market will not.

  22. Portable broadcast table with a microphone and small mixer at the edge of a small town parade route with flags and folding chairs nearby

    · Stations Near You

    Putting a Hometown Festival on the Air: Cameras, Streams and Rights

    The annual parade passes once, and a community station that is not ready for it watches the most local hours of the year go by in silence.

  23. Printed community events calendar pinned to a studio corkboard beside a microphone and a stack of handwritten index cards in a small radio station

    · Stations Near You

    Getting a Civic Event on the Air: What a Community Station Can Do With a Published Calendar

    The cheapest hour on a community station’s schedule is written by the town itself, in the calendar of fairs, breakfasts and lodge suppers nobody else broadcasts.

  24. Open public records binder on a newsroom desk beside a microphone, a lamp and a printed statute page with a highlighted passage

    · Stations Near You

    Five Working Days: Records Requests for a Two-Person Newsroom

    The smallest newsroom in town has the same right to the town’s paperwork as the biggest one, and the state wrote the answer into statute.

  25. Retriever sitting at heel beside a handler on a mown field with a judge and a marshalling tent visible under a gray sky

    · Stations Near You

    What a Field Trial Teaches a Remote Broadcast

    A retriever trial is a broadcast school disguised as a dog sport: a published order, fixed stations, judges, weather and a results sheet at sundown.

  26. Open planning folder with site maps and stamped approval letters on a newsroom desk beside a desk lamp and a sharpened pencil

    · Stations Near You

    Reading the Development File Your Town Filed

    The biggest local story of the decade is usually a stack of clearances and land allotments, and the newsroom that reads the file owns the story.

  27. Volunteer meeting around a folding table with name tags, a duty roster and a coffee urn in a community room lit by fluorescent light

    · Start a Station

    Run by Volunteers: What Keeps a Community Signal on the Air

    A community station and a regional writers chapter are the same machine wearing different missions, and the machine has been studied for a century.

  28. Adoptable dog beside a broadcast microphone at a small studio with a volunteer holding a leash and a shelter calendar pinned behind

    · Start a Station

    What a Station Can Do for the Shelter Next Door

    The shelter three miles away has animals nobody sees; the station has three miles of ears. The pairing is the oldest public service in radio.

  29. Coaxial feedline running up a short mast toward a folded dipole FM antenna with a small transmitter building and a pickup truck below at dusk

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    Why Your 100 Watts Does Not Reach the Whole County

    The license says 100 watts, the listener hears a radius, and between the two sits a chain of components each quietly taking its share of the signal.

  30. Small FM broadcast antenna mounted on a mast above a residential rooftop with neighboring houses and gardens visible in flat afternoon light

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    Living Near a Community FM Transmitter: Field Strength and Limits

    A 100-watt antenna on a rooftop raises a fair question in the houses around it, and the answer is a matter of physics, reference levels and honest measurement.

  31. Clipboard with a licensing checklist on a broadcast console beside a stack of music CDs and a film festival program in a volunteer office

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    Clearing Rights Before You Broadcast or Screen: a Volunteer Media Checklist

    Volunteer media ask the same question in every format, radio or film: what rights does the room or the signal require, and who sells them?

  32. Printed village chronicle binders on a shelf beside a laptop showing a local blog archive in a municipal reading room with afternoon light

    · Radio History

    The Village Chronicle a Station Should Keep

    The town that writes itself down owns its own memory, and a village blog that started as campaign coverage is the proof small stations should study.

  33. Audio waveform on a laptop screen beside a small mixer and a notebook of cut marks in a quiet edit room lit by a desk lamp

    · Podcast Corner

    The Cut in Sound: Editing Radio Pieces Like a Film Editor

    The volunteer trimming an interview is doing the oldest craft in cinema, and the film editor’s vocabulary is the fastest way to learn it.

  34. Empty studio chair at a broadcast desk with headphones resting on the console in early morning light before the first shift

    · Podcast Corner

    The Discipline of Listening a Studio Teaches

    Listening is the volunteer’s real instrument, and the people who have trained attention longest are not broadcasters at all.

  35. Compact weather radio standing on a tackle box at a riverbank with a folding rod beside it and gray morning light over fast water

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    The Weather Band: What a Small Radio Tells an Angler

    The cheapest safety equipment on a riverbank is a thirty-dollar weather radio, and the anglers who drown statistics usually skipped the forecast it was reading.

  36. Small town viewed from a water tower at golden hour with rooftops and playing fields spread below the antenna of a community radio station

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    What 100 watts buys on the FM dial

    One hundred watts is a light bulb with a license, and the size of its footprint is not an accident but the central promise of the low-power service.

  37. Wall calendar with a short week circled in amber marker beside a stack of prepared application binders and a computer screen showing a form in an office at night

    · Start a Station

    FCC application windows, explained

    The strangest feature of the LPFM world is its calendar: you cannot apply when you are ready, only when the FCC opens a window, and the winners are almost always the groups that prepared during the closed years.

  38. Scored application worksheet with tally marks beside a framed community charter and a small scale model of a radio mast on a meeting room table

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    The FCC point system made simple

    The point system is the FCC’s answer to a simple question: when several communities’ groups chase one frequency, which of them is most the community’s own?

  39. Folded frequency map, application notes and a compass on a community hall table surrounded by folding chairs and stacked volunteer name tags

    · Start a Station

    Start an LPFM station: the full roadmap

    Between a kitchen table full of interested people and a licensed 100-watt signal lies one application, one point race and one buildout, and every step of that road can be prepared before the filing window opens.

  40. Engineering sketch of concentric protection circles around two broadcast towers with a compass, protractor and penciled frequency notes on drafting paper

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    Protections, offsets and shared dial space

    The FM band is a geometry problem: every new signal must prove it will not hurt its neighbors, and the FCC’s spacing rules decide where a 100-watt station may legally stand.

  41. Compact volunteer studio with a secondhand mixing desk, two dynamic microphones on simple booms, a laptop and a handwritten equipment price list pinned to the wall

    · Start a Station

    Building a studio on a community budget

    The transmitter is one purchase among many, and rarely the trickiest: a workable low-power station is built from patient shopping, donated rooms and a budget that respects the license clock.

  42. Volunteer editing a recorded interview on a laptop with headphones around her neck beside a broadcast mixer and a folder of episode notes in a small studio

    · Podcast Corner

    Turning a station into a podcast workshop

    A station that treats every broadcast as a recording gains a second audience that never touches the dial, and the studio it already owns is most of the way there.

  43. Kitchen radio receiving a slightly noisy local broadcast beside a mug and an open window onto a small town main street in early evening light

    · Stations Near You

    What a 100-watt station sounds like

    A low-power signal has a texture of its own: strong at the center of town, noisy at the county line, and programmed with a freedom no ratings-driven operator would dare.

  44. Newspaper technology column open on a wooden table beside early white earbuds tangled around a small music player from the mid two thousands

    · Podcast Corner

    How the podcast got its name

    The medium was older than its name, the name was a joke that stuck, and both facts tell you everything about how community audio actually spreads.

  45. Handbuilt transmitter board with homemade coil and soldered wiring on a workbench beside a licensed station certificate in a frame and a pair of pliers

    · Radio History

    From pirate transmitters to LPFM licenses

    The low-power FM service was not a government idea. It was the government’s answer to a decade of illegal transmitters that kept turning themselves back on.

  46. Nineteen fifties volunteer reception desk with a donation jar of coins, stacked listener letters, a wall poster of a radio mast and a green glass desk lamp

    · Radio History

    Pacifica and listener-sponsored radio

    Before LPFM, before public radio, a small group of pacifists in Berkeley invented the business model community broadcasting still runs on: the listeners pay, so the listeners decide.

  47. Vintage 1930s radio laboratory workbench with brass instruments, coiled wire, an oscilloscope style tube and a schematic sheet lit by a green shaded lamp

    · Radio History

    Armstrong and the invention of FM

    Every 100-watt station on the dial owes its existence to one stubborn engineer who proved that static was not inevitable, and who paid for the proof with everything he had.

  48. Volunteer broadcasting by lantern light during a storm blackout with a battery radio, a laptop on reduced brightness and a laminated checklist clipped to the console

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    A community station’s storm playbook

    When the warning sounds, the smallest station in town may be the only media outlet still running on generator power and volunteer nerve, and the difference is a playbook written on a calm day.

  49. Student operator in a college studio leaning toward a microphone with a music log open, campus posters on the wall and dusk light through the window blinds

    · Stations Near You

    Campus radio and the reserved band

    The bottom of the FM band was set aside for education before most of the rest of the dial was filled, and the college stations that grew there shaped what American community radio sounds like.

  50. Weather radio receiver with its warning light glowing amber on a shelf above a broadcast console, a city under storm clouds visible through the window

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    The Emergency Alert System for beginners

    The attention signals on your radio during a tornado warning are the third generation of a system built against nuclear war, and community stations sit closer to its front line than any network.

  51. Hand on the tuning wheel of a wooden cabinet radio at dusk, warm dial lamp glowing over the FM scale with county fields visible outside the window

    · Stations Near You

    How to find a community station on the dial

    Every county in America has more radio on it than the commercial logos suggest, and finding a low-power community station is mostly a matter of knowing where on the dial and in which database to look.

  1. Long community work table covered with a frequency map, application papers, a microphone and a small transmitter board under warm lamp light

    Start an LPFM station: the full roadmap

    The resource the magazine was built around: finding an open channel, surviving the point race, building out inside the permit clock and going live on 100 honest watts.

    Desk 02 · Start a Station

Citizens Radio Review is written from the listening side of the dial: we follow the stations, the rules and the people, we keep the numbers real, and every guide links back to the desk that explains it. Start with the magazine’s method on the about page, take the whole story from the roadmap in Start an LPFM station, or compare the fastest route to the signal in the filing window guide.

KEEPSignal notes worth keeping

These pages stay on the dial as durable reference points, with rules, history and working steps kept together for repeat visits.

  1. Folded frequency map, application notes and a compass on a community hall table surrounded by folding chairs and stacked volunteer name tags

    · Start a Station

    Start an LPFM station: the full roadmap

    A durable route from a founding group to a licensed 100-watt signal, with the filing, point race and buildout kept in one working sequence.

  2. Open federal rulebook beside a hand drawn diagram of two radio towers and a ruler marking the distance between their channels on a desk

    · LPFM Rules Made Simple

    LPFM rules made simple

    The plain-language reference desk for power, antenna height, channel protection and the rules that shape every small FM signal.

  3. Vintage 1930s radio laboratory workbench with brass instruments, coiled wire, an oscilloscope style tube and a schematic sheet lit by a green shaded lamp

    · Radio History

    Armstrong and the invention of FM

    The story of Armstrong’s invention and the technical idea that made a cleaner FM band possible for later community broadcasters.

  4. Battery radio and a weather radio receiver side by side on a shelf with a flashlight, spare batteries and a hand written phone tree taped to the wall

    · Emergency Broadcasting

    Emergency broadcasting for community stations

    A reference to the Emergency Alert System, weather radio and the station habits that matter when a warning takes over the schedule.

  5. Volunteer editing a recorded interview on a laptop with headphones around her neck beside a broadcast mixer and a folder of episode notes in a small studio

    · Podcast Corner

    Turning a station into a podcast workshop

    A practical guide to turning existing community radio routines into recorded shows, RSS episodes and a second life beyond the dial.

OUTSIDEOther listening posts

Eight independent reading desks, each kept to its own subject and linked here for a clear description of what it offers.

  1. Plain-English golf guide

    Ball flight, short game, rules, handicaps, fitting and ball choice in eight written chapters.

  2. Broadcast and sound notebook

    FM signals, coverage, studio wiring and the practical planning behind a broadcast day.

  3. Near-ground aerial imaging

    Tethered blimps, balloons, kites, masts and drones, with attention to how altitude changes a picture.

  4. Knitting and crochet how-to

    Dated guidance on yarn labels, needles, dropped stitches, blocking and beginner patterns.

  5. Mac storage field notes

    Measured notes on drive space, cleanup guides, tool criteria and free field-kit worksheets.

  6. Plain-language legal guides

    Clear guides for contracts, business formation, estate planning and tenant records.

  7. Diesel generator digest

    Genset Digest reads generator sets and process air systems from the nameplate: sizing, maintenance schedules and the figures engineers specify.

  8. Idaho voter guide

    A community newsroom covering a local race needs the plain mechanics first: Gem State Civic Desk is a nonpartisan Idaho guide to registration, ballot measures and where official results are posted.