Skip to content
Citizens Radio ReviewCommunity radio and low-power FM, explained

On the air

Desk 01 · Stations Near You

Community radio stations near you

How to find low-power and community stations on any FM dial in the United States: the band they occupy, the directories that list them and what they sound like.

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

Between the network affiliates and the commercial repeaters, the American FM band hides more than a thousand low-power stations: campus broadcasters, church services, high school sports, bilingual talk, grass-roots music shows. This desk is the magazine’s listening guide. It explains where those signals sit on the dial, how to list and map them with the FCC’s own database and the volunteer directories that track them, and what a first-time listener should expect from a 100-watt signal.

We treat the dial as a place with a geography. The reserved band from 88.1 to 91.9 MHz belongs to educational broadcasting, the non-reserved band from 92.1 to 107.9 MHz is where low-power FM was placed, and every occupied tenth of a megahertz has a story. Our guide to what 100 watts buys explains why those signals are small on purpose, and the history of the pirate movement explains why they exist at all.

In this desk

  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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    Diagnose a slow PC before replacing it

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

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

    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.

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

    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.

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

    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.

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

    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.

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

    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.

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

    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.

  11. 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

    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.

  12. 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

    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.

  13. 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

    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.

Two neighbouring desks extend this one: Start a Station and LPFM Rules Made Simple. The magazine’s method is stated on the editorial policy page.