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Tom Bozack and his wife Linda knew nothing about operating a radio station.

Yet when the FCC had an opening for low-power FM licenses about a decade ago, they and a handful of others in Curry County thought it could be an effective way to inform a community Bozack says is largely fractious and divided.

“We got connected with an organization called Prometheus Radio, which was and still is an organization that promotes community radio. They provided us with technical support,” he told the Wild Rivers Outpost. “We threw together an application for the FCC, to get what they call construction permits — permission to build a station — and we submitted that on the first of November 2013. Eventually that was approved.”

Working with a friend from Gold Beach, the Bozacks filed for nonprofit status, cobbled together a Board of Directors and found roughly 20 other volunteers — Curry Coast Community Radio KCIW 100.7 was born. The FCC granted the station its low-power construction permit in February 2014.

On Jan 1, 2017, KCIW began broadcasting 24-7, its signal reaching as far south as Crescent City.

Now KCIW has the opportunity to reach further after the FCC granted construction permits for full-power transmitters. The station has about a year and a half left to raise $125,000 to obtain that equipment and hire broadcast engineers to properly install it. Bozack said the Board of Directors decided to go for it even if the financing isn’t quite ready rather than wait for the FCC to open that window of opportunity again.

“We weighed our options — do we wait another 10 years? none of us are getting any younger — or do we take the plunge and try to see if we can move forward with the full power transition,” Bozack said. “We decided we were going to give it a shot. We decided that the next opportunity, we don’t know when that’s going to happen if ever.”

KCIW plans to install a transmitter in the Harbor Hills area near Brookings and on Grizzly Mountain near Gold Beach, said Board Treasurer Candice Michel, who hosts “Our Community.”

The Harbor Hills site will allow KCIW to reach listeners immediately north of Brookings as well as further south into Del Norte County, Michel said. Installing a transmitter on Grizzly Mountain will allow the radio station to reach into Port Orford, thereby covering the entire county.

“It’ll make a huge difference if we can get the county to come on board,” Michel said. “We can be the emergency broadcaster. We’ll have backup equipment at our sites. In an emergency when all the cell towers come down, what’s going to be left are the HAM radio operators who can talk from point to point and the FM station that can broadcast to the populous. That’s what’s going to be left for maybe months.”

Currently, while KCIW is able to reach Crescent City via its transmitter’s current location on Railroad Avenue in Brookings — the airwaves can cross the water and reach the Del Norte County Airport — going north, it doesn’t get past Carpenterville Road, Michel said. There are too many mountains.

Up until October 2021, KCIW was the emergency broadcaster for the City of Brookings. The Brookings City Council unanimously decided against renewing its lease with the radio station, which had a transmitter on an antenna near city hall, which is where Brookings’ emergency operations center is, Michel said.

“We were hardwired into the emergency operations center, which is right beside the tower, which means they could have interrupted our programming at any point if there was an emergency,” she said.

However, in November 2021, the Curry Coastal Pilot quoted Brookings Mayor Ron Hedenskog, who said the lease with KCIW was not going to be free or permanent. IN 2019, the Council voted to extend KCIW’s lease at $100 a month before it expired in 2021.

Michel also pointed out that Curry County is considered a news desert and one thing KCIW does provide is access to local news. In May 2023, the station announced that it had received a regional Edward R. Murrow award for Lori Gallo-Stoddard’s long-form expose, “Corruption in Curry County?.”

The radio station has also provided regular updates on the status of Janell Howard, Brookings’ city manager who was fined and paid restitution for shoplifting from Fred Meyer on July 4, 2022.

“One of the things KCIW can do is make it not so arid,” Michel said, referring to the news landscape in Curry County.

Going to a full-power format will just broaden the station’s reach.

“If there’s a festival or the Elk’s Club is having a toy drive or something like that, that kind of information is very local and very valuable for the Brookings-Harbor Community,” Michel said. “But if we can have that kind of information from Gold Beach and Port Orford and share it with people in Brookings and vice versa, there’s that much more availability of resources, many more people will show up at these vents and there are many more people who are going to promote these events. It just makes us not so remote.”

KCIW is putting a call out to the community for donations to get its transmitters up and running, Bozack said. But, he noted, it’s a big investment. He said the radio station has also gotten some financial support from the Wild Rivers Community Foundation.

“We could certainly use help,” he said. “We’ve done well with grant applications, but it would be very good if somebody were able to step up and help out with that and put a full court press on grant opportunities right now as time is running out.”

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