Seeking to fill the community radio void created when Vanderbilt University’s WRVU went online-only two years ago, 107.1 WRFN-LP Pasquo, TN’s “Radio Free Nashville” is looking to simulcast its signal throughout Davidson County–Nashville. The station’s 7-watts at 349 ft. HAAT signal currently is heard best in the city’s southwestern suburbs.
So, to solve the problem, the nonprofit station programmed by the community, received FCC approval for a translator that would rebroadcast its signal on 103.7 FM to the rest of the county.
Radio Free Nashville is in its eighth year, and station co-founder and general manager Greg Welsch launched an indiegogo.com fundraiser earlier this month with a goal of $20,000 that would be used to buy the equipment to boost its signal countywide, reported The Tennessean.
Radio Free Nashville features local music programming and left-of-center political talk. “If everything comes together, you’d hear us in the Vandy area, Music Row, East Nashville, downtown, all around town,” Welsch said.
Freddie O’Connell, who co-hosted a political talk show on WRVU and briefly on Radio Free Nashville called Liberadio(!), said he hoped the station reached its fundraising goal.
“I think that the loss of WRVU was a critical blow to Nashville’s media landscape because it was one of the few full-powered broadcast signals that carried voices counterprogram to the mainstream,” O’Connell told the paper. “It wasn’t a purely narrow commercial interest controlling what type of music, what type of commentary that was available to people able to pick up FM signals.”
