Common Frequency

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FM Radio as it exists today sounds pretty much the same anywhere you travel in America. It’s a collection of commercial stations, NPR, a Spanish station or two and Christian offerings. If you live within the reach of a college radio station, you’re likely to hear a more raucous blend of listening choices.

And then there is radio as a small band of local visionaries who call themselves Common Frequency would like to see it. Common Frequency is a tiny nonprofit made up of UC Davis students and graduates who are all connected by way of the university’s radio station, KDVS. They came together around the idea that using their radio expertise — from engineering, content and underwriting — they could help other nonprofit groups create their own radio stations. In doing so, they believe they can help recapture something that has been lost.

Group board member Paul Schramski says people want to hear what’s going on in their community, and they aren’t getting that from current radio coverage.

“As the media has aggregated, people have lost their communities,” says Schramski. “By creating radio communities we are helping to rebuild the sense of communities.”

Both Schramski and Common Frequency board president Todd Urrick are past station managers of KDVS. Schramski, who studied environmental policy at UC Davis, works as a community organizer with Pesticide Watch in California and Toxics Action Center in Massachusetts. Urrick studied civil engineering and divides his time between Common Frequency and KDVS.

“There are very few tools that members of the public can use to start their own radio stations,” Urrick says.

Common Frequency members worked diligently to help various groups, including the Peace and Justice Network of San Joaquin County, apply for the last remaining frequencies on the FM dial during an open filing period offered by the Federal Communications Commission in October.

The FCC has not said when selections will be announced. Applicants were graded on a host of criteria, including listening value and engineering ability.

Common Frequency is able to advise groups on everything from engineering issues to content-related matters. But the idea of radio ownership is still so new for most community groups that in many cases Common Frequency went looking for groups to start their own stations.

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