Green River Selling Radio Property

At Green River College, plans to sell radio property in Enumclaw will pave the way for renovations in the broadcasting department.

The college’s two radio stations, KGRG 89.9 FM and KGRG 1, have long been part of the school’s history. Entirely student-run, KGRG FM, a station emphasizing “Today’s Rock” since the late 1980s, became an official part of GRC when it was licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1977.

Inspired by the burgeoning Seattle grunge era, KGRG FM became one of the first radio stations to feature then-unknown bands such as MxPx, Emery, My Chemical Romance, Death Cab for Cutie, and one of the most iconic alternative bands in history: Nirvana. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana even performed in the Student Affairs building in 1989 as part of a fundraiser for KGRG FM.

In 1996, to present students with even more opportunities to learn about broadcast journalism, the Green River College Foundation purchased a 500-watt radio station on five acres in Enumclaw.

“This was about the time that GRC opened up the Enumclaw branch campus building. It made sense to have that radio station because the Foundation got it for really cheap,” said Tom Evans Krause, Director of Broadcast Operations.

After several years, the station (then called KENU) was moved to Green River’s Auburn campus to be side-by-side its sister station, KGRG FM. With input from students, KENU became “Pulse 1330” and began playing music from the techno/electronic genre. As subsequent years saw the techno trend fading, the broadcast operations faculty were faced with a problem.

“We were trying to think, ‘Okay, well, what should we now do as far as putting music on that station?’ Here was all this great music that KGRG made famous, but it’s sitting in the closet collecting dust. So, let’s pull it out and play alternative oldies,” Krause said.

 Pulse 1330 became KGRG 1 and branded itself with a new slogan: “Your Classic Alternative”.

In the age of multimedia and online radio, the old Enumclaw radio station has become somewhat obsolete. With streaming capabilities on the KGRG 1 website, iHeartRadio, and its own app, selling the property and using that money toward improving the broadcast journalism department at GRC has become a priority for Krause.

“We want to renovate the area, add some additional studios, add some soundproofing, and have it be better organized in terms of our offices and studios for students for years to come. In order to do that, we need money,” Krause said. “I appeared before [the Foundation Board of Trustees], spoke before them, gave them our plans, answered many, many questions, and they voted unanimously that they could proceed with selling the license.”

“As long as there’s an educational purpose for the property, we’re happy to own it,” George Frasier, executive director of the Green River College Foundation, said. Recognizing the need for the broadcast journalism department to raise money for renovations, Frasier said that the Foundation was willing to put the property up for sale and write a check to the department for $50,000.

Although the property has not yet been sold, Fraiser said, “We will continue to market it. When it sells, great. Otherwise the money is available to the broadcasting department when they need it.”

Krause plans to work closely with industry professionals and engineers to transform KGRG FM into a multimedia facility. “We’re always making sure we ask the question time and time again, ‘This is the way things are now, but what can we do next?’ We want to make sure that the future students that come here will get the absolute latest of what’s going on in the media,” Krause said.