Why KFKX Went Dark

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KFKX-LogoHastings College station KFKX in Hastings, Nebraska went off the air last week. The school decided it didn’t want to operate a station anymore. Here’s why.


The historic station was a casualty of changing student interests and a restructuring of the school’s journalism department.

Chair of the college’s journalism program Chad Power told the Associated Press “We know radio is not dead in the industry, but for us, the tools students need to learn to capture stories, write stories, capture and edit messages, we’re still — from an academic standpoint — able to do those things without having a distribution point of 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week radio station year-round.”

The station got its start in 1923, when Westinghouse put an experimental rebroadcasting station in Hastings to see how far they could bounce radio waves and share programming, reported the AP. In 1921, KDKA Pittsburgh, the first commercially licensed station, transmitted a program by short wave, which was picked up by KFKX and re-transmitted.

After that KFKX began producing local programming until when NBC bought it from Westinghouse and shut it down. The calls remained dormant until 1988 when Hastings College added a carrier current station to its journalism program. Then-President Ronald Reagan dedicated the new building.

In 1997, the FCC granted the school an FM license and KFKX went on the air on 90.1 MHz. Hastings College Professor Sharon Brooks oversaw the station and retired this year. Power told the AP her retirement, dropping listenership, fewer jobs in the industry and a declining interest among students about working at the station led to the shutdown decision.

The school will still offer audio production, but there won’t be over-the-air distribution.