It is a Class C2 FM serving a big college town situated halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis with a cavalcade of community programming that on Friday ranged from a pre-Shabbat Jewish Spectrum hour to a two-hour sunset block dedicated to the Grateful Dead.
It now serves Columbia, Mo., a little clearer thanks to the successful deployment of a new transmitter.
For KOPN-FM 89.5, station management went with Broadcast Electronics (BE), and the STX 10 FM Transmitter offered by the company headquartered in Quincy, Ill.
The new solid-state transmitter replaces an older BE FM10S transmitter.
The legacy FM10S remains operational at full power and will transition to serve as the station’s dedicated backup system, BE says.
KOPN leadership initiated a rigorous engineering evaluation in 2025 in search of a new transmitter. Ed Herrmann, a KOPN board member, and Dylan Martin, Designated Chief Operator of KOPN, served as the primary technical contacts, working closely with BE’s Quincy-based design and support teams.
“KOPN has been a vital voice in mid Missouri since 1973, and having a reliable transmitter is crucial to serving our listeners,” Herrmann said. “We are also happy that the BE FM10S, which had served reliably for almost 20 years, will stay on as a full-power backup.”
BE President/CEO Rich Redmond comments, “KOPN’s transition to the STX 10 underscores what we are hearing from broadcasters globally: stations want high-efficiency technology that drives down total cost of ownership, backed by a team committed to keeping them on the air.”
