CHIRP Radio Founder/General Manager Shawn Campbell joins for this episode to talk about CHIRP’s growth, mission and approach.
If you haven’t yet had the chance to listen, CHIRP (chirpradio.org) is a totally independent, hyperlocal, “non-comm” station run by volunteers. It’s true to the spirit (and perhaps the promise) of radio, and runs live 24/7 from a North Center studio, playing tons of local music along the way.
Shawn and I talk about the origin of CHIRP, the differences between non commercial and commercial radio, how music is picked, how volunteers are added to the team, and why events matter.
Support CHIRP: chirpradio.org
Listen: chirpradio.org, 107.1 FM
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TRANSCRIPT
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I am in Ravenswood returning to Byron’s Hot Dogs, a perennial favorite on Lawrence Avenue just west of Ashland.
Joining me to my right, if you’re watching on video, even if you’re listening on audio, she is still on my right.
That is Shawn Campbell.
She’s the founder and general manager of CHIRP, chirpradio.org, 107.1 FM, a volunteer-driven community radio station that’s been around for well over 10 years and has deep roots in the Chicago community.
And I cannot believe we’ve never actually talked for more than like 30 seconds at a time.
It’s true.
This was, some might say this was long overdue, Shawn.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I’ve never been invited to converse in a car this way, so.
This way, which is to say recorded with lights and a camera.
Right.
I mean, eating hot dogs.
Yeah.
To be clear, I’ve talked to people in cars before.
Right.
All right.
So we’re at Byron’s.
I’ll distribute food.
I pre-ordered.
I’m trying to be more efficient as I approach Episode 1000.
You ordered a corndog.
I got your message and before I responded, I googled their menu because I’m like, they don’t have corndogs at Byron’s, do they?
Sure enough.
I also had to check the menu.
I thought like, oh, I’ll get a classic Chicago hot dog.
Then I looked and I thought, oh, corndog.
Here’s your side of mustard.
Wow.
That is a generous side of mustard.
Here is your hot dog on a stick.
The only way to fry.
I don’t have any utensils.
I might have a bonus straw, which you can use as a makeshift butter knife.
Or maybe just do the dip.
I think I’ll just dip.
All right.
And feel free to use the dashboard for your own.
Okay.
And I got a Chicago dog.
I went classic from Byron’s.
You can’t go wrong with a Chicago dog.
In fact, I’ll show it off.
I was here most recently with After the Fight.
We had a lovely time talking.
Wow.
They loaded up the hot peppers.
I’m good for like two hot peppers on a hot dog.
You give me four and I’m going to be hiccuping for the rest of the night.
Which is an ideal for an interview show.
No, no, no.
All right, so CHIRP Radio, chirpradio.org.
This is radio as you envisioned it.
And I want to get to the origin story, but just pulling back a little bit farther, what is a non-commercial radio station?
Hey, I know what it is.
I’m assuming it’s self-explanatory, but people may not know.
Sure.
I mean, really simply, it’s a radio station that is a non-profit, a non-for-profit organization.
So we have no commercials, but we’re also, we’re a community station.
And I never had heard of a community radio station until I ended up working for one.
And I really fell in love with the model.
And it’s, it’s basically a radio station that’s volunteer driven, that members of the community can come in and volunteer to be on the air, to do behind the scenes work, to basically do everything that it takes to make the station run.
And so we have almost 270 volunteers, I think right now at CHIRP.
And they do all sorts of things.
About 40% of them are on the air, and everybody else does other things like design work and develops apps for the station, builds partnerships, everything we need to do to run the operation 24 7 365.
It’s a lot of work.
And thinking about it from a modern lens, I’m going to create an independent radio station.
Technology has caught up to the present day that you can kind of fake your way through that.
But this model back in, what, 2007 when you first thought of it?
Like this seemed almost like a quixotic vision.
Like how on earth are you going to pull this off?
Well, it was, it was kind of a crazy thing.
And I had been running another radio.
I’d worked in radio for a long time, and I’d been running another community radio station for eight years.
And there were some things that went wrong there.
There were, it was an institution that shall not be named, that held the license, and they decided they didn’t want it to be a community station anymore.
And so I had a hundred or so community volunteers who loved what they were doing and really were good at it and committed to it.
And so I learned a little bit about the low power FM movement.
And I was like, okay, you know what?
I’m going to start a truly independent radio station from scratch.
Let me interrupt.
Low power FM.
Again, I know these terms, but I realized that the general public may not.
Sure.
A low power FM station is a non-commercial station that’s licensed at 100 watts.
And those stations were created in the year 2000.
Basically because people were unhappy with the state of a lot of commercial radio.
What’s not to love?
It’s lovely.
It’s a lovely thing.
And so it was kind of a, you know, there was so much consolidation and deregulation of the industry in the 90s.
And the low power FM service was created a bit as a nod of acknowledgement by the FCC that there was unhappiness around the deregulation of ownership of more and more big corporations.
This all happened in 1996.
The Telecommunications Act was 96 when the rules made it so that one company could own up to six commercial stations in a market.
It squeezed the life out of commercial radio.
Absolutely.
And so non-commercial radio can be more adventurous.
obviously, again, no commercials.
It can be more focused on local music, on what’s going on in the community.
There’s no central programming dictates coming down from headquarters in New York or LA or wherever it may be.
And so the Low Power FM service was created to, like I say, kind of address that.
It’s still 100 watts.
The coverage areas are not big, but it did allow new players to get into the game.
You can only own, a non-profit can only hold the license for one LPFM, so you can’t build up nationwide networks.
They are very much intended to be community-based outlets.
And so when we got involved with this whole situation, Low Power FMs were really only available in rural areas and ex-urban areas because the National Association of Broadcasters had convinced Congress that there wasn’t any room in major markets because the dial was too congested.
And when you think about it, back in the analog days, it might have made sense where you’re trying to tune in, you have to really adjust your dial.
Yeah, that’s completely lost, but it actually helped our cause because in digital tuning, there’s no in between.
So it’s a direct hit every time.
So we actually got involved with this national movement, with this national low-power FM movement, to try to change the law at the federal level, to allow for new low-power FM stations, to be in big cities like Chicago, to be able to apply for broadcast licenses.
And the way we did that was by convincing the FCC and Congress that they needed to remove one of the clicks between the stations on the dial as far as a minimum separation distance.
So in Chicago, for instance, you had like, say, you know, WXRT at 93.1, then click, click, click 93.9, the light.
And you couldn’t have stations in between because, you know, the NAB and the big broadcaster said, well, those would cause interference.
You know, those, that 100 watt station would cause interference with our 10,000 watt signal.
You’re giving me PTSD for my time in the industry, just hearing you say all this.
Yeah, like I said, I did some time in commercial radio as well, and it definitely made me know that I wanted to work in non-commercial radio.
I grew up in North Central Illinois, so not right in Chicago, but close enough that we got the Chicago stations.
I can remember when there were still regional hits, you know.
I remember bands like The Kind, for instance, being played on WLS and off Broadway.
By The Kind?
Yeah.
Okay.
I had to stretch my brain for that one.
Okay.
And, you know, just knowing that these were bands that if, you know, I was meeting with a friend from camp or something, they wouldn’t know who those bands were because they were specific to Chicago, or at least to the region.
And that just always made sense to me.
The radio should be for, you know, what’s going on in your community.
That’s what radio does so well, is to be, you know, live, local and connected to the community.
I say over and over again.
And commercial radio has just gotten rid of, like, it’s just abandoned all of these traditional values that made radio so good and so meaningful in people’s lives.
It’s not just that there’s this proliferation of choices now.
It’s that radio just gave up all of these powerful things.
And I’ve always been a radio true believer.
And so when I saw this happening in the industry, I mean, I wanted to work in radio from the time I was 10 years old.
It was the only thing I ever wanted to do.
And so when I saw these decisions that were being made, and again, the deregulation that was happening, I just thought, well, there has to be something to do, something to address this.
And I think radio people in general just sometimes sit around and, you know, we bitch about the state of the industry and talk about, well, what would you do?
What would you do if you could just start a station from scratch?
And I was just like, I’m going to do that.
And it’s really such a luxury because I think it’s a fantasy for so many people who do love radio.
And to get to do that has been great.
And to have people be so supportive of it, you know, whether it’s, you know, just the volunteers who want to be involved or the people who support it with donations, because again, we’re, you know, we’re a non-profit, non-commercial station.
We have to pay the bills.
And so the model for that is you have to ask people for money.
You have to say, if you like this service, we hope you’ll support it with a donation.
And people do.
And you know, that’s very gratifying and very humbling.
Oh, for sure.
And not to turn this into a, boy, commercial radio sucks session, but I hear, I still talk to a lot of people in commercial radio and they complain about the state of the industry.
There is a solution for radio stations to survive and be successful.
It’s right in front of them.
And that’s being local and being live.
No one wants to do that.
Like the, the, the calls coming from inside the house, like the answer is right there.
And no one will do that.
Right.
It’s just economies of scale.
It’s, oh, well, why would we be live when we can voice track and have, you know, a single DJ voice tracking multiple stations?
Why would we do events?
Those cost money and it’s just why.
Everything is so cookie cutter.
Everything, you know, is just so centralized.
And that’s a shame because it just, it isn’t a model that works well for radio.
Radio is so intimate and immediate.
You know, I talk about this a lot to volunteers too.
You think about the ways you listen to radio.
You don’t listen to radio at a party with your friends.
You’re in your car or you’re, maybe you’re in your shower, or just waking up in the morning.
So you listen to radio in these really intimate moments, and you have this ability, with radio done well, to build a very strong relationship with your listeners.
And you would think that, you know, the people who run the corporations would understand that those close, intimate relationships also are good for sales.
You trust the people that you hear on the air over time.
And, but you know, what do I know?
One thing, one topic I keep coming back to on this podcast in life, when I’m out socially, is the need for curation, which CHIRP does.
We’re in this interesting time, 2024.
Any song ever created is accessible.
You can track it down, you can Google it, you can stream it.
It’s findable.
The problem is, with all this excess of music, you don’t know how to tunnel through to find the stuff you like.
I found that the recommendation engines on the streaming platforms, be it YouTube music or Spotify or Apple, never hit the mark with me.
What’s missing is that curation.
When radio has done well, those hosts are the ones who would leave.
If they’re not picking the songs, they can still explain to you why you should give a shit about those songs.
With CHIRP, it is legitimately heartfelt curation.
It is honest from the host.
It’s a relationship like, hey pal, here’s what I’m into.
I think you’ll like it.
Right.
Everybody who you hear on the air is putting together their own shows.
Again, they’re live in real time.
They’re from our studios in North Center.
They’re people who love music and who are musically omnivorous.
because the thing we say tongue in cheek about CHIRP is that it’s eclectic consistency.
We don’t believe people only like one kind of music.
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That’s the truth.
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I mean, that is the truth.
If you look on the playlists on my phone, you’ll find the most erratic, knee-jerk bipolar approach to music programming ever.
Yeah.
So we use the slogan, Hear What’s Next, and it can be interpreted as, oh, we’re on top of the latest things, the up and coming music, the local bands you don’t know about, but Hear What’s Next can also mean, oh, you don’t particularly like the song you’re hearing right now, stick around for three or four minutes because the next song you hear is probably going to be something completely different.
The thing about curation versus algorithms is, algorithms will only ever introduce you to things that sound like what you already like and what you’re already listening to, and you don’t know what you don’t know.
So part of the curation that we do is, we want to introduce you to stuff that you would never find on your own, because it doesn’t necessarily sound like what you already like.
We feel like that’s something that’s really important, because again, if you tend to listen to one kind of music a lot, then you’re just going to be fed more and more of that, and we think people are hungry for some different things, and it can be overwhelming to find that on your own.
It is, and that’s why people go back to that stuff they listen to in high school, or those formative music listening years.
It’s just easier.
It’s comfort food.
It’s like, yeah, I could try the eel, but I’m good with a burger.
Right.
Who is CHIRP’s competition?
Do you think in those terms?
We do.
For instance, I’m aware of the fact that KEXP has one of their biggest audiences outside of Seattle in Chicago.
I want their listeners.
I’ll make no secret of that.
I think a lot of people don’t know that Chicago has an independent radio station.
We obviously don’t have a big marketing budget.
We don’t have billboards on the Kennedy.
You’re doing interviews in the car at this point, really.
So we do think in terms of competition, should I just call out names?
Well, maybe not specific entities, but I didn’t know from a media perspective, is it radio, is it podcasting, is it streaming services?
Like I don’t know what your space looks like.
Gotcha.
I understand.
Now, I think certainly we want to bring people back to radio who may have abandoned it in the past and or may have never had a relationship with radio at all because that’s certainly Gen Z.
They didn’t have that chance to develop that personal relationship that, you know, Gen Xers and to a lesser degree Millennials developed with their local radio station where maybe you were, you know, calling in to request songs or you just had a favorite DJ that you listen to on a regular basis.
And so it’s kind of a matter of convincing Gen Z that radio is even worth their time.
And then also bringing back Generation X, bringing back, you know, older Millennials, people who just got disaffected by radio and just will say, oh, who cares about radio in 2024?
You know, we definitely hear that from people.
And when we were fighting for the license, even back in, you know, 2009, people were asking us, oh, do people still care about radio?
And it’s only, you know, gotten more commonly asked since then.
But I’ve always been a true believer in the power of radio.
I just think there’s something really cool and magical about it.
You know, the Internet is science, radio is magic.
I love that.
I love that.
So with the music, people aren’t bringing in their own stuff.
I mean, is there like, do you kind of decide what lands in the studio for them to pick from?
To an extent, people do bring in their own stuff actually.
So we have a huge library that we’ve curated.
Last time I checked, I think there are around 300,000 tracks in the library at the station.
But people can bring in their own stuff, and we know there are holes in our library.
And so, you know, as long as they’re being responsible about it and screening things and following FCC rules, they can bring in stuff.
We do have rotation, you know, so we’re not a free form station.
It’s not just anything goes.
We have rotation.
So we have a music team of 11, I believe, plus pretty much every volunteer at the station is also a music volunteer, but the music department, music directors and assistant music directors, you know, take a look at everything that I’m saying.
I’m imagining a group that size agreeing on music, and I can’t make that work in my head.
Well, the nice thing is we can be so much broader, you know, our rotation is so much bigger than it would be in commercial radio, that, you know, heavy rotation for us is generally maybe 20 records and light rotation is 60.
That’s awesome.
You know, so DJs still have a lot to choose from, but there is some structure to it, and we do ask DJs to play local stuff every single hour of the day.
So that’s, you always, you know, are going to hear local music every hour.
Yeah, I mean, it’s super eclectic.
I mean, just over the past week, I heard White Rabbit Object, who are fabulous.
Yeah.
The new one from X, which I wasn’t even aware they had a new album out.
I’m like, oh shit, that’s cool.
Like, I love the breadth of stuff you play.
Yeah, we just really love music.
And we are a community of music lovers, and everybody brings their knowledge to it, but also their hunger for exploration.
And I think that’s something that’s really nice about CHIRP too, is people come in and, you know, sometimes independent stations can be very snobby.
There’s kind of a reputation of, you know, like the record store world of High Fidelity, where it’s like, well, oh, you like that?
Oh, wrong.
But at CHIRP, people are just really open, and they like to learn from one another and explore, and people readily admit, like, okay, I’m not really familiar with that genre.
And we just encourage people to share their knowledge and to try things out that they don’t think they like too.
You know, and we always tell people when we’re training DJs, because we train people from scratch, you know, people who have never been on the air before.
I was going to ask how that vetting process works.
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It’s mostly just training, that’s so much better.
I mean, there’s a bit, okay.
When people come to us and we bring new volunteers in three times a year, and there’s a waiting list to volunteer.
There’s about 75 people on the waiting list right now, and we’ve just welcomed 25 new volunteers last week.
Wow.
So we’ve never had a problem finding volunteers.
So volunteers come to us and they’re expected to work behind the scenes to start out.
Nobody walks in the door and gets to be a DJ right away.
DJs don’t just get to be DJs, no matter how long they’ve been there.
So everybody works to make sure that the station runs properly.
Like I say, you know, it’s a 24-7-365 operation with one staff person and that’s me.
And so we really need everybody to be pulling their weight.
And so once people are there for a while and they’ve put in time behind the scene and kind of shown they’re reliable and they’re committed to the organization, they can do DJ training.
And it’s DJs training DJs.
So there’s an orientation that they go to first and then they sit in with a current DJ for three sessions and those DJs train them on everything from engineering to proper mic placement to curating their shows to FCC law.
That’s amazing.
One thing you do, I mean, CHIRP is a radio station.
Again, chirpradio.org, 107.1 FM, but you compete as a radio station.
You have co-pros, you have the presents on local shows, which, back in the day, was always a big deal.
In the present day, CHIRP is the only station I see on these local and independent shows at places like Lincoln Hall, et cetera.
And that’s a big perceptual win for CHIRP.
Yeah, we’ve, from the beginning, we knew that building those relationships were really important.
And, I mean, for everything from it lends legitimacy to the work you’re doing, it’s, we want to support these businesses, we want to support independent venues, we want to support independent bands.
And also, it just is a marketing tool as well.
It’s the best way we can get our name out there and people see our name, they see our people tabling at shows.
And, you know, that attaches us in their mind to cool bands that they’re going to hear on the station.
And so we have, we’ve worked from the very beginning to really introduce ourselves in the early days to just maintaining relationships and always being really professional.
You know, I think sometimes people like to make the comparison of CHIRP and college radio.
Sometimes people say it’s like college radio run by grownups.
But even though it’s a volunteer driven station, everybody takes it really seriously.
And so we have 13 different departments that are all volunteers, managing volunteers.
And our promotions team is a great example.
You know, we have six people on our promotions team.
They each have a couple of venues that they work with.
And they’re just, you know, in regular contact and managing those relationships.
There is no way someone is listening right now who doesn’t want to be part of this, to hear you describe this.
I think if someone is listening or watching and was unaware of CHIRP or not to this extent, like hearing this is really exciting.
What you’re doing is exciting.
Well, thank you.
I think when new volunteers come to the orientations, I hear that really commonly afterwards.
I’ll ask them, how do you feel about it?
Did you feel like you got the information you needed?
They’re always like, this is more than I expected.
I think people come into it and they don’t necessarily realize how big the organization is.
Or I’ll give credit to myself for this.
It’s a well-organized, well-run organization.
For sure.
In addition to things like getting the co-pros on local shows, events are a big deal.
It’s something I’m aware of as a podcaster.
I need to do events.
That’s where the proverbial puck has moved.
But for you as a radio station, you need to be at events.
I think one of the things that reminded me, oh, I should reach out to Shawn.
I saw CHIRP at Out of Space at the Bob Moult Show.
I’m like, oh, man, they’re here.
Of course they’re here.
I thought I should really reach out for an interview.
But you’re doing all these things.
You’ve got the Vinyl Lovers Workshop with the Chicago Public Library.
You’re in the community doing cool shit that is completely on brand for CHIRP.
Yeah.
We build partnerships.
We love working with the library.
We’re doing the vinyl workshop.
We’re also doing a mini version of our music film festival at Salter Library.
It’s a Saturday afternoon screening of four films that the library has in their collection.
They had reached out to us and said, you do this music film festival every year, a big thing.
Would you be interested in just doing a day long version for our summer reading program because their adult summer reading program this year is based around music.
We always jump at the opportunity to do things like that.
I love it.
When did you get the facility you’re in now in North Center?
When did that come along?
Yeah.
Finding space for what we wanted to do, I think was maybe the hardest thing that we had to do at the beginning.
This was back in 2009.
The first couple of years, we were just raising money and raising awareness.
We didn’t have a station, we didn’t have a location, and we’d finally raised enough money where we felt, okay, we can start looking for places.
To find a place where you can have people in and out every hour of the day or where you can sometimes be loud.
It was really hard to find that space.
It was through the local screen printing community and Screwball Press, Steve Walters had his shop there at the time at the building that we ended up in, in 4045 North Rockwell, and he made a recommendation to us.
We had put it out on social media that we were looking for a space, and he suggested this building, and we came and talked to the landlord, and it worked out, and we’ve been there ever since.
So we moved in in spring of 2009.
All right.
So the two questions that are going to come out of this interview for people watching and listening, one is from the local bands who watch and listen.
How do they get their music in front of CHIRP?
Sure.
They can email submissions at chirpradio.org, and send us a download link and code, or if you just want to send a high-quality file, if you’re just sending us a single, but submissions at chirpradio.org.
Then of course, for the non-musicians, how do they get involved as a volunteer or a board member?
Let’s say I have someone a little more seasoned watching or listening.
Sure.
volunteers.chirpradio.org is our volunteer application, and so you can go fill out the form, and then next time we have a new volunteer orientation, we’ll contact you.
We do those three times a year, because if we did them more often, we’d be doing nothing but onboarding new volunteers.
And as far as board membership, you could email me and I’ll point you in the right direction for that.
You could email chirp at chirpradio.org and that’ll come to me.
I feel terrible because I’ve made you talk, you’ve been just sitting there holding a corndog and a cup of mustard this entire time.
It’s just gone unattended.
So Shawn, this was super long overdue, some might say over 10 years overdue.
I’m glad we did this.
Me too.
I’m glad we made this connection.
chirpradio.org.
Listen, support.
Thank you.
