miller's crossing

On top of Urbana-Champaign IMC raising WRFU's mast (photo: JJ Tiziou/jjtiziou.net).

Urbana-Champaign, Ill, has a new low-power FM radio station - WRFU. Well more than 100 volunteers from across North and Central America decended on the U-C Independent Media Center to take part in a weekend-long station barnraising. The Prometheus Radio Project helped coordinate the weekend, which included workshops, trainings and live music. As of this posting (with thanks to Prometheus), you can listen to the live stream here.

At promptly 5 p.m. CST on Sunday, November 13, WRFU went live with toasts all around for the intense labor and emotion that went into creating the station and for an active future of community media creation. I was thrilled to be there for it. Here's lift-off audio recorded in the performance space.

And it's true, the LPFM station really was built with the hands of dozens and dozens of volunteers. Sure there was disorganization and chaos, but everyone lived to tell. Here's my audio report on the mast raising.

WRFU is located in the IMC's cavernous old stone building, which also houses the post office, an art collective and other projects. The downtown Urbana building will also be a live music venue for WRFU-sponsored shows. It was a great location for a weekend full of media activities. I hope the IMC and WRFU host lots of fun conferences and gatherings in the future.

I send out my thanks to all of you who worked so hard to make it happen. And extra special thanks to my "home stay" host for the weekend.

Good luck and broadcast well WRFU! We need you.