Glacier City Radio: Pirates and Politicians — the flight through Turnagain Arm’s ‘Hall of Mirrors’
By Hannah Dillon
TNews Associate Editor
Lewis Leonard is the passionate founder of Girdwood’s community radio station Glacier City Radio, KEUL 88.9. Leonard spoke with Turnagain News to elaborate on how his exciting life led to the creation of Glacier City Radio.
Thousands of CDs line the walls behind Lewis Leonard as he sits in the Glacier City Radio studio. Amps quietly play 88.9 behind the table where Leonard shares life experiences that led to the creation of Glacier City Radio. Later, Leonard gave this reporter a tour of his home and the original five-story 88.9 radio tower.
The group Dirty Hands perform live at the KEUL 88.9 FM studio. (Photo by Lewis Leonard)
Leonard developed an interest in audio and electronics in junior high and, by high school, his hobbies led him to a job as a sports photographer with Anchorage Times. Leonard expounded on his experience traveling and working with other studios until KEUL’s formation.
After years of traveling the United States, hitchhiking state to state, attending college classes from multiple campuses and living in “hippie houses”, Leonard decided to settle back home in Alaska to develop a community FM station in Anchorage.
He formed Aurora Community Broadcasting in Anchorage with Jim Parsons, gathered a board of directors, and with the assistance of the Alaska Public Broadcasting Commission, KSKA FM public radio for Anchorage went on the air in the late 1970s.
Living in Girdwood, he talked the members of the Girdwood Community Club into starting a local FM station. “We started a pirate radio station here for a couple 100 bucks. It was a $100 transmitter that I built from a kit and a Sony, five-CD changer set up in the fifth floor of my house,” said Leonard.
Pirate radio stations are simply unlicensed stations that broadcast to the public. Leonard reminisced on the “pirate days” of the 1990’s.
“All these pirate operators got together and formed a little unofficial group… we all talked about stuff. And it was a really empowering thing. We didn't hide,” he said. He said there was a possibility commercial broadcasters could find out about Leonard’s pirate operations and contact the Federal Communications Commission, also known as the FCC.
“I think then they decided that it wasn't fair. And so they got the FCC on us.
They did it,” said Leonard. Leonard received a cease and desist order, after which the Community Club applied for a license to broadcast. Leonard said that a license to broadcast at the time could have taken, and was expected to take, several years.
A board member for KEUL got in touch with a lawyer for the FCC in hopes to expedite the license acquisition progress and mentioned a well-known name to the FCC: Ted Stevens.
Former senator Ted Stevens had a home and lived in Girdwood. According to Leonard, Stevens also was a chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee which oversaw the FCC. “So suddenly, just dropping his name got a flurry of activity going in the FCC. And within nine months in 1998, we had a license… and there we were. Poof.”
While Glacier City Radio received the license they needed to broadcast within a year, they didn’t have money for the equipment needed to host a high-power licensed station.
Leonard asked for a “Class D” license, which allows only 10 watts of broadcast power, but 88.9 was capable of an average wattage of 14 “and the feds wouldn't give us the Class D license, because our transmitter site was at the top of the Alyeska tram terminal, which covered too much area. FM radio waves are stronger the higher the antenna is above your audience,” said Leonard.
Glacier City Radio’s “height above average terrain” was too large and so the FCC gave 88.9 a “Class A” station, which Leonard said allowed many thousands of watts.
A few years later, Leonard and other contributors of KEUL obtained a second license. Leonard said they wanted the high-power license but lacked the money for a transmitter.
Girdwood School students prepare Bear Aware public service announcements. (Photo by DJ Flowergirl)
Leonard said a Girdwood resident went into a local bar and announced that he had just received an allotment and wished to give money to an organization in Girdwood and asked to whom he should give the money.
“One of our major DJs was there and raised his hand and said, ‘the radio station needs $10,000 for a transmitter.’ And he goes ‘okay’ and he writes a check. And we're all going, ‘when we deposit this, will it be good?’ And sure enough, it was,” said Leonard.
“And so that's how we got to be the high-power station we are today. Which, if the mountains weren't here, we'd go from Talkeetna to Homer but… FM waves don't travel around corners. But they bounce off the mountains in the Hall of Mirrors which is Turnagain Arm, which is why you can get it down Turnagain Arm.”
Leonard mentioned that locals can also participate in having their own radio show at 88.9. “Well, if they're interested in getting into radio, I just invite them in and show them around and say ‘when do you want to do it?’ It's really too easy. Four hours lecture demonstration, an hour on the air, everybody gets it. It's too easy.”
“Come educate Turnagain Arm in your own style”, said Leonard.