Northern California Public Media’s KRCB-FM is an unusual, though not unique, example of a station that launched as a commercial enterprise and was converted to non-profit status.
This came about in 2021 when Amaturo Sonoma Media accepted $1.5 million for its “104.9 K-Hits” KDHT (previously KRPQ).
KRCB-FM had previously been heard at 91.1 FM, known as KRCG-FM since the 2021 transaction. The station’s call letters legally include the appended “-FM” because the same KRCB call letters are used for Northern California Public Media’s television station licensed to Cotati. The same is true for KRCG-FM because there’s a KRCG television station licensed to Jefferson City, MO.
KRCB-FM dates back to 1991, when the Rural California Broadcasting Corporation, which owns and operates Northern California Public Media, secured a construction permit for a new FM educational station in Santa Rosa.
It would be more than two years before the new station actually began transmitting from a site near Geyserville. At the beginning, with studios in Rohnert Park, the station broadcast the audio portion of programming carried by co-owned KRCB television (Channel 22). A full broadcast schedule on KRCB-FM launched on September 1, 1994.
KRCB-FM’s launch came ten years after KRCB television had gone on the air, led by founders Nancy Dobbs and her husband, Sonoma State University professor John Kramer.
Programming on “Redwood Public Radio” would expand to include classical music and locally-produced content as well as National Public Radio programming. Santa Rosa Press Democrat radio listings in the 1990s described the KRCB-FM format as “classical and eclectic”.
The “eclectic” category included programming such as all-night Grateful Dead marathons.The station placed itself on the public broadcasting map quickly, attracting the nationally-distributed West Coast Live program to Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center for a 1994 broadcast that would become an annual fixture.
Veteran Sonoma County journalist and broadcaster Bruce Robinson was brought aboard as station manager in 1998. He would remain with the station until 2017.
Another notable longtime staff member was Robin Pressman, who hosted a program called Our Roots Are Showing and served as program director over a span of nearly twenty years.
KRCB-FM continued to add local programming and sponsor local events, but the station was always hamstrung by a signal that failed to adequately cover Santa Rosa and areas to the south. The station had put a repeater on the air (at 90.9 FM) in 1999 but even that signal barely covered central Santa Rosa.
The disastrous Kincade wildfire in October 2019 hit KRCB-FM hard, but would ultimately prove to offer the station a golden opportunity.
The station’s transmitter site on Geyser Peak was incinerated by the flames.
An emergency transmitter and antenna (at a different location) were pressed into service while Northern California Public Media tried to handle the engineering and paperwork for construction of a new facility.
While KRCB-FM struggled to come back from the fire, Nancy Dobbs stepped down from her longtime role as licensee North Coast Public Media’s president and chief executive officer in December 2019.
The “big deal” for KRCB-FM came in March 2021, when North Coast Public Media closed a deal to pay Amaturo Sonoma Media $1.5 million to acquire a significantly-better FM signal: Amaturo’s 104.9 “K-Hits” KDHT. The 91.1 legacy frequency that had been home to KRCB-FM stayed on the air with new call letters, KRCG-FM, carrying a simulcast of KRCB-FM programming.
