History
Noncommercial radio has a rich tradition in North Dakota. In 1923, KUND signed on from the UND campus as one of the first college radio stations in the country. It was one of several stations signed on by Midwestern colleges in the early days of radio. KUND moved to several frequencies over the years before finally settling on 1370 AM. By the 1970s, it had adopted the on-air name of "Northern Lights Public Radio." It added an FM counterpart in 1995. The two stations briefly went off the air in 1997 due to flooding in the transmitter. KUND-FM swapped callsigns with UND's college radio station, KFJM, before its return. By the end of the 20th century, the two stations aired jazz, adult album alternative music, and NPR programming.
In 1952, students at North Dakota Agricultural College, forerunner of North Dakota State, signed on KDSC, a carrier current station. It began using the KDSU calls sometime in the early 1960s. The station went off the air in 1964 due to technical difficulties, but returned in 1966 as a fully licensed FM station. It originally tried to satisfy all tastes, airing jazz, blues, folk music, classical music, rock and opera. By 1981, however, it had evolved into a more traditional public radio station, airing news and jazz during the week and specialty programming on weekends.
Both stations were early members of NPR, but this still left western North Dakota without public radio. Prairie Public Television had its mission broadened to include radio in the late 1970s, and in 1981 KCND signed on as the first public radio station in the western part of the state, under the on-air name of Prairie Public Radio. Between 1981 and 1993, four more stations signed on.
On February 1, 1999; Prairie Public Radio, KDSU and KUND merged to form North Dakota Public Radio, with the goal of providing a full NPR service to all of North Dakota. On September 26, 2006, the service reverted to the Prairie Public Radio name, so chosen in order to achieve brand consistency with Prairie Public Broadcasting's other operations.
Read more about this topic: Prairie Public Radio
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