High school radio

High school radio are radio stations located at high schools and usually operated by its students with faculty supervision. The oldest extant high school AM radio station is AM 1450 KBPS in Portland, Oregon. Portland radio station KBPS, first licensed in 1923, is the second oldest radio station overall in the city of Portland. The student body of Benson Polytechnic High School purchased the transmitter and other equipment from Stubbs Electric in Portland for $1,800. Money for the purchase of the station came from student body funds. On March 23, 1923, the student body of Benson was licensed by the federal government to operate a radio station using 200 watts of power at 834 kilocycles. The first call letters of the station were KFIF. The station made its formal debut on the air and was officially dedicated in early May of 1923, between the hours of 9:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., on the opening night of the 5th annual Benson Tech Show. In spring of 1930, the call letters changed from KFIF to KBPS, for Benson Polytechnic High School. In 1941 KBPS stopped sharing its frequency with other stations and moved to 1450 AM on the dial where it remains today. In 1971 the FCC gave the station permission to increase daytime transmitting power to 1000 watts. Nighttime power was 250 watts. KBPS is now licensed for 1000 watts 24-hours a day. The KBPS studios, transmitter and 200 foot self-supporting steel tower are located at the rear of the Benson campus. AM 1450 still broadcasts 24/7/365 and the KBPS Radio Broadcasting program at Benson High School still teaches today's students about radio broadcasting and audio content creation. [1]

The oldest extant high school FM radio stations began broadcasting in the 1940s, with the advent of the 88–108 MHz FM radio band. Because the 88-92 MHz region was dedicated to non-commercial broadcasting, this allowed for schools to fairly easily obtain licenses from the FCC. The oldest HS station on FM is WNAS in New Albany, Indiana, which started broadcasting in May 1949.[2] The station is still broadcasting today. WHHS, Haverford Senior High School's radio station also started in 1949, located in Havertown, Pennsylvania.[3] As the FM band increased in listenership in the next few decades, the number of HS stations increased with it. In addition to this number, there have always been untold numbers of unlicensed stations using carrier current (popular through the 1970s), extremely low power or "Part 15" stations, and closed-circuit broadcasting. Many of the licensed stations are assigned to suburban school districts in a few large metro areas: Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle and to a lesser extent San Francisco and Cleveland.

After a steady decline in their numbers in the 1980s and '90s, the availability of LPFM licenses has renewed interest in HS radio.