A New Voice: Price plans to establish second Valley community radio station

Betsy Price wants to give the Rio Grande Valley a new voice.

Price, the liaison to part-time faculty at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, is planning to harness what she calls the Valley's untapped potential to create a new community radio station.

Price is hoping to utilize her broadcasting background to help create a new Brownsville-based public radio station that will not be restrained by what she sees as the limitations of KMBH, the current National Public Radio affiliate in the Valley.

A former KMBH board member, Price says she "was born into radio," with a father who worked at a community station in Chicago. Since her childhood, Price has worked in virtually every aspect of the medium, from ad sales in Dayton, Ohio, to an eight-year stint co-hosting three programs at a radio station in Salt Lake City.

"I'm a strong believer in public radio,'' Price said. ``Community radio has the freedom to express a diversity of concepts and opinions that commercial radio doesn't have."

Price envisions a new public radio station in the area that will be representative of the Valley's community and culture. She wants to create a local public radio station that will examine key issues, seek a range of perspectives, and provide an effective medium to publicize worthy events.

Price came to her latest radio project after her term as a KMBH board member abruptly ended just a few months after it began. She, along with the board's chair Bill Elliot, and longtime member Chelse Benham were mailed letters from the station's president, Msgr. Pedro Briseño, informing them that their board tenures would not be renewed.

The Diocese of Brownsville operates both the Valley's public television station and radio station, and has struggled for years to raise sufficient amounts of local funding and donations to provide more robust programming. It has also endured various controversies, including the timely broadcast of a public television documentary that examined the national controversy of the sexual abuse of boys by priests.

At first bewildered by her dismissal from the KMBH board, Price regrouped and decided to launch an effort to start a new public radio station that could be based at UTB-TSC. Many NPR stations nationwide are broadcast from university campuses and are tied to college broadcast programs.

The Valley can have more than one NPR station, but it might be possible to purchase KMBH's public radio affiliate rights. In The Current, a national publication which covers public broadcasting, Briseno said the diocese might be open to selling its NPR rights.

``I think that if somebody else in our area, any other institution or corporation, would like to take the responsibility of providing public radio and public TV service in the RGV of Texas, the Catholic Diocese would be very glad to consider this option, which could release its radio and TV facilitates for a full religious broadcasting,'' Briseno wrote in The Current.

There is also the key matter of funding. Gaining a broadcast license alone could cost as much as a $1 million. Price is confident that she can help lead efforts to raise funds, citing her past work in generating donations for non-profit organizations and public radio stations in other parts of the country.

If KMBH's financial performance is a gauge, trying to establish another public radio station in the area could be challenging. Support for KMBH has dropped off the last three fiscal years with contributors dwindling from 805 to 426, according to the station's audited financial statements.

Price said that successful non-profit organizations must have transparent management practices that promote good community connections.

"If you're not transparent, forget it," she said, of a station's success. "People who give money are investors, and if you're in bad shape financially, you have to let people know and have a good solid plan to get out of that mess."

Price is excited to create a station that would derive its strength from the sort of community involvement she says KMBH is lacking.

"We are going to start by having open community meetings to see what people would want," she said.

Price wants an NPR station with more robust programming with shows like ``This American Life,'' ``Fresh Air,'' and ``The Diane Rehm Show,'' all of which are not currently aired on KMBH. Purchasing those programs, however, would take higher levels of funding that KMBH has thus far been able to generate.

Intermixed with national programming, Price would like to broadcast local opinions and reporting on issues like immigration, the border fence, and poverty. Programming generated here could be shared with other U.S. stations with demographics unlike the one seen in the Valley.

Price would also like to bring back "North of the Border," a conjunto show by Rosa and Joe Perez that aired on KMBH for many years.

``We have issues here and a cultural richness that is of national interest,'' Price said.

Gaining NPR affiliation is not an absolute must in launching a community radio station, Price said. She said there are other broadcast models that can be pursued. Community stations with no NPR affiliation are sometimes more rewarding, she said, because they force the station to create local broadcasting instead of relying on external content.

A station of that type, like a NPR station, could be run through UTB-TSC.

Anthony Zavaletta, the UTB-TSC vice president for external affairs, said that the university would be glad to explore the possibility.

"We have a nascent communications program and we are very interested in trying to provide broadcast learning and teaching opportunities to the community," he said.

Price would like to create classes and solid internship programs for high school and university students, training a new generation of broadcasters and community organizers.

A third idea would be to broadcast from Matamoros, though Price has done less research thus far on the viability of such a station.

After a model is decided on, Price would again reach out to see what programming is desired.

"We would create surveys to see what the community wants from the station," she said. No matter the model, Price said the station would be bilingual.

Though there is no formal board yet in place, Price always uses ‘we' when describing the organizing effort. One of the people that ‘we' thus far includes is Gene Novogrodsky, a longtime advocate of public radio and a local teacher.

"I think this station would actually get people to listen to serious FM radio," Novogrodsky said. "Betsy is just the person to do it. Betsy is a visionary."

Novogrodsky used to volunteer with KMBH and donate money to the station, but says he now puts his contributions towards public stations in Austin and Boston that he listens to online.

"Brownsville is not homogenous," he said. "It's got a lot of different people and a lot of different ideas. This place is growing rapidly and there's no shortage of stories."

While Price is more than happy to pioneer the creation of the station, she plans to give managerial responsibilities to full-time employees, volunteers, and experts.

"It's going to be real fun," she said.