Beat Radio
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Beat Radio was a unlicensed radio station in Minneapolis, Minnesota that played dance music. Founded by local radio DJ Alan Freed in 1996, the station served downtown Minneapolis and surrounding neighborhoods. The station operated for 103 days until it was shut down by the Federal Communications Commission. Beat Radio found an outlet via other mediums and eventually became a nationwide radio network.
[edit] History
Freed, who had worked on-air at local stations WWTC, KTCJ, KMOJ, KBEM, the now-defunct KMAP (1370 AM) in St. Paul and at WUSL Philadelphia, launched Beat Radio on July 21, 1996 on 97.7 FM with a 20 watt transmitter at 110 feet in downtown Minneapolis. For the next three months, the unauthorized station played non-stop house, and other forms of club music on a signal that covered most of the city and reached into the north, west and southwest suburbs. The station was not licensed and on November 1, 1996, Beat Radio was [silenced] by FCC agents accompanied by US Marshals. The FCC had to defend its action in U.S. District Court as Freed challenged the agency in a legal case that lasted for four years and reached the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
However, this was not the end of Beat Radio. A year later, in November 1997, Beat Radio returned to the air, this time legally, for three hours a week over local community station KFAI on Sunday nights from 2-5AM. Beat Radio also hosted events at local nightclubs, including First Avenue in Minneapolis.
In another stroke of good fortune, Beat Radio went nationwide when locally-owned, pioneering children's radio network Radio Aahs shut down operations. The network's owner, Children's Broadcasting Corporation, needed programming for its owned and operated AM stations until a buyer could be found. So on February 18, 1998, Beat Radio began airing live from Minneapolis on the ten CBC stations across the United States, in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Ft. Worth/Dallas, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Detroit and Minneapolis/St. Paul. The national broadcast continued until October 24, 1998, when the sale of the stations to Catholic Family Radio was completed.
Beat Radio returned yet again, less than a year later, on July 24, 1999, when it started airing on KVSC (88.1 FM) from St. Cloud, Minnesota. Heard on the second Saturday of every month from 4-7PM, it aired until December 1999 when Freed joined Grooveradio.com, an early dance music webcaster, in Los Angeles.
Alan Freed is still heavily involved in the dance music radio format. He is currently programming the BPM channel for XM Satellite Radio.
