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With the music of Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, KPFK radio went on air in Los Angeles with regular programming for the very first time on July 26th, 1959. In tune with the unique mission statement of the Pacifica Foundation, the inaugural broadcast that took place fifty years ago yesterday on KPFK 90.7 FM featured classical music, a reading of a short story by Mark Schorer, and a speech on religion by Dr. Paul Tillich. In the evening, a half-hour dedicatory program for the new station in town aired at 7 p.m. and featured prominent guests such as Norris Paulson, the Mayor of Los Angeles, and Harold Winkler, the President of Pacifica.

Like its predecessor in Berkeley, KPFK began as a commercial free and independent medium in public radio. The birth of such an innovative media experiment powered by the people on the FM dial in Southern California rose more than a few eyebrows from surrounding newspapers in the area. Notably, the Los Angeles Times wrote that, “A station such as KPFK-FM is what Los Angeles needs. A cultural bomb…that will provide commercial-sick or weary TV viewers a chance to rest their eyes and use their minds for a change.” The Overture, a publication of the American Federation of Musicians, declared before the inaugural broadcast of Pacifica’s second station that, “radio without commercials, radio for the purpose of communicating, not selling, will soon be on the air in Southern California.”

With that, the inaugural edition of the bi-weekly program guide of KPFK welcomed its first listener subscribers to the daring experiment declaring the station’s aims as “humanistic” in wanting to be “a concert hall,” “a lecture room” and “a part of your living room.” Since the time of KPFK’s inception, it has continued its service to the audience over the course of decades with the generous and consistent help from listener subscribers like you. Despite it’s mission to improve understanding between peoples, KFPK, like other Pacifica stations, has suffered internal political turmoil for nearly all of it’s fifty years of existence, as battles are constantly fought over what Pacifica Radio really means and how its mission is to be interpreted, that has resulted in many internecine conflicts between management, staff, and activist listeners. Still, KPFK has managed to survive, at times barely keeping our heads above water, and on occasion, providing alternative news analysis, and award winning programming.

KPFK is the second of Pacifica’s five stations to go on the air, and has the most powerful transmitter of the Pacifica stations and indeed is the most powerful public radio station in the Western United States. Highlights over the decades include the station’s on-the-spot coverage of the Watts Riots, a showdown between General Manager Will Lewis and police as they sought to search the station for documents related to Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, and folk legend Pete Seeger singing to raise funds to continue the lifeline of KPFK. As we reached our milestone 50th anniversary yesterday, Uprising will spend the hour today looking back at our history with special in-studio guests.

GUESTS: Uncle Ruthie, “Halfway Down the Stairs With Uncle Ruthie” heard Saturday mornings at 8 am (50 years), Roy Tuckman, aka Roy of Hollywood, host of Something’s Happening, from 12 midnight to 5:30 a.m., Monday night/Tuesday mornings through Thursday night/Friday mornings (37 years), and Terry Guy, director of KPFK Membership Department, heads up Community Calendar (26 years).