Pacifica Radio turns 60 years old today, April 15, 2009. Lew Hill and a staff of four launched the first listener-supported radio station in the world on April 15, 1949 at 3:00 PM, in a makeshift Berkeley studio, with the words: “This is KPFA Berkeley.”

The rest is History. Four more cities gained the sound of Pacifica when local residents created new Pacifica stations KPFK in Los Angeles, WBAI in New York City, KPFT in Houston, and WPFW in Washington DC.

Pacifica also inspired a movement of community radio stations throughout the United States, many who are independent and locally based, but are affiliates. As a result, the Pacifica Network, today, includes approximately 150 stations, that collaborate daily to bring grassroots community radio and free media to American citizens.

For sixty years, since the McCarthy era, America’s oldest independent media network has defied political pressures and the conventions and internal censors inherent to mainstream media. A haven and training ground for artists and journalists, Pacifica has been the vanguard of free media. Breaking important news, providing historical and political analysis, and discovering some of our greatest artistic talents, Pacifica Radio has brought us the great voices of each era.

Listen to a mix of voices over Pacifica Airwaves from Lew Hill to Barak Obama (29 mintes long)  

From the storied depths of the Pacifica Radio Archives, which curates over 50,000 recordings representing sixty years of Pacifica’s broadcast history, From the Vault presents an audio celebration of Pacifica’s 60th Birthday. 

From the Vault: FTV 0153 Pacifica Turns 60 (60 minutes long)

Listen to some of these voices as they aired on Pacifica stations: 

Abbie Hoffman

James Baldwin

Lorraine Hansberry

Allen Ginsberg

Noam Chomsky 

Saul Alinsky 

Dolores Huerta 

Elaine Brown

Stephen Biko  

Wounded Knee 1973 

Iran Contra Affair 

3 Mile Island 

Here are only some of many groundbreaking events from the Pacifica tradition:

• 1949: 1954: Elsa Knight Thompson hosted an astonishing gay rights documentary and panel discussion at KPFA in 1958, 11 years before the Stonewall riots.
  
  
• 1960: KPFA programmer Bill Mandel tells off the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC): "If you think I am going to cooperate with this collection of Judases….if you I think I am going to cooperate with you, in any way, you are insane"
  
  
• WBAI in New York broadcasted an interview with former FBI agent Jack Levine in 1962, who labels the J. Edgar Hoover-led agency as "bizarrely cult-like". the FBI responded by investigating everyone at Pacifica for years to come, steadily feeding disinformation to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
  
  
• 1962 Citing FBI concerns about "communist affiliations" at Pacifica, the FCC withholds the license renewals of KPFA, KPFB, and KPFK for 3 years. Neither the FBI nor FCC ultimately cites anyone at Pacifica with any violations.
  
  
• During the early 60’s, programmer Bob Fass at WBAI introduced Free Form Radio. His relaxed format, mixing interviews, music, and theatre, is the precursor of the on-air style of everyone from Howard Stern to (gulp) Rush Limbaugh.
  
  
• 1965: Vietnam Day in April on KPFA, WBAI & KPFK in Los Angeles provides an early national forum for protests against the war. KPFA’s Chris Koch is the first regular radio commentator reporting from Vietnam.
  
  
• 1967 KPFA broadcasts a live interview with Che Guevara months before he is killed in Bolivia. During this period, Pacifica Radio was the lone radio voice for progressives such as I.F. Stone, Bertrand Russell, Malcolm X and Daniel Ellsberg.
  
  
• The 70’s saw growth in the Pacifica network of stations with the addition of KPFT in Houston & WPFW in Washington, D.C.
  
  
• 1970: Arlo Guthrie’s interminable "Alice’s Restaurant" was playing when KPFT was blown off the air by a dynamite attack on their transmitter…..the first station to be so targeted in the history of broadcast radio. A second attack soon followed; federal agents ultimately arrested a Ku Klux Klansman for the bombings.
  
  
• WBAI in NYC broadcasted comedian George Carlin’s "Seven Dirty Words" uncensored in 1973 and triggered a ground-breaking Supreme Court battle on obscenity rules for open-air broadcasters.
  
  
• 1973 Pacifica provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings.
  
  
• The Symbionese Liberation Army delivered the Patty Hearst tapes to KPFA/Berkeley and KPFK/Los Angeles in October, 1973. KPFK manager Will Lewis is jailed for refusing to turn the tapes over and a police search of the station is broadcast live for 8 hours.
  
  
• 1980: Ray Hill begins The Prison Show, on KPFT. The lone voice for prison reform and a call-in show to allow families & friends of Texas inmates to talk to their loved ones behind bars. Under Ray Hill’s leadership, KPFT became the first public radio station to broadcast programming in 11 different languages, serving all of Houston’s many communities.
  
  
• 1984 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Pacifica's favor that non-commercial broadcasters have a constitutional right to editorialize.
  
  
• National programming at Pacifica came into its own in the 80’s. Larry Bensky anchored live coverage of the confirmation hearing of nominee Robert Bork in 1987, the Iran-Contra Hearings, and subsequently the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
  
  
• 1991: Future host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, and Allan Nairn deliver harrowing live reports on the Indonesian army’s murderous crack-down on the East Timorese independence movement.
  
  
• The 1990’s saw the birth of the hard-hittin’ news show, Democracy Now!, launched by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez in February 1996. The hour-long show features daily investigative journalism including award-winning exposes like that on Chevron Oil’s collaboration with the murderous Nigerian dictatorship.
  
  
• 2001: Democracy Now’s crew reported on the terrorist attack blocks away from Ground Zero in New York City
  
  
• 2003: Pacifica covered the invasion of Iraq and continued reporting on the unfolding of abuses of the Busch administration