KBBF, nation’s 1st bilingual radio station, to celebrate 50 years since Sonoma County debut

KBBF 89.1 FM made history when it launched May 31, 1973, becoming the nation’s first bilingual public radio station.

“The story is that many people took off in their cars and went in all four directions to see how far that signal reached,” said Alicia Sanchez, president of KBBF’s board of directors.

The scene unfolded that day at the station’s first headquarters: a former army base at Finley Avenue and South Wright Road in Santa Rosa. It was donated by Ethel Kennedy, widow of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Sanchez said.

“And then, of course, there’s no cellphones during that time,” she said. “So, they would stop at a store where there would be a public phone outside … and they would call and say, ‘I’m in Sacramento, I’m in Fresno’ … and just say, ‘I can still hear the radio in my car.’”

They found the signal, transmitted from an antenna on Mount St. Helena, reached 18 counties.

“Counties. Not cities, but counties,” she said from a meeting room inside the station’s current location on Corby Avenue in southwest Santa Rosa.

The station, which operates under the Bilingual Broadcasting Foundation, Inc., will mark its 50th anniversary with a community celebration Sunday at Bayer Park in Roseland and a dinner fundraiser Aug. 3 at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa.

And there’s much to commemorate.

The station nearly shut down 13 years ago amid years of infighting, legal issues and financial woes. But its board’s love for the community helped them rebound, Sanchez said.

Since then it has expanded to offer programming in five languages and continues to serve the community, as was the original intent of its founders, several college students and community leaders that included Guido del Prado, Javier Guzman, Jesus Otero and Jose Arreguin, according to the station's website.

And it helped bridge a gap between Spanish and English speakers, serving as the linchpin for the birth of similar stations across the country.

She joked that Radio Bilingüe, the nation’s largest Latino public radio network formed in 1976, is the “child” of KBBF. In fact, Hugo Morales, Radio Bilingue’s founder who lived in Healdsburg, was a decadeslong friend of Sanchez.

The station’s focus on providing information in languages spoken by the community is personal for Sanchez, who graduated high school in Santa Rosa after moving from Texas.

She recalled the childhood shame she felt after she was hit for speaking Spanish at school. Her brother, similarly, asked their mother to be washed in Clorox to lighten his skin and to diminish his Mexican identity.

They found their experiences were not unique. And so KBBF, instead, made it “an honor” to know Spanish.

Today the station offers programming in Mixteco, Triqui, Chatino, Spanish and English.

“We're serving people by just giving them information, education for them to make their own decisions … in the language that they feel powerful and they understand,” she said.

In many ways, the station’s start allowed founders to honor their parents and other ancestors, by bridging intergenerational language barriers and ushering the experiences and culture into a mainstream platform, she said.

Sanchez, a former union organizer, was brought in for two months in 2010 to help the station rebuild after limited financial support, poor facilities, internal power struggle and increasing competition forced it to the brink of collapse.

It has now been 13 years, and she’s still volunteering

A variety of programs have sprung from its airwaves, from shows hosted by high school students to Sunday night oldies to an ongoing stream of public health and safety news.

For instance, an HIV-positive radio host held a radio program where he spoke about sex, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in 2004 — all in Spanish.

The radio station’s leadership urged for peaceful community celebrations in 2006 while fears of ongoing immigration crack downs lingered.

And, in 2013, Sanchez recognized a turning point for the station after Andy Lopez was shot and killed by a Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy. KBBF “opened our airwaves during that time in order for people to grieve,” she said.

The station galvanized to deliver Spanish-language evacuation and safety information as the Tubbs Fire ravaged Napa and Sonoma counties the evening of Oct. 9, 2017. Programmers came in to deliver information 24 hours a day to make sure the community had accurate information.

“It was just one of those things when you say, ‘We’re doing the right thing. It’s all worth it, as exhausted as we are feeling,’” she said. They did it all again in 2019 during the Kincaide Fire.

She credits the station’s many longtime volunteers for its longevity, even amid internal strife and public emergencies. “We wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for everybody who just put in their little bit of energy, talent,” she said.

As she and others from the station look forward to new changes, like a new app for digital streaming, she can’t help but look back toward the station’s ancestors.

“I think we were doing good and, you know, we fulfilled the dreams of our founders. And I’m proud of it,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Jennifer Sawhney at 707-521-5346 or jennifer.sawhney@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @sawhney_media.