The small public media company that could

"Blues Before Sunrise' fills the moody hours between last call and daybreak. 'Hearts of Space' beams ambient music for Saturday morning reflection. 'Retro Cocktail Hour' provides nostalgic Space Age pop to cap off a Friday night date.

They're among the eclectic shows that inhabit the Sonoma County-centric weekly schedule of KRCB-FM, Rohnert Park's revered, locally owned public radio station.

They add spice to a robust daytime menu of locally produced music and news shows, along with syndicated programs that parachute into music from underrepresented genres — Native American, alt-Latino, Afropop, bluegrass, Americana, jazz and folk. All can be found at 90.9 and 91.1 FM in northern, western and central Sonoma County, or live online at radio.krcb.org.

Sister station KRCB-TV (Channel 22.1 on the air, 22 on Comcast) offers the best of PBS programming — favorites like 'Sesame Street,' 'Nature,' 'Nova' and 'The PBS Newshour' — along with locally produced shows that reflect life in Northern California. 'Neighbors' profiles Sonoma County residents, for example, and 'Bay Area Bountiful' explores things that affect the county's rich agricultural bounty — soil health, fisheries and vineyards. For those with wider interests, international news shows include English language broadcasts from Japan and Germany.

And last year, the parent company of these two powerhouses — Northern California Public Media — acquired a Bay Area public TV station that is expected to expand the corporation's profile from rural to regional.

It's a winning formula, 35 years in the making, that gives Nancy Dobbs much to feel proud of. She is president and CEO of the public radio and television corporation her late husband, John Kramer, conceived of and co-founded in 1984. Then a Sonoma State University political science professor, he envisioned a way to connect Sonoma County with the larger world of public access news and entertainment programming.

'There wasn't much cable coverage then,' Dobbs said, 'and very little access to Bay Area PBS programming. Nor did Bay Area media pay much attention to the day-to-day issues that reflect Sonoma County's unique personality. They swooped in only when there was a crisis, or a tragedy like the grisly murders committed in 1989 by winery worker Ramón Salcido.

'With about 250,000 Sonoma County residents unable to get public TV, Paul worried that they were missing out on all the educational (PBS) programming,' Dobbs said. 'He (also) worried that would cause a lack of identity, that residents would forget their local history.'

Driven by those worries, he formed a small focus group, got a planning grant, hired Dobbs to survey the community to gauge its support and applied for a full-service TV station license. The radio license followed in 1991.

By 2013, Northern California Public Media (legally known as Rural California Broadcasting Corp.) reported a weekly audience of 825,000 people drawn to round-the-clock programming on KRCB TV and radio stations. Both are noncommercial (no advertising) and nonprofit, supported by members, business sponsorships and a hefty grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Each spring KRCB also hosts a televised wine auction that, combined with other auctions, generates about $250,000 toward the corporation's annual budget.

Though KRCB offers local news on the radio station, it doesn't yet provide local TV news on a regular basis. Instead, it adds programming when it's warranted, leading up to local elections with candidate interviews and League of Women Voters debates, for example. On election night, KRCB reports on results as they come in.

'There are times we would be the only station in the Bay Area doing election results,' said Dobbs.

Its impact was particularly noticeable in the wake of Sonoma County's devastating wildfires. Dobbs said she's particularly proud of its coverage during and after the 2017 blazes.

'It was very important to the community,' Dobbs said. 'We were on the air providing emergency information.'

The station also recorded and archived community meetings on topics such as rebuilding requirements and insurance issues. The community responded with gratitude, she said.

'Last season, almost 50 percent of the PBS stations (across the United States) carried the program,' she said. 'We received eight regional Emmys for that series.'

And through a program called 'Health Connections,' Dobbs said, 'we're paying attention to what's going on in the community: clean air, clean water, school gardens, sidewalks in front of schools.'

A recent special, archived online, focused on Forget Me Not Farm, a local nonprofit that brings together abused animals and at-risk children in an effort to break the cycle of abuse. 'They help each other along the way,' said Dobbs. 'It's a very effective program that not many people know about.'

In 2017, Dobbs expanded the company's reach to the Bay Area, parlaying a complicated FCC spectrum auction into cash. Northern California Public Media earned $72 million by exchanging its desirable UHF license, on the broadband spectrum, for a comparable VHF license.

She used the proceeds to buy KCSM-TV, a community television station at the College of San Mateo, with enough cash left over to bank $50 million as an endowment for the corporation's future.

Since August, Northern California Public Media has been operating the new television station, now called KPJK, giving the company access to broader regional programming and the much larger Bay Area viewing audience.

In 2020, it also will add a new Sonoma County translator and repeaters to cover a 20- to 30-mile broadcast range.

'We had been a very small and not rich station,' Dobbs said, 'operating on one of the country's smallest annual budgets. Then this wonderful opportunity came along that allowed us to remain on the air in Sonoma County and to secure the future, whatever happens.'

Northern California Public Media's annual budget is $4.1 million, up from $2.8 million before the spectrum auction. More information about the nonprofit is available at norcalpublicmedia.org.