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Community Involvement Never Gets Old

Radio stations help out their communities

Stations help their communities — and their bottom line — in lots of creative endeavors. In our new semi-regular feature, we share some of them.

POLICING ATTITUDES

It takes guts for a radio station to tackle tough community issues head-on.

Kudos to Bay Area hip hop station KMEL(FM) for continuing to improve the relationship between youth and local police in the San Francisco/Oakland, Calif., area. KMEL, part of iHeartMedia, in May was hosting their second Street Soldiers Live Town Hall to talk about violence and help alleviate tension between cops and kids.

The industry needs to encourage more of this dialogue!

JAMMING FOR VITALOGY

Whenever stations amplify star power to benefit communities, it’s a win-win-win. The station earns the cool factor, the artist gets recognition for good work and the charity receives needed funds.

Entercom stations in San Diego, Portland and Seattle have joined forces to promote Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy Foundation, which supports community health, the environment, arts, education and social change.

A portion of ticket sales from their annual marquee concerts go toward the cause, which raises money for charities selected by each station.

KNRK will benefit MyMusicRX (https://www.mymusicrx.org/feed/all/), providing musical support to kids in hospitals; KNND benefits Treehouse (http://www.treehouseforkids.org/), a charity assisting over 7,000 foster kids; and KISW’s Pain in the Grass will go to the Downtown Emergency Feed program (https://www.emergencyfeeding.org/) and the Bureau of Fearless Ideas (http://fearlessideas.org/). KBZT’s effort will go to the Surfrider Foundation (https://www.surfrider.org/to help keep beaches clean.

Since 2015, over $200,000 has been raised.

IT’S STILL A THING

Do you think it’s old hat to raise money for charity by creating and selling a station CD? Think again!

In Minnesota, the 28th Annual Cities 97 Sampler CD raised $530,000 for nearly 100 local charities. The Cities 97 CD featured performances recorded live in Cities 97’s Studio C by 20 artists, including O.A.R., X Ambassadors, Andra Day, Johnny Rzeznik, Ingrid Michaelson and Rachel Platten.

Listeners bought the CD at Target stores in the Twin Cities area and online.

Cities 97 is KTCZ(FM), an iHeart station in Minneapolis.

Got your own example of a station “doing good”? Email Mark Lapidus at[email protected].

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