Victoria Niemeyer had never hosted a radio show, let alone stepped near a control board, before COVID-19 hit. But then she stumbled across Little Raleigh Radio (LRR) and just celebrated six years of hosting her Tuesday night show, Raleigh Real Talk.
“I love it and can’t imagine not doing it,” she said. “Hosting my show never doesn’t give me this tingle of like, ‘My gosh, what if this information is exactly what someone is needing?’”
Niemeyer is one of LRR’s DJs and on-air producers who’ve been able to leverage the platform to tell community members’ stories, share music, or simply chat with listeners over the past 15 years, a milestone LRR will celebrate Sunday, July 26, at Trophy Brewing Company in Five Points in Raleigh.
“We envisioned having a place for folks to have space to create radio,” said Jacob Downey, one of LRR’s founders and a former DJ at North Carolina State University’s WKNC 88.1 FM, of the original idea, “so they could use audio as a medium to give value to people in Raleigh and what they care about.”
“Little Raleigh Radio’s programming reflects the region’s love of eclectic music that ranges from literal garage bands to world music,” Downey said, “and conversations that highlight our city’s spirit for arts and innovations.”
He stresses that everything that’s streamed is handpicked by the on-air producers as something they think is important for their neighbors to hear. That could mean anything from Niemeyer’s recent? interview with Preston Ross from the Great Raleigh Cleanup, a nonprofit focused on reducing litter around town, to 21st-century jazz and African music.
LRR started as a nonprofit in 2011; the first three years were spent learning from other nonprofit and 501(c)(3) organizations before formally kicking off and beginning streaming in February 2014. The initial goal was to create a low-power FM (LPFM) station.
“The low-power FM movement was a big part of what kind of launched Little Raleigh Radio,” Downey said. LPFM refers to stations that broadcast at 100 watts or lower, which means their listening radius can extend only three to five miles. It’s a program the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced in 2000, geared at giving community groups the ability to broadcast.
The FCC has had only three LPFM application windows since 2000, one of which was October 2013. Nearly 3,000 entities, including LRR, applied, but the FCC ultimately awarded the 106.5 frequency to two Catholic organizations in Raleigh. The number of radio frequencies available are limited to begin with—there are only so many stations on a dial—and Downey and his team were looking for a specific area to target with their broadcasts, making things even more limited.
“The hope was that there would be either a station that could reach Southeast Raleigh or inside the Beltline,” Downey said, “but unfortunately there was not.”
Since then the FCC has only had one other LPFM application window, in 2023, but there weren’t any frequencies available then that would reach LRR’s core audience. Until that opportunity comes up, they’ll just focus on being a great internet radio station, said Downey. You can listen in by going to their adorably analog website.
“We want to be the go-to audio platform that amplifies conversations and ideas and music that makes Raleigh a vibrant place,” he said. “What we care about is what’s two blocks over and six blocks down.”
Jacob downey, co-founder,
Little raleigh radio
For the past 15 years, LRR has been completely volunteer-run. They started in a small studio off of St. Mary’s Street and now share a space with recording studio Thread Audio on Brooks Avenue in Raleigh. The station is currently 100% funded by listeners, although Downey said they’ve gotten grants from local arts foundations and a few sponsorships from local businesses. Downey works security at a building downtown and a second job at the Rialto movie theater while also managing much of the station’s operations.
It’s a tough gig to keep going. Niemeyer even said Downey paid the station’s last rent payment out of his own pocket. What started as nearly 60 volunteers has shrunk to about 17.
That’s even with the free radio training program LRR offers, the one Niemeyer took before launching her show, to help encourage new people to learn the trade. Collectively, the current group of on-air producers is able to put out about 15 hours of live programming a week, but the rest of the 24/7 stream is prerecorded content or automated.
Like at many businesses and organizations, the pandemic hit operations hard, and it’s been tough to build things back up.
“We’ve been thinking, how do we get people to come back out and be excited to make content again?” Downey said.
At the station’s 15th birthday party, he’ll be announcing a shift in LRR’s mission and vision to do just that.
“We want to be the go-to audio platform that amplifies conversations and ideas and music that makes Raleigh a vibrant place,” he said. “What we care about is what’s two blocks over and six blocks down.”
One of the changes Downey hinted at is around hosting more in-person events, like the quarterly listening party that kicks off September 4 at the City of Raleigh Museum where LRR will spotlight artists and albums with a tie to the city’s history. With this addition and other shifts in strategy, the goal is to keep LRR running for the next 15 years and beyond.
“Little Raleigh Radio was loyal to me when I had no idea what I was doing,” Niemeyer said. “I want to see it paying its bills, I want to see their presence at every music festival because I think radio connects lives and brings things to life.”
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