KRPS 89.9 relocated to the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts in August and will celebrate with an open house on Dec. 10 from 5 to 7 p.m. KRPS is an NPR-member station with a listening area that covers the four corners of Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. They are a small NPR station, as they have four employees. They primarily air NPR news, covering 20 hours of news every weekday with music in the evenings.
KRPS 89.9 came on air in April of 1988 at Pitt State. It was originally located in Shirk Hall, then temporarily moved to Grubbs in 2024, and now is in the Bicknell.
“It’s about getting a local and statewide presence,” Fred Flether-Fierro said, the general manager of the station. “The relocation is a huge part of that. Obviously, we had some dated offices over at Shirk. We had a whole floor, but it was pretty much stuck in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. With the relocation, we purchased about $120,000 of new equipment. It’s the first major update of our equipment.”
With this newer technology, Fletcher hopes to have a one-hour local live show five days a week, as well as focus on the individual states between the four that they cover.
“One thing I’ve always wanted to have for as long as I’ve worked here is to have at least one-hour local live show,” Fletcher said. “We can start it as an hour. I’d like to have five days a week of that show across. You know, the afternoon day part brings local voices and talks about local topics. For instance, we are only four miles away from the Missouri, Kansas border, and just those two states have vastly different views on the same topic. Everything from City Commission to statewide stuff to municipality stuff… We’d like to have a live local show to examine these topics.”
Last fall, they installed a new transmitter, which the university owns. This was part of the many technological advances made, and it was a quarter of a million-dollar purchase. A lot of the work, like the transmitter, started two years ago, Fletcher said.
“The transmitters are hand built,” Fletcher explained. “You put their order in and then a year later you get this transmitter. The previous transmitter we had was 17 years old. With the one we have now, it is 20 percent more effective, so it puts off less heat, which equals less electricity bills.”
KRPS has been around for 37 years and does not work the way a lot of people assume.
“I think there’s a perception of the media that a lot of it is run by millionaires, billionaires, and these big corporations,” Fletcher said. “Theres an idea that they are super powerful. That’s not the case. In public radio, I like to tell people, we keep our ear to the ground, as low as things are.”
Fletcher is grateful to the university and his staff for this change.
“It’s been a lot of highs and lows, but it’s been a substantial change. The substantial positive change is something that we needed for a long time and then I’m very grateful to, a lot of my staff members here and Pittsburg State.”