Radio station nabs San Francisco's last unclaimed FM frequency

San Francisco will soon have a new FM radio station. It may be the last for a while. 

In December, after a decadelong freeze, the Federal Communications Commission opened applications for low-power FM radio licenses. San Francisco had only one available FM frequency remaining: 104.9 FM. Now, local nonprofit internet radio station BFF.fm — short for “Best Frequencies Forever” — has claimed it after submitting a successful application to the FCC, leaving the city with no more unclaimed FM frequencies.

BFF.fm is one of a handful of independent online radio stations that have cropped up in San Francisco in recent years. (There are also HydeFM, Psyched! Radio and SutroFM.) Amanda Guest, the station’s director, founded BFF.fm in 2013 as a music-focused alternative to San Francisco’s community radio. For a decade, BFF.fm broadcast its music shows and podcasts exclusively online, first on its website and later through a mobile app as well. 

“It is very eclectic,” Guest said of BFF.fm’s programming, which still consists mostly of music. “Some might say free form,” she added. Its music shows have titles like “Invocation of My Demon Sister,” “Twin Shrieks Radio” and “PICKLEPLANET,” and give airtime to obscure and underground genres.  

“We jokingly call BFF post-college radio,” Guest told SFGATE.

It’s a victory for weird, local media at a time when giants like Audacy and iHeartMedia still dominate FM dials. 

BFF.fm will have to build a radio tower within the next three years, according to a post on the station’s blog March 10, or forfeit its ability to broadcast on 104.9 FM. The radio station, which is entirely listener-supported, has already set up a fundraiser to pay construction costs and legal fees related to the project. 

The station hasn’t yet determined its call sign, the four letters that identify it, but Guest told SFGATE that BFF.fm community members are holding a March Madness-style bracket to choose the best option.

FCC guidelines limit BFF.fm to broadcasting from the southwest corner of the city, somewhere in the area between the San Francisco Zoo and South San Francisco. Although it’s hard to predict the tower’s range without knowing its location, height and wattage, Guest estimated that the station’s broadcast radius could reach 100,000 people — not the entire city, but a substantial chunk.

With that limited range, BFF.fm will gear its FM programming to be more locally specific. “What we’re going to do is going to be very unique to the area and to San Francisco,” Guest said. 

But even as the station makes plans to accommodate the new medium, Guest said BFF.fm has no plans to stop — or alter — its online broadcasts. “We’re definitely going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” she said.