CU Boulder’s Radio 1190 is back — and it has the power to reach 3.5 million listeners

With a new FM translator and multiple awards in tow, the student-run station at CU Boulder is on sharp upswing.

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Jasmyn Chioda was on the verge of dropping out of the University of Colorado when she discovered Radio 1190.

Not that it was easy.

“I physically couldn’t find the studio my first year because I was scared to go in the basement,” said the 21-year-old strategic communications major. “But I (found it), and it was the best decision I ever made. There was no club at CU where I felt like I fit in, and the second I walked in here the vibe just felt so different.”

Underneath the University Memorial Building, down a concrete hallway just before a pair of blue dumpsters sits the scrappy, student-run station. It’s been around in some form or another for 46 years, starting as a satellite of KGNU (88.5 FM in Boulder, 1390 AM in Denver) and growing in strength before it got its own AM spot in 1998.

Jasmyn Chioda sits as Samyukta Sarma does her hair at the Radio 1190 studios on the University of Colorado Boulder campus on Friday, March 6, in Boulder. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic put a sleeper hold on the station as DJ-driven playlists went silent over in-studio safety concerns, coupled with it losing control of its FM translators “due to unethical business practices by an area translator lessor,” according to its website. But now, it’s in the midst of a stunning comeback.

With a record-high 150 students involved this year, a new FM translator that widens its potential market to 3.5 million metro-area listeners, and an award-winning news team ballooning in prestige and listenership, the station is ready to compete in the Denver radio, podcast and streaming world.

“(The quality of) our airwaves right now — anywhere in the country, but particularly in this market — aren’t all that great,” said Iris Berkeley, general manager of Radio 1190 (1190.radio online) and its only full-time employee. “Like so many things, the pandemic was so deeply unkind to us” in terms of shutting down the studio out of safety concerns.

“But now we can say we’re leaps and bounds beyond where we were, even before the pandemic,” she added.

Berkeley sees the radio scene as a diverse, collaborative community, with Radio 1190 working in tandem with other stations’ coverage and programming.

Radio 1190’s stalwart support of weird, DIY culture in Boulder and (nominally) in Denver has been an influential part of the Front Range underground scene, with multiple student DJs and staffers graduating to stations such as Colorado Public Radio’s Indie 102.3 FM and other roles in the news media and music industries.

The lower-band AM sound quality of KVCU Radio 1190 has never seemed to bother its fans. But before Radio 1190 had the ability to stream playlists online, it likely wasn’t minting a whole lot of new fans, staffers said. As of Feb. 13, the nonprofit station — which operates under an FCC noncommercial license — can now be heard on Denver’s 92.9 FM.

General manager Iris Berkeley listens as students talk at the Radio 1190 studios on the University of Colorado Boulder campus on Friday, March 6, 2025, in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)

Berkeley and Josh Shepperd, the station’s faculty advisor, are hoping to connect with record stores, music venues and bands in the Mile High City to promote the station’s new reach. At the moment, Radio 1190 is operating with a provisional license on their 92.9 FM spot, with a formal “hard launch” expected in the next couple of months.

Station honchos bought the new FM translator, which boosts their signal and gives them a firm presence in the Denver market, from Denver Open Media, Shepperd said.

He and Berkeley declined to say how much it cost. Berkeley and Shepperd also declined to say what Radio 1190’s budget was, instead describing its funding structure: monies coming from the College of Media, Communication and Information, as well as CU Student Government (itself funded by student fees). More funding comes from direct gifts — small listener contributions and student DJs’ parents’ donations — “and major donor the Stewart Family foundation (honoring the legacy of Colorado broadcast pioneers Lila and Bill Stewart),” Berkeley said.

The station is also hosting its first on-air fund drive in more than a decade, April 22-24, “with some really fun handmade thank-you gifts,” Berkeley said.

“The No. 1 recipe for continuity of the station is someone (at its head) who is an expert and quite dedicated at the same time,” said Shepperd, an associate professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies at CU Boulder. “That’s Iris. I’m also excited that more of the student community is now seeing it as a resource and a place to experiment creatively. The audience and the staff are really growing organically.”

Berkeley — who DJ’ed her own show on Radio 1190 in the early 2000s but says she lost it because she wouldn’t play the playlists prescribed by the station’s director at the time  — said there’s more freedom than ever at the station. The mix of silly and earnest messages on a chalkboard (including a cheeky portrait of actor Michael Cera) exemplify the playfulness of its staff, as does the lineup of shows: “Cold Cutz Deep Cutz,” “Workhorse Riot,” and “Synthpop Nonstop,” among dozens more.

Instructions and quotes of the week are displayed on the walls of the Radio 1190 studios on the University of Colorado Boulder campus on Friday, March 6, 2025, in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)

The 25,000 floor-to-ceiling CDs in the studio give students a sense of continuity, too, with hand-scrawled notes from previous DJs inside each jewel cases assessing its play-ability. “BRILLIANTLY GENIUS” reads the note inside Aphex Twin’s 2006 release, “Come to Daddy,” which was labeled as Techno. “Absurd revolutionary eclectic electronic,” it adds. The station is also stocked with a generation’s-worth of Colorado music, said Paul Martin, host of the surf-focused Worldwide Waves of Reverb, and one of the few non-students with a DJ slot.

The news division is a much more recent concern than the music, said Samyukta Sarma, the 19-year-old associate news director and another DJ at the station. It’s bubbled up since the pandemic with new, original reporting that runs every day in an audio news-magazine format (i.e., longer pieces).

“I had a chip on my shoulder my freshman year because I was studying journalism, but I felt like I wasn’t doing any actual journalism,” said Nicholas Merl, a 21-year-old journalism major and Radio 1190’s print editor. “I stumbled onto this room completely by accident and just the vibe of the place told me this is where I could put my energy and have a purpose.”

He and the other news staffers, including news director Juanita Hurtado Huérfano, have been shepherding stories that explore how the freeze in federal aid affects students, as well as reviews, guest op-eds, and quirky stories from “esoteric topics” reporter Leon Spiess. Hurtado Huérfano and Spiess recently picked up a pair of awards at the Broadcast Education Association. Posts on its Instagram account also show staffers proudly clutching trophies from the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System and College Media Association.

Radio 1190 studios on the University of Colorado Boulder campus, on Friday, March 6, 2025, in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)

“When I first joined, almost two years ago, the news team was going through a rough patch with five members bringing you a one-hour news show each week,” Hurtado Huérfano wrote on Radio 1190’s website. “But seeing how we have grown since into a daily news show produced by a team of over 60 volunteers, I can only hope to continue bringing you impactful journalism, experimental audio storytelling, and the best underground stories.”

“Student freedom and First Amendment rights to (report) the news as they see fit is fundamental to the university system,” Shepperd said. “We do not interfere or tell them how to do the news.”

Radio 1190 will not know how many new listeners they have for awhile — at the very least until their translator is officially licensed in a few weeks (they’re currently operating with a temporary one). But with 1,000 people listening at any one time online, they know the potential is there, as it always has been for the students who discover its unique culture.

“This is a place now that I famously do not leave, because I’m down here for like 6 hours straight,” said John Meylor, who last year was a finalist at the International Student Broadcasting Championship for his podcast “Doxxing Truck.”

“I just didn’t know where to be, socially, at (CU)” said Jane Novel, a 21-year-old media production major and Radio 1190 DJ. “But I was drawn into it in my sophomore year, and everyone has since become part of my big circle of friends.”

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Originally Published: March 17, 2025 at 6:00 AM MDT

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