Seneca Nation acquires radio station permit
SENECA NATION, CATTARAUGUS TERRITORY – By the end of the year, Seneca Nation members and their neighboring communities could be waking up to the sound of Native music, news and information broadcast on the nation’s own radio station.
The Seneca Nation announced March 25 that it has purchased a license to operate an FM radio station on nation territory and a construction permit from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC assigned the station to 105.9 on the FM dial, but call letters have not yet been assigned.
The tribal council authorized negotiations for the purchase of the radio permit, which had an initial asking price of $550,000. The radio construction permit was appraised at $280,000 and the permit was ultimately purchased for $250,000.
On March 14, the council passed a resolution creating the charter to establish Seneca Broadcasting, LLC, a 100 percent, wholly-owned subsidiary of Seneca Holdings, LLC, an entity of the Seneca Nation.
“This broadcasting effort will be a tremendous asset to the nation in terms of outreach to neighboring communities,” Seneca President Barry Snyder said. “This will establish a strong and positive voice for the Seneca Nation and give us an opportunity to share and highlight the many developments at work in our community.”
Richard Nephew, the tribe’s council chair, said the nation has wanted to develop a commercial radio station for more than a decade as part of its economic diversification efforts and to strengthen communications within the nation.
“In addition to presenting new professional employment opportunities the programming and content of the radio station will be driven by Seneca interests and needs, but we also expect that there will be appeal to the non-Seneca audience in neighboring communities,” Nephew said. “We expect to fully utilize this communications vehicle to not only provide music, news, information and up-to-the minute reports on events and developments at the nation, but to promote and enhance Seneca culture and education efforts.”
The antenna site will be located in Little Valley, N.Y.; the actual radio station site will be on the Allegany territory. The Seneca Nation is located on two communities, Allegany and Cattaraugus, about 35 miles apart.
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One of the nation’s main concerns before purchasing was whether there was an antenna that could reach both communities,” said nation spokeswoman Leslie Logan. There was, and it will be strong enough to reach both Seneca communities and beyond to the towns of Jamestown, Salamanca, Olean and Chautauqua.
“We’re also considering putting up a repeater antenna so we’ll be able to stretch into northern Pennsylvania and the western New York and Buffalo area,” she said.
The radio station is expected to feature an eclectic mix of music programming and Seneca Nation news. The nation predicts it will be instrumental in emergency and disaster preparedness, while generating advertising revenue.
Logan said the station will create a number of new jobs in sales, engineering and broadcast journalism and other areas.
“I think once we get this radio station up, people will be scratching their heads and saying how did we live without this for so long? It’s such a mainstay, just providing news, information, giving voice not only for the nation, but the communities as well.”
Logan said the nation hopes to eventually include news of the eastern nations.
In acquiring a radio station, the Seneca Nation joins dozens of other tribes across the country with broadcast capabilities.
On the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge reservation last summer, KILI-FM, the country’s largest Native American radio station, celebrated its 25th anniversary as “the voice of the Lakota People” by joining the tribe’s alternative energy project – clean, renewable wind energy – and beginning operation under its own wind power turbine.
More recently, the FCC in January approved a license for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe to start a radio station broadcasting to 8,000 households on its reservation in Idaho. The tribe has a three-year window to get the station on the air.
