Local radio station adjusting to growth

Spanish station recently added

FAIRMONT - After around 15 years as a small, 100-watt station with a 65-foot tower that only covered the Martin County Area, KYEJ now reaches a potential audience of 70,000 people, extending into Iowa, along I-90, and across five counties, as well as expanding to a second radio station for Spanish, 91.9 KRYX.

The stations are operated by Fairmont Area Catholic Radio, which airs programming on both stations from the Eternal Word Television Network, based out of Alabama.

Executive Director and Deacon Steve Landsteiner said they got the opportunity from the FCC to go higher, and they jumped on the chance to reach as many people as possible. The groundbreaking was in October 2024, and they quickly got to work.

"We had to have boring samples of the soil," he said. "We had to make sure the base of the tower was going to be robust enough to hold up that much weight. There’s 60 tons of concrete that were poured into the ground to support the tower."

The tower they bought for the project was used, and when they got it, some of the angles on the tower were bent and damaged. In that, and across the whole project, volunteer help was crucial in getting everything accomplished.

"I had to personally make a template for the flanges on the tower, in order to get equipment custom made," Landsteiner said. "I’m not an engineer. We are a low-budget operation, so everything we possibly could do ourselves, we did. Most of the work here in the radio station was done by volunteers. Obviously, there were some things that needed to be done by contractors in order to be legal and insurable."

Even then, the tower ended up only being 170 feet tall, short of the 198 feet they wanted it to be, so an extension was custom-made to get it where it needed to be for intended range.

The tower was completed last year, but that in no way meant things were over. Even with an expanded range, Fairmont Area Catholic Radio still needed to put the work in to let parishes in that range know what is available to them now.

"That was really nice because some were just gleeful," Co-Owner Marie Landsteiner said. "They were just so happy."

"We took a weekend for each parish to go and talk to them," Steve said.

The next parish they are visiting is a Spanish-speaking parish in Watonwan County, letting them know about the new Spanish companion station to KYEJ, 91.9 KRYX. Adding that station was considered around when they got approval for a new radio tower.

"We knew we needed a new transmitter to do that," Steve said. "We had an old transmitter that was perfectly good, and so we applied for two frequencies with the FCC and got them both in a construction permit."

In considering this, Steve took stock of what the Southern Minnesota, Northern Iowa population looks like in the modern day.

"Our demographics are changing, and there are a lot of Hispanic people in our area and to the north of us, and they’ve come for jobs," he said. "They’ve come for the American dream, and when you are an immigrant and you come into a country that you’re not accustomed to, you’re not always feeling welcome. One of our main goals of the Spanish station is to reach those people who are feeling like outliers and not really a part of the community, and to draw them back into a faithful living."

From there, they had to decide just how they were going to integrate it, as they had two radio stations to broadcast instead of just one.

"We decided we were going to use one antenna and one tower," Steve said. "We wanted to get as high as we possibly could. Once that was decided, we needed to buy a combiner, which is a piece of equipment that allows two separate radio signals to go into it and then bring it up on one antenna line. There had to be a construction permit from the FCC, and we had to fulfill all of the obligations in a timely manner, within two years in order to be licensed."

With both pieces being worked on in tandem, it was only two to three weeks after the new tower went online that the Spanish channel also kicked on. Since then, Steve said he has gotten strong positive feedback.

"It’s something they can obviously very strongly relate to," he said. "It’s something they look forward to. We have several in our parish who have been really promoting the Spanish station to a number of people, and they’re avid listeners, and they’re faithful donors."

Now, Fairmont Area Catholic Radio is looking to maintain their programming and continue spreading the word through their larger coverage area. The group is still fundraising, as they still have $80,000 to pay back on a loan they took out to finance these projects.

For more information, visit facradio.org.