91.7 The River is a project of IowanEASFan. I have an interest in radio, and my area lacks a good general throwback station. The one closest to us is KOBM-FM in Blair, Nebraska, but they get here with mixed results. Becuase of this, I got my hands on an FM transmitter and set up a radio station.

At first, this station was my unnamed secondary stream I used to play a large collection of singles a local thrift shop owner gave me. The stream was ran using an HP Thin Client, and was streamed 24/7 at 24kbps AAC+. I later got busy with other projects and lost the motivation to record the records. Around this time, I discovered Crossroads, an IP-only radio station ran by a friend of mine. I decided to take inspiration from them and play all smooth jazz, pulling from a Spotify playlist of Weather Channel music. I lost interest in that after two weeks, and decided to shift formats once again to soft rock.

After that point, my station still had yet to be named. Music played on it was from the 70s and 80s, and typically stuck to the soft rock category, with a hint of pop being played here and there. I later decided to name it "Sunshine 106.5" (I was transmitting on 106.5MHz at the time), stealing inspiration from Sunny 97.1, an oldies radio station that used to be in my area until around 2019. Because of interference caused with KSUX-FM, a local primary for the Sioux City market, I decided to move to 88.7 and later 88.9 FM.

As my station moved, so did the format. While I still have a lot of the soft rock I've launched with, the playlist features a lot more pop music, as well as some rock. On the softer side, I play some R&B and smooth jazz. While I definitely play a lot of hits, I've been trying to find music that either wasn't released as a single, or never hit the charts.

My station is the exact opposite of powerful. I transmit at less than a watt, which is enough to cover most of my small town of around 200 with varying signal. Because my transmitter is fairly low to the ground, I have issues with roof clearance. Given I'm unlicensed (going after a licensed LPFM would be too expensive for both me and my family), I'll be sticking to this setup for now.

The hardware my station currently runs on is an HP Compaq 6000 office PC running Pop!_OS 22.04. For automation software, I use a piece of DJing software called Mixxx. I have my PC running into my Numark CM100 mixer, with a turntable also connected. I have my mixer running to a thin client running Stereo Tool for processing. The thin client runs into the playout system for streaming.

Legal Stuff

Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

91.7 The River is ran as an unlicensed non-profit radio station made to entertain and inform my community and friends. No money whatsoever is made via this page, nor any related streams or webpages. If you enjoy any of the artists played on The River, please consider supporting the artists.