New York Daily News
RADIO
February 26, 1998

Twin Cities Show Gets Gotham Dancing

By David Hinckley
Daily News Staff Writer

It may not be around forever, but at the moment New York radio has a 12-hour nightly show that showcases cutting-edge dance music.

It's called "Beat Radio" and it airs 7 p.m.-7 a.m. on WJDM (1660 AM).

It's run out of Minneapolis by a guy named Alan Freed, no joke and no relation to the late deejay. This Freed is an outspoken advocate of micro-broadcasting, low-power "community" stations better known as pirates. The FCC and regular stations don't like that idea much, and the feeling is mutual: Microbroadcasters feel big corporations are strangling creativity and community voices in radio.

Beat Radio, however, is a legal enterprise, with programing by club and underground deejays from the Twin Cities. Tony Santiago, who ran the New York Metro Dance Radio Coalition, says it's "just what I've always wanted a dance station to be."

The catch is this: WJDM is a Radio Aahs station, which did children's programing before deciding rival Radio Disney had too much muscle.

So Radio Aahs is selling its stations, and hopes to have a deal by May or June. Until then, Beat Radio lives.

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