If we haven’t met yet, hi! My name is Chase Spross, I’m XRAY’s Station Director. If you’ve ever written into the station, gone to an event, gotten a studio tour, really anything, we’ve probably talked. That’s because, as XRAY turns 10, I’m also looking back on a decade of my life spent with XRAY.
I started at XRAY as a volunteer in summer 2014. I helped table some concerts, make fundraising phone calls, really anything that needed doing. By 2016, I was a full fledged staff member, and since 2017 I’ve been running XRAY’s radio operations (in radio speak, this means what’s happening on air!). In 2020, I was promoted to Station Manager, a title common at other stations, but that was new to XRAY at the time. Essentially, that meant more formally that I’d manage everything to do with the actual operation of the station—including things like programming, volunteer programs, traffic, facilities, etc. And in 2023, I became Station Director — a combination of your typical Station Manager role and an Executive Director. Basically, they say I’m the guy in charge now. The station has gone through so much to get here today, so I wanted to take a moment to walk you through some of the more important stuff.
September 2014: XRAY begins broadcasting on 107.1 FM, quadrupling its signal size.
I think you know what quadruple means, but this was huge because people had, maybe rightly, been questioning how a 7 watt (yes that’s as small as it sounds) signal like 91.1 at the time could really make much of a dent in Portland media.
Getting a decade-long lease for 107.1 was more than seemed possible. Because, just like today, Portland signal expansion is basically entirely contingent on other stations folding. Not likely, and not the kind of thing people want to wish for.
November 2016: You know what happened. But it was a major catalyst for XRAY. You’re not ready for this list.
Some of the most unique and valuable projects we do today were born out of the aftermath here. And some were really great at the time, but just didn’t pan out long term (sorry XRAY TV & XRAY Records).
In this time period, we would:
- Start producing teach-ins
- Begin a daily live 2-hour morning show somehow run by volunteers
- Host a summer camp
- Put on Radio U classes and Podcasting workshops
- Launch a podcast network
- Build a larger production studio for band sessions (dubbed Flaming Cat Studios)
- Launch, and sunset, a record label (the aforementioned XRAY Records)
- Become the home for the weekly City Club of Portland broadcasts
- Put on multiple mini music festivals
- Run for and win Willamette Week’s Best of Portland for our 5th time in a row (nominate us for 2024 by the way)
- Raise funds for and buy the 91.1 signal
- Try to break into video (yup, it’s XRAY TV)
- Start a collective conversation project called “Group Therapy”
- Produce PSAs en masse for local nonprofits,
- Help launch 2 additional stations: KXRW Vancouver & The Numberz (and try out several other signal projects too—some we don’t talk about because they’re dead and gone, but one of those is now 91.7 FM Nehalem!).
I probably still missed some big stuff. Does that all sound like a lot? Well that’s because it is. All of that is within roughly 2.5 years. And in some ways, we’re still managing the aftermath, where there’s so many cool things we could keep doing, but also need to manage listeners’ expectations towards a reasonable amount of activities. And yet, so many of our proudest moments, and the start of our most prized projects, began there. While November 2016 was inherently political, what it inspired in us was taking action to be involved in our community. Stepping up to make what we wanted to see happen, happen.
One thing that matters a great deal here though: our annual budget was not all that much larger than it is today. And thankfully, we’ve had a groundswell of community support since our viral Kickstarter launch, which has kept things more stable. Nowadays, while we still do a lot, we’ve got fewer staff members and an outlook for the station that relies on projects being sustainable. Since over 75% of our budget comes from individuals’ like you donating, and I’m the one whose job it is to spend the most money, that refocus is a lesson I’m proud we’ve learned.
March 2020: Again, you know what happened. Also a major catalyst.
We were one of the first stations in the country to return to live programming, were featured in The New York Times, put on a series of at-home virtual concerts to get funds into the hands of artists who lost gigs and to keep the live music magic coming for listeners, started a pandemic-era daily local news podcast, interviewed over 100 local candidates, heavily covered the BLM protests and preempted the vast majority of our programming to play The Numberz (the Black-led and serving station we helped launch), raised a lot of money and lost a lot of money when our local business sponsors and artist supporters couldn’t continue giving, and plenty more that I think I’ve blocked out from this time.
Like I said, another catalyst, and another period of hyper-production, because honestly not only did we have more time with quarantine, but so did nearly all our volunteers. Many of the projects we loved most from this time just aren’t sustainable on volunteer labor outside of that unique time—because we can’t expect dozens of hours weekly in perpetuity from them, and also definitely don’t have the funds to pay a staffer to keep all that going.
April 2024: 10 Years In, We’ve Got a Handle on This Radio Stuff (Mostly)
If the last 10 years have taught me anything, it’s that there is no shortage of creativity and energy at the station to make cool, innovative, and important things happen. In fact, it seems there’s so much of that energy that we often make do with far less than most would or could, because we think this stuff is that important.
So when we take the time to ask for your support a couple times a year, it matters. A lot. Because whether you give or not, we’re still going to do everything in our power to keep doing this. But when you do support us, we get to do more of it, do it better, and do it right.
We can make a lot happen with very little. But we still need that little bit to do anything at all.
So join me today in becoming a member—I don’t know what the future holds but I can guarantee there’s more than you bargained for coming from XRAY when you do.
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