Kids, Cattle, Grain, Minerals & Journalism

KCGM (Kids, Cattle, Grain, Minerals), 95.7 on your FM dial, "the voice of the prairies, your good-neighbor station" in Scobey, Montana, can attribute its thirty-five years of continued survival to just one thing: unconditional support from the Daniels County community and surrounding area. In 1969, it was Larry Bowler, Publisher/Editor of the Daniels County Leader weekly newspaper, who spearheaded the effort to establish Scobey's first radio station.

"We were being considered colonies of neighboring, larger populated areas, and I wanted us to develop a certain amount of political clout so that some of our feelings could get to higher levels," Bowler explained in an August 19, 1995 interview. "We also wanted the business people who wanted to get their message out to have that opportunity."

He applied for an FM license because they were more available, but it got hung up somewhere in the Washington, D.C., bureaucracy.

"There was some opposition [in D.C.], but we couldn't put our finger on it exactly," he said.

Bowler's next move could be labeled as brilliant.

He wrote a letter and – "to cut through the underbrush" – mailed it to the residence of the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The letter, however, wasn’t addressed to the chairman; instead it was addressed to the chairman's wife.

"I wrote to her saying when your husband comes home tonight, serve him one of his favorite drinks and then hand him this letter, if you don't mind," Bowler said. "There was a letter within the letter."

Like magic, the roadblock was cleared, and within a week Scobey received its channel assignment and permission to construct.

On Monday, June 21, 1971, KCGM sent out its first signal from high atop the Leader building with Bowler as president of Prairie Communications Inc., which operates the station.

"I was told when I first began as the station's manager: 'Don't ever try to be like the big-city radio stations. We have to keep it local or it's not going to survive,' " said Dixie Halverson, who has been KCGM manager for twenty-seven years. "The board of directors and the stockholders don't care if we don't make a huge profit. They want to make sure we serve the community and are here for its benefit."

One of those benefits has been the ability to raise significant amounts of money through radiothons.

Mike Stebleton began his career with Montana newspapers in 1979 while a sophomore in high school stuffing grocery inserts into the weekly Glasgow Courier. He later went on to work fulltime as a reporter/photographer for The Courier, Miles City Star, Terry Tribune and Daniels County Leader in Scobey, where he has been employed for the past ten years.