KALX 90.7 FMKALX 90.7 FM

KALX started in 1962 as Radio KAL, built by two UC Berkeley roommates, Jim Welsh and Marshall Reed, in their Unit 2 residence hall room. It reached the dormitories over wires strung across campus, mixed on a board made from a modified Cuban cigar box. The call letters came from combing FCC records for a free combination beginning with KAL — KALW was taken, KALP sounded wrong — and after a construction permit in 1966, KALX-FM finally hit 90.7 on 3 October 1967 at ten watts.

It is still run by students and community volunteers, close to 300 of them, with no automated satellite feed anywhere in the schedule. The programming is freeform in the strict sense: one DJ may move from underground punk to avant-garde jazz inside a single show, backed by a physical library of well over 100,000 albums kept on shelves at the station.