Radio: Cheechako Radio

In 1896 Captain Austin Eugene Lathrop, a building contractor turned shipmaster, sailed to Alaska from Puget Sound in the small steam schooner L. J. Perry. He sailed right into the Klondike gold rush. Instead of turning to pick & pan, however, Cap Lathrop stuck to his bridge and toted prospectors and their pokes. Nowadays, in rich Central Alaska, stout, furrowed, 73-year-old Cap Lathrop is the head man. He owns a big salmon cannery, a bank, a coal mine, an airplane hangar, three cinemas, two newspapers, a general store, apartment houses, and is a member of the Board of Regents of University of Alaska. One day last week Cap Lathrop sailed out of Puget Sound for Alaska again, to launch the latest and most ambitious enterprise of his career, the Midnight Sun Broadcasting Co.

By September, out on the Farm Road that leads from Fairbanks past the University, Cap Lathrop hopes to have in operation the northernmost commercial radio station in the world, and the largest and most powerful (1,000 watts) in Alaska.* Its call letters: KFAR.

Before plunging into the KFAR project, Cap Lathrop did considerable prospecting. He located every mine and outpost in the vast Alaskan interior within KFAR’s expected range, which is more than the U. S. Government has ever done. For expected sponsors the census showed a potential audience of some 25,000, with a per capita buying power five times that of the average U. S. consumer and very little else to do evenings but listen to a radio. Expecting a short-wave network connection with some U. S. chain, KFAR nevertheless intends to broadcast home-made programs for Alaska’s own needs. It will announce airplane arrivals and departures to a people who fly 17 times as much per capita as their fellow citizens in the States. It hopes to teach the sourdough how to make better biscuits, and to school the cheechako (tenderfoot) in the art of mining. It will broadcast four to six news periods a day.

In a great, sunbursty slick-paper prospectus issued last week, the Midnight Sun Broadcasting Co. gave advertisers some idea of the possibilities of the Alaska market. Alaska’s bill last year for U. S. merchandise was $42,676,441. Fish cannery equipment and mining machinery were the biggest items. The petroleum bill was $3,505,819; tobacco, $1,061,621. The cosmetics purchases were not worth listing.

-Others: KGBU, Ketchikan, 500 watts; KINY, Juneau, 250 watts; KFQD, Anchorage,

250 watts.