The Early Days of
by Barbara Novovitch
W
est Texans at home, and vis-
itors bedazzled by the spec-
tacular desert and mountain
scenery that greet every Big Bend area
traveler, are happy Marfa Public
Radio is there on their FM radio dial.
The station offers national and inter-
national news as well as extensive local
programming.
In February, 2006 Dan Rather,
native Texan and CBS News Anchor,
flipped a switch and cut away to
National Public Radio’s “All Things
Considered.” Except for occasional
shutdowns, KRTS has been broad-
casting National Public Radio news
and local programming from its offices
at 111 Highland Avenue in Marfa ever
since. KRTS now has nearly nine
years serving West Texas. In late 2011
it expanded into Midland-Odessa by
acquiring KXWT, adding yet more
credibility to Michael’s choice of a sta-
tion motto – Radio for a Wide Range.
The idea for the station began in
Alpine in 2002, when Michael’s wife,
artist Katherine Shaughnessy, was
lunching with Desert Candle editor/pub-
lisher Kay Burnett. The Michaels, new
arrivals from Chicago, moved to
Calamity Creek south of Alpine after
months of living on the road in a van –
Tom was writing for Encyclopedia
Brittanica, and Katherine planned an
embroidery venture from home.
Burnett, then editor-publisher of The
Desert Mountain Times weekly newspa-
per and the Desert Candle, needed a
graphic designer and offered the job to
Katherine. At lunch in Alpine,
Katherine recalls, she mentioned to
Burnett that both she and Tom had
missed hearing National Public Radio
since their move to the area. After
some investigation, Burnett discovered
that people had been trying “for more
than 30 years” to get Public Radio in
sparsely-settled West Texas.
“I said, let’s do it! I put seed money
toward the effort and hired a consult-
ant out of Washington, D.C. to come
to the area. He and Tom canvassed for
14
Cenizo
Marfa Public Radio
Drew Stuart, Rachel Osier Lindley, Tom Michael - March 2007
local interest. The response was over-
whelming,” Burnett said. She learned
that Marfa was holding an auction for
an FCC radio license, and she asked
Tom to represent her in the bidding.
“He stayed in constant touch with me
by telephone during the process to
know whether to keep bidding or drop
out. The tension was enormous...when
the price reached $500,000 I asked
Tom to stop. I wasn’t sure I could raise
the support needed for a station.”
Then Burnett found out an Austin cor-
poration had bought the license. She
called its president and asked to meet
with him. “I drove to Austin the next
day and met with him and his partner
that evening. We ended our meeting
by shaking hands on our working
together to make the station a public
Fourth Quarter 2014
radio, belonging to the people of Far
West Texas. Tom Michael was my
recommendation as our station man-
ager and I became the first director.”
Willie Nelson kicked off KRTS with a
sold-out benefit concert at Sul-Ross. “I
called Willie Nelson, who agreed to
come to Alpine with a benefit concert
as a favor of his friendship with my
deceased husband, Warren Burnett.
West Texas Public Radio has been one
of the happiest endeavors I’ve ever
entered.”
After the studio on Highland Ave.
opened, Michael said, “In the early
days I had a 45-minute commute, a
commute like a lot of friends elsewhere
... but I saw more antelope and deer,”
he added with a smile. Katherine said
she and Tom, who are parents of
Fiona Mae, a nine-year-old daughter,
and Wyatt, a seven-year-old son,
“think of KRTS as our middle child.”
“A lot of the grunt work, the grant
work to get the station started” was
accomplished in Calamity Creek. “We
left to go to Marfa when our second
child started walking,” she added. “We
thought we should head to town.”
They now live in northwest Marfa,
and Katherine has her arts studio at
home. She is an active community
member. Michael often commutes
from home to the office on his bike.
He’ll have a new destination when
KRTS moves soon to larger quarters
(2600 square feet instead of 2200) in
the 100 block of East San Antonio
Street, adjoining Marfa Studio of Arts.
He drives at least once per week to
Midland/Odessa to check in at Station
KXWT.
Rachel Osier Lindley, one of the
first interns to join Michael at KRTS,
heard of the station while attending a
Chinati Foundation open house in
Marfa in 2005. “There was a big
Marfa Public Radio party but the
radio didn’t exist yet,” said Rachel. At
that time she was an intern at Austin's
KUT while finishing her degree at the
University of Texas. “The week after I
graduated in June 2006, I took stuff in
a U-haul, a long haul through a lot of
nothing ... I think my mother thought
I was crazy. I showed up at the station
when it had just started up. Just Tom
and Drew Stuart were working there.
Tom said: ‘You know about Morning
Edition, you helped with the show at
KUT, you’re our new host.’ And on
the third day I was there I was on-air.”
Rachel and her fiancé Chase had
planned to move to Chicago after col-
lege, “But they paid me to stick
around,” so the couple – who married
in April 2007 – bought a house just
outside Marfa. Their first child, Rhett,
was born in 2011, “right before the
2011 fall pledge drive, and it was
announced on the radio. I gave birth
just a few weeks later. There was a lot