On the air and under the radar: A radio station on campus remains widely unknown 

Students’ music taste is varied and niche in this age of the internet yet despite that Long Beach City Colleges’ own radio station, KLBC, has managed to draw in viewers and grow from year to year.

Radio has a long and storied history in Long Beach with stations such as KNAC bringing us acts like Sublime as well as popularizing reggae on the west coast.

KLBC has followed in the footsteps of these giants and themselves play a variety of music and genres stretching from vintage 1980s such as Gloria Estefan or legendary group Sublime, as well as including modern day pop and R&B music with artists such as Sabrina Carpenter and Rod Wave.

This blueprint has been led by the students and Manny Pacheco, who has been leading the charge, building out the Radio program with him recently receiving an award for Innovation in Education and Teaching due to his work in developing the radio station.

“I want my music to be forward thinking when it’s old, when it’s new I like for it to be a little nostalgic or throwback sounding…” said Pacheco.

The idea behind this was to blend the different eras of music and form a more coherent sound with the intention of enhancing the listening experience.

^{Founder of the radio program at LBCC, Manny Pacheco (right) and Bob Hirsch (left) runs the tv and emerging media programs featuring the all new KLBC studio rooms at the new G building on Thursday, March 26. (Maximus Rago)}

This strategy has benefited the station as they have grown their listening hours from 100 hours a month in March 2025 to over 500 hours a month in just a year’s time.

Building on strategies such as diverse music, the station also makes sure to play many local artists and even some of LBCC’s very own faculty and students’ music who bring it forward to the station.

“One of the professors, one of the adjuncts who actually admitted a song to me for consideration, in fact she gave me the whole album and I picked a song from there,” said Pacheco.

The relationship between the station and local artists benefits everyone as these artists get a chance to grow and listeners get to discover new talent who they can go see perform if they wanted to.

Among students however the KLBC radio station for the most part is unknown to the general student body, even those who would be interested in listening have never heard of the station before.

“I would listen now that I know it exists,” said Chris King, a student at LBCC.

The station is available by stream only on the service Live365, while it may make it harder for students to tune in, it provides the station with music licensing allowing the station to boast a track list of over 1,600 songs.

Despite students who are willing to listen upon hearing about the station, there is also another side to the issue of getting students on board with listening to radio which is finding a way to beat out the convenience of streaming.

When discussing with students several made the claim that they wouldn’t listen to the station even if it played music they were interested in.

“(There’s) nothing they could do honestly” said George Magdalany, a LBCC student after being asked what the station could do to get them to listen.

Despite students’ aversion to radio nearly everyone’s favorite genre or artists were played on the station at some point in the day as the type of music changes depending on the dj.

With a majority of Americans’ music listening hours being on radio over streaming, KLBC seems primed to continue its growth and expand into an even bigger station as it continues to build a Long Beach vibe that plays music that people are interested in.

^{Shown (left to right) KLBC radio personalities Lizzette “Everyone’s favorite chismosa” Ramirez, Brandon Magalong, Jerad “Vibez” Wadley, KLBC program founder Manny Pacheco and audio engineer Andrew Chui. The KLBC radio station crew reporting live at the Jenni Rivera ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday, March 26. (Maximus Rago)}