The Minnesota airwaves just got a whole lot gayer.
In June, iHeartMedia Minneapolis-St. Paul launched the nation’s first FM radio station dedicated exclusively to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) listeners. The new 96.7 Pride Radio debuted, appropriately, with 24 straight hours of Madonna tunes June 11, followed by two weeks of non-stop commercial-free music — namely pop hits and dance remixes by the likes of Sam Smith, Rihanna, Nick Jonas and more — the next day.
The new station is an FM broadcast extension of Pride Radio, iHeartRadio’s digital LGBT channel, and listeners will recognize many of the same hosts, including Ricky, Delana, Houston, Pacey and Christie. Still, Hartley Adkins, Executive Vice President of Operations for iHeartMedia, said in a press release that the broadcast station will break fresh ground as “a place for amazing music and entertainment” as well as “a destination to express opinions, be heard and connect.”
Check out the logo for 96.7 Pride Radio below:
Don Parker, Program Director for 96.7 Pride Radio, told The Huffington Post in an email that the station aimed to “be relatable and deliver content generally appealing to the LGBT community,” but nonetheless hoped that listeners who didn’t identify as queer would tune in, too, for its mix of entertainment and news programs.
“No listener is excluded in our mind – we always say that Pride Radio is ‘Gay, Straight, and everyone in between,'” he said.
Certainly, the city’s vibrant community will be a good testing base for LGBT-focused broadcasting. Minneapolis-St. Paul is consistently rated highly on surveys and polls of LGBT-friendly destination.
“There’s a lot of opportunity here,”Dot Belstler, executive director of Twin Cities Pride, told the Star Tribune in 2014. “Everybody knows the East and West Coasts call us flyover land, but we have a lot to offer.”
For more details on 96.7 Pride Radio, head here.
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