Chris Shebel built little radio towers out of Lincoln Logs as a kid, then cobbled together a crystal transmitter to broadcast across his Wisconsin neighborhood. When he heard his own voice travel half a block through the air, he knew. “It always was,” he says of his calling to radio. That childhood certainty—tested across four decades and some of the industry’s biggest markets—finally crystallized at KGAY in Palm Springs, where Shebel is program director. He architected something unique in American broadcast radio: the only commercial terrestrial FM station explicitly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
The path from those Lincoln Logs to KGAY wasn’t straight. Shebel’s career reads like an encyclopedia of radio history. He started in Portage, Wisconsin, at WPDR, where he was16 and working two six-hour shifts a week while in high school. The format was loose—”here’s a bunch of albums in the library, and we kind of play stuff off of them”—but on Monday nights, Shebel booked 45s from Hayes Music Store and spun what he called the WPDR Rock Show. The experiment didn’t last. Hayes Music Store, it turned out, didn’t want his inventory resold. However, that early exit taught Shebel something more valuable than format mechanics: when students petitioned to bring the show back and the gym teacher spotted the complaints on the gymnasium walls, the station manager called Shebel into the office. “Because you’re a stupid kid, I’m not going to fire you,” the manager told him. “But what you should learn right away is don’t go against your station in public.” It was the kind of lesson you don’t forget.
He progressed methodically through radio’s rungs. College in Stevens Point led to his first full-time gig at WSPT, also in Stevens Point. From there came Columbus—WCOL and 92X, where he worked mornings briefly—then the leap to WLS in Chicago. “That was just an amazing experience,” Shebel recalls of seeing Larry Lujack, the legendary morning man, every day. Indeed, each move built his expertise and deepened his understanding of programming at scale.
Finding His Voice: Phoenix, Programming, and Pivots
Phoenix came next: KDKB, where Shebel moved into morning shows. It was also at KDKB where his on-air career effectively ended, though not by choice. A competitor outed him with shock-radio jokes on the air. Shebel’s general manager—married to the sales manager—panicked about business impact. They negotiated an exit. “I just said, I’m done with trying to be a morning guy,” Shebel explains. “I want to live my life.”
That decision redirected his career into programming—a lane where his appetite for building something strategic could flourish. It took him to La Crosse, Wisconsin, thenLouisville, Providence, Pittsburgh, back to Chicago for , 92Kiss-FM then to the FM dance format he’d eventually master Energy 92-7 & 5. Subsequently, Shebel worked inWest Palm, San Francisco, Raleigh, Portland, and eventually Palm Springs, consulting stations and refining his approach to dance radio programming.
The Move to Palm Springs and KGAY
Shebel moved to Palm Springs from Portland deliberately. For older LGBTQ+ people, most gay communities felt unsustainable. “In the gay community, it’s always been a culture driven by consumerism and driven by looks,” Shebel says. “When you reach a certain age, they kind of don’t even want you in their bars anymore.” Palm Springs, by contrast, welcomed older gay people. “If you’re like 65, you can still go to the bar for happy hour. They hire people over the age of 60 for jobs here.” It was, he thought, a rare thing.
KGAY—call letters grabbed when they became available—became his vehicle for serving a population that commercial radio had largely ignored. The station operates as “profit for purpose, or purpose before profit,” Shebel explains. Moreover, it succeeds in a market that major broadcasters had written off. “We’re the only, as far as I know, over-the-air terrestrial commercial radio station in the U.S. targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” Shebel notes with obvious pride.
A Unique Format Built for a Real Audience
The format is a deliberate construct refined across years. Shebel calls it “dance hits”—a term he’s refined across San Francisco, Phoenix, and Chicago. “It is not like just constant thumpa thump of that you get at a club,” he emphasizes. “It’s heavy on gold.” That’s crucial because Palm Springs’ radio audience is predominantly 50 and older. The music serves them, not some mythical club demographic. Additionally, songs that endure in the cultural memory—disco classics, dance records that meant something in the ’80s and ’90s—frame the format. Morning host John Taylor handles the flow, and between the music comes conversation about what matters: local politics, community safety, LGBTQ+ issues, and the relentless political currents affecting his audience.
Woven Into Community Life
Woven Into Community LifeIntegration into Palm Springs’ fabric didn’t happen accidentally. It’s baked into the station’s operating philosophy. “We’re very involved with our local community,” Shebel says. “We participate in all the major events and many of the minor ones.” During season—winter, when snowbirds and tourists arrive—the station is everywhere. Every major charity fundraiser, dozens of community events every week. John Taylor, the morning host, maintains a strong social media presence and is active in the community. He’s interviewed the police chief and other local figures on air.
That last detail—the community genuinely liking the police—struck Shebel as extraordinary. “I’ve never lived in a city where the gay population really liked the police,” he says. “But here, our police chief and his wife have just become institutions in the LGBTQ+ community.”
Some radio veterans would object to Taylor spending eight minutes on a single interview instead of moving through rapid-fire segments. But that’s not who Shebel is anymore. “You know that’s what we do,” he says. “We play a lot of music, but we also want to make sure that we talk about things that are relevant. Obviously, with the current political administrations, we have material every day.”
The Payoff
After decades in some of radio’s finest markets and most storied stations, Shebel says KGAY is his favorite job. Not because it’s the biggest or the flashiest or the most culturally dominant the way WLS or 92 Kiss were in their day. Rather, it matters differently. “I’ve never worked at a radio station that was as important to a community as this one,” Shebel says. “It’s very satisfying to be a radio guy working at a radio station that people really consider part of their lives.”
That’s the thread running through his whole career: radio at its best wasn’t a broadcast medium. It was a relationship. Some stations—like the morning show in Raleigh where the host “ruled the town”—managed it. Most don’t. KGAY does, deliberately and completely. The kid who built radio towers from Lincoln Logs and heard his own voice travel half a block through the Wisconsin air finally built something that stays with people. It serves a community nobody else was serving and does it with authenticity and care.
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