Listen here: Public, community radio stations labor to keep up

Cork-popping celebrations don’t often happen at 6 a.m. on a Monday, but then the scene at dawn in Greeley on Feb. 29 wasn’t your typical party. It was the dawn of a new era in radio along Colorado’s Northern Front Range — and a new challenge for noncommercial broadcast competitors vying for donor dollars.

KUNC-FM 91.5, which for nearly a half century had brought an eclectic mix of music and award-winning investigative reporting to Northern Colorado, switched on a new station it had purchased for $3 million in December to split off its music…