KOPN (89.5 FM) is a non-profit community radio station in Columbia, Missouri, which from its start was modeled on the progressive radio format of KPFA in Berkeley, California. The station relies heavily on volunteers for programming and also carries programming from National Public Radio, Public Radio Exchange, and Pacifica radio.

The station went on the air in 1973, becoming the eighth open-access, listener-supported station in the U.S. and the first to serve an audience of less than 100,000 people.

The station traces its roots to a November 1971 meeting at The Issue, an alternative newspaper in Columbia. They picked the call sign KOPN to commemorate its openness to all. KOPN was founded as a project of the New Wave Corporation whose initial directors were Patricia Mae Watkins, Gerald Keliher, Harry Pearle, and Kathy Bierbach all of whom signed the initial incorporation papers. Keliher was the station's first manager, Pearle was the first chief engineer, Watkins was the first program director, and Bierbach was the first news director. The first music director was Jeff Mintz. Most of the incorporators had worked together on various alternative newspapers prior to starting KOPN.

The station received its FCC Construction Permit and officially began broadcasting at 10watts on March 3, 1973. It broadcast a monaural signal and operated out of a studio and office space shared with the Columbia Community Grocery, a natural food cooperative, on the second floor of 915 East Broadway. The food co-op left that building in the mid-1970's but KOPN programming still originates from that address. In its first 2 months it had $340.81 in cash and $200 in subscriptions. It broadcast from atop the newly opened 15-story Paquin Tower adjoining the University of Missouri campus and Columbia's second tallest building and highest above average terrain.

In the planning stages the radio received assistance from KDNA personnel Jeremy Lansman and Lorenzo Milam who had started similarly formatted KDNA in St. Louis. KDNA had already financial failed by the time KOPN went on the air. KOPN acquired KDNA's the 20 kW CCA transmitter and in 1974 began broadcasting at 40,000 watts and moved its frequency from 89.7 MHz to 89.5 MHz.

From its earliest years, the station has hosted locally produced radio plays. In 1979 it created the Midwest Radio Theatre project, partially funded by a modest National Endowment for the Arts Services to the Field grant. The station produced and hosted the first week-long [Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop] (MRTW) in 1980. Jim Jordan, the golden age radio star of "Fibber McGee and Molly" was the first guest host and keynote speaker. MRTW continued as an annual live radio performance and radio drama training event for over 2 decades in Columbia. Later it was incorporated as a separate 501(c)(3) non-profit named the National Audio Theatre Festival (NATF) the performance and training event was moved to West Plains, Missouri. Today, NATF has evolved into the annual Hear Now Festival [1], which features public listening sessions and performances by many renowned audio performance producers in Kansas City, Missouri .

In 1977, KOPN's parent, The New Wave Corporation, sought to bring public television and PBS programming to Columbia. The University of Missouri owns and operates full power TV station KOMU as a commercial NBC affiliate and not a public television station and thus there was no public TV signal available in mid-Missouri. New Wave was granted a construction permit and the call letters K56AU. Two attempts were made to re-broadcast PTV signals, first from KETC, St Louis, with a series of microwave relay towers which was only marginally successful. Later New Wave built a huge custom engineered UHF receiving antenna atop the Paquin High Rise building (affectionately called "The Fence" by the group of volunteer engineers who constructed the thing) to receive a public television station signal from Kansas City, KCPT. This actually worked for about a year but K56AU's low power TV signal reached only an 11–mile radius from its tower and was hampered by frequent outages. After a major ice and windstorm destroyed the antenna, New Wave Corp. abandoned the station, K56AU eventually was licensed to Trinity Broadcast Network. and operated as a repeater for Trinity's religious programming.

In 1984 the station entered an agreement with the University of Missouri to move its transmitter from Paquin Tower to a 200-foot tower on land owned by the University on Route Z, several miles north of downtown Columbia. Its power was reduced from 40 kW ERP to its present 36 kW ERP. This move came after years of unsuccessful attempts by the university to get the FCC to either revoke or significantly modify KOPN's license to broadcast with 40 kW ERP at the Paquin Tower location. The university claimed that RF interference from KOPN caused problems for operations and experiments at its nearby Chemistry and Physics buildings. After spending far more on legal fees in its unsuccessful efforts with the FCC than it actually cost to move the facilities, the university finally offered to pay to move the station's transmitting facilities to its current location on Route Z.