Travis Holcombe Takes Freaks Only Off KCRW and Onto the Internet

Travis Holcombe has moved his radio show Freaks Only from KCRW to an internet station of his own, which now broadcasts around the clock. Billboard reported the move on 5 November 2026.

KCRW is the public radio station in Los Angeles. Holcombe spent 14 years there. From 2014 to 2020 he hosted a 10 p.m. to midnight weeknight show under his own name. In 2021 he took over the 8 to 10 p.m. weeknight slot full-time with Freaks Only.

His exit came during cuts at the station. In October 2025, KCRW cut 10% of its staff, citing federal budget cuts, and Holcombe left in that round of layoffs. According to Billboard, the station then offered him the chance to keep Freaks Only going one night a week. He turned that down.

He did win something in the talks. Holcombe kept the right to use the Freaks Only name after negotiating with KCRW. That name now belongs to his own station.

In May, he launched Freaks Only FM, an online radio station that takes the show into a 24-hour format. Radio that streams over the internet, rather than through a traditional broadcast signal, can be heard from the station's website and through an app. Holcombe runs it from his home. It is supported by donations and a base of subscribers, who pay to back the station.

The station describes itself as an internet radio station curated by Holcombe and broadcasting from Los Angeles. Its programming covers punk, funk, disco and post-punk. Anyone can tune in at freaksonly.fm.

KCRW has described the original show as featuring emerging artists, rare gems and "no boundaries." That mix is the same one the station now hears from a home studio rather than from its building. For listeners who followed the show through the 8 p.m. hour, the change is simple: the same name, a different place to find it, and a station that never signs off.