THE NATIONAL ‘ALTERNATIVE’ MEDIA, true to its Frisco-centric ways, has been treating the attempted upscaling of a Berkeley, Calif. community radio station as a story of national import.
That kind of deadening air’s nothing new to folks up here.
KRAB, a Seattle station of similar vintage and format to that Calif. station, was the subject of an attempted gentrification attempt in the ’80s. The operation was a success–the patient died. The frequency’s now used by none other than KNDD, the local outlet for all your next-Beasties and next-Korn wannabe acts.
In the mid-’90s, KCMU, the Univ. of Washington student station that had given just about all your “Seattle Scene” superstars their first airplay (and where I’d DJ’d for a year), was the subject of a sort of palace coup by UW administrators.
The station was placed under Wayne Roth, the bureaucrat who ran KUOW, the UW’s NPR affiliate. He tried to rein in KCMU’s eclectic programming, eliminating what a management memo called “harsh and abrasive music” in favor of baby-boomer-friendly world beat and blues; all in hopes of attracting a demographic market segment favorable to corporate “underwriters.”
After listener boycotts and DJ resignations and some heavy-handed PR against the moves, Roth and the UW compromised. KCMU would henceforth be run by a paid staff instead of volunteers; its on-air delivery would be slicked up. But indie rock (though not hard-punk), avant-jazz, and difficult-listening music would remain in the mix.
Now all that may be changing again.
While details are still sketchy, the rumor mill and the local news media have been awash in speculation about KCMU’s future. Seems the UW’s top brass has been talking among itself about transferring the station out from under Roth and KUOW and to the university’s “computing and communications” unit.
Roth, who maneuvered to get KCMU onto his turf, isn’t letting it go without a spat. He’s spoken publicly about his worries that the move would put the station’s programming under the thumb of potential big donors, and named Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project museum as just such a possible donor/influence-peddler.
Of course, that’s not really all that different from what Roth wanted to do with KCMU in ’93-’94.
Except Roth would be on the outside of the dealin’, and on the inside would be folks (like the heavy-hittin’ musicologists and rock historians staffing E.M.P.) who just might want to make it into a more professionally-run version of the serious-music-lover’s station the pre-Roth KCMU had been.
Anyhow, the station’s future has yet to be officially announced. Even if it does go under new management, KCMU might change in ways longtime fans such as myself might not necessarily like. (It could become an all-oldies station for rock historians, for instance.)
But if the potential new regime plays its cards right, it could become an experiment in community radio’s rebirth.
Tune in and find out.
IN OTHER NEWS: This just might be the best news story of the year….
TOMORROW: Art-film nostalgia.
ELSEWHERE:
