Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

I am, it’s fair to say, sometimes overwhelmed by the deluge of Christmas music in stores and other commercial locations. I’m still not sure what to think about hearing Bob Dylan’s Christmas album (the whole thing, on repeat) at a local sandwich shop last week.

But sometimes it’s nice to have a few “seasonal favorites,” as we call them at KUSP, at your beck and call. For the second year in a row NPR Music comes through with “Jingle Jams,” an on-line loop of holiday tunes picked by ten of America’s top public radio stations with musical formats.

“Eclectic” is an apt word for a winter wonderland that includes Louis Armstrong, the London Philharmonic and John Aldiss Choir, the Ramones, Robert Earl Keen, Run D.M.C. and the Waitresses. Best of all (from my perspective), a track from the supremely talented Woody Phillips makes the playlist this year, as it did in 2008. Find Maestro Woody’s full repertoire of workshop masterpieces on Gourd Records here.

NPR’s Jingle Jams plays on a loop so you’ll pick up the playlist at some random point if you launch the stream on your computer. If you’re in the mood, go find it…

On Sunday morning, December 13, KUSP will broadcast a special 3-hour program looking back at the most interesting moments on public radio in 2009. The show starts at 9:00 AM, right after Weekend Edition Sunday.

Robert Siegel and Ari Shapiro of NPR News are hosting; the supporting cast includes most of public radio’s luminaries, including all the hosts of the programs that usually occupy that time period: Tom and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk, Peter Sagal of Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! and Ira Glass of This American Life.

The Best of Public Radio is also a fund-raising program, tied in to our overall end-of-the-year campaign. During the show you’ll be able to call a toll-free pledge number or make a gift on-line. Nothing fancy — we’re trusting that you’ll take this opportunity to make a gift to KUSP (if you haven’t contributed recently) and ensure that the best of public radio in 2010 will be coming your way in the months to come!

Early this Friday morning (12/5) you can hear the debut broadcast of “The Fuze” with Eddie Hudson on KUSP. Eddie describes the show this way: “The Fuze” will feature jazz fusion music celebrated since the late 60’s including Chicago, Miles Davis, Weather Report, multiple-Grammy-Award winner Herbie Hancock and many others.

The show will run early Friday mornings (or late Thursday nights, if you prefer) from 12 midnight until 2:00 AM.

“The Fuze” will hold the time slot previously held by “The Trip” — hosted by Chris Niemitz since 1997. Chris is retiring the show after 12 years of late night radio on KUSP — a remarkable length of run for a volunteer-hosted late night show anywhere. Thanks go out to Chris for his talent and dedication for all these years.

If you’re not up when “The Fuze” airs live, you’ll be able to hear it any time with The KUSP Music Player…

This morning NPR announced that Carl Kasell is retiring after thirty years as the top-of-the-hour newscaster on Morning Edition. Carl began working at NPR News in 1975, and started on the early morning shift when Morning Edition went on the air in 1979.

Happily, Carl will continue as Official Judge and Scorekeeper on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

I will attest that Carl is every bit the thoughtful journalist, gentleman and wit in person that he comes across as on the air. I’ll miss waking up to his voice on weekdays, but I’m very glad he’ll still be part of public radio — and KUSP — on Wait Wait…

Tonight the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports the death of Morton Marcus, a towering figure in our area’s literary community. Mort was my friend and, for many many years, a host of “The Poetry Show” on KUSP.

Wallace Baine writes of Mort’s life and accomplishments here. Mort carried on as one of the hosts of “The Poetry Show” for as long as his health permitted, and we have surely felt his loss these past few months… but not to the extent I feel it now.

All of us at KUSP mourn his passing, extend our sympathy and support to everyone who was close to Mort, and celebrate the gift his presence was for so long as a part of our station.

We’ve resumed operation on FM 95.3 in Big Sur after a three-day interruption due to equipment failure. Our technical support people, led by Chief Engineer Brant Herrett, rounded up loaner equipment from other stations to make our return to the air possible. We’ve tested the antenna system to make sure the storm did no additional damage after we went off the air on Monday night, and everything looks OK.

As always, we ask our listeners, especially those listening to us via our FM translators, to let us know if they experience problems receiving our signal. Call our toll-free studio number, 800-655-5877.

We have additional repair work to do at Big Sur over the next couple of weeks to get everything back to normal, but there should be no lengthy interruptions in service as a result.

Late Monday 10/12, as a early-season storm blew on to the Central Coast, KUSP’s Big Sur translator at 95.3 went off the air. A technician living in the area inspected our equipment (following directions sent by cell phone from our Santa Cruz-based Chief Engineer, Brant Herrett) and determined there had been a major failure in the transmitting equipment beyond his capability to fix. KUSP’s spare equipment inventory had already been strained to the limit by failures in our HD Radio transmitter on Mount Toro (about which I had blogged here).

Consequently, we have nothing in our inventory to put into service in Big Sur and (given the storm situation) some uncertainty as to when our principal engineers can get there to start repairing what’s on site and now out of commission.

We are reaching out to other stations to see if there is any equipment we can borrow or rent in order to get our Big Sur signal back on the air. It should be obvious that the middle of a pledge drive, with a major storm brewing, is about the absolute worst possible time for us to be off the air, especially in a place where our broadcast signal is so important to listeners. No apology we can offer to the people of Big Sur will be adequate.

Our engineering team will do the best they can with what they have, as always. And I’ll try to update this blog as the situation develops.

Next Tuesday, September 29, KUSP’s Big Sur translator will move from 105.9 FM to 95.3 FM.

The change in frequency is necessary because the FCC has authorized a new commercial FM station on 105.9 in that part of Monterey County. FM translators, which are the kind of broadcasting facilities we have in Big Sur (as well as in Palo Colorado Canyon, Hollister/Gilroy, and Los Gatos/Saratoga/Campbell and vicinity), are “secondary” services — which means that if the FCC adds a new full-power station to the FM band that might receive interference from us, we have to get out of their way.

Thankfully, our consulting engineer, Don Mussell, identified another slot we could move to under the rules, and we will be making that move this coming Tuesday.

There may be minor coverage differences between the 105.9 and the 95.3 signals, but they should not be significant.

If you have friends or associates in the Big Sur area, you can help us spread the word about the change. FM listening options are few in and around Big Sur, and we sure don’t want anyone to be left behind. Especially since we’re close to the start of our Fall Membership Drive (October 8)!

Tonight about 8:00 PDT the main KUSP 88.9 transmitter shut down and won’t restart. While modern FM transmitters have a lot of built-in redundancy and outright failures are rare, some parts of the system don’t have back-ups — and it would appear something in that category malfunctioned. Our engineers are on their way to the transmitter site right now to see what happened.

The kusp.org audio stream is unaffected, as are the 89.1 translator serving Hollister, Gilroy, and points north, and the 89.3 translator that serves part of the Santa Cruz area.

I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

12:30 AM update: Our engineers suspect there is a problem in our FM exciter, a key piece of equipment that takes our stereo audio signal and uses it to synthesize the 88.9 FM signal (which is then amplified and sent to the antenna). An attempt to put a back-up FM exciter into service was unsuccessful (some kind of problem with its power supply). So the primary (and suspect) FM exciter is back in service pending repair and reinstallation of the back-up unit, or discovery and repair of whatever is wrong with the primary exciter in the first place. Not the ideal state of affairs, especially in the middle of a holiday weekend, but it is the best our team can offer you at the moment…

5:00 PM update 9-6-09: The primary FM exciter malfunctioned again about 12:40 PM this afternoon. We were able to round up the parts needed to fix the back-up exciter (thank you Santa Cruz Electronics for being open on Sunday of Labor Day weekend!) and restore programming everywhere by mid-afternoon.

At noon today the 91.7 MHz public radio facility that serves the Highway 101 corridor from King City south to Paso Robles (and communities west of there) passed from KUSP’s ownership to our colleagues to the south, at KCBX. KCBX now has three major transmitters: KSBX 89.5 in the Santa Barbara area; KCBX 90.1 for northern Santa Barbara County and most of San Luis Obispo County; and what will be (after the FCC approves a change in call letters) KNBX 91.7 north of that.

This change in ownership furthers the strategic plans of KUSP and KCBX, and has been under study by our stations for almost a year. For KCBX, the acquisition of the 91.7 frequency fills in areas of poor coverage in the northern part of their home county, San Luis Obispo, and adds coverage in more rural parts of southern Monterey County — a place that, culturally, has more in common with San Luis Obispo County than it does with the communities ringing Monterey Bay and the urbanized areas along 101 (from Salinas north to Silicon Valley), where almost all of KUSP’s audience lives and works.

For KUSP, this transition is a strategic move that accomplishes three important and interrelated goals.

First, it strengthens us in financial terms. That in turn makes it possible to keep moving forward in two critical programming areas — building a team to bring you the news and issues in our area that you care about, and building the capacity at kusp.org to get all our programming to our audience how they want, when they want, wherever they are.

In the past year KUSP has invigorated our news and information service, and you have responded. Our audience research indicates the station’s core audience — the number of people who depend on us more than any other station — is about 30% bigger than it was in early 2008, and as big or bigger than at any time in KUSP history. More people are tuning in more often, and stay with us longer. Audience size is not the only measure of how a public radio station serves its audience, but it’s significant.

And in the past year we have worked very hard to build kusp.org into a public media center that can carry our station and our values far into the future. The RadioEngage project, developed with our partners at Quiddities and supported by a generous grant from the Knight Foundation, is just about ready to go. We know that the choice and interactivity the Internet brings our community of listeners has changed, and will continue to change, our public radio world — profoundly and irreversibly.

Thirty-eight years ago, the people who started our station didn’t sit around and just pine for their own AM radio station — they went out and got an FM license, even though FM listening was only a tiny fraction of AM listening in 1971. They saw what the medium was capable of and moved to secure that capability for their community. We reap the rewards of their foresight around the clock, every day.

Now, we must do something nearly as bold. We need to strengthen the over-the-air service built on our founders’ foresight, and move — quickly — to build a great on-line service. If the world of public media moved more slowly, we might have chosen to wait until the economy had recovered, before charging ahead into the world of on-line listening and connectivity though mobile devices like the iPhone. But I think all of the professional and volunteer leaders at KUSP agree that it’s necessary for us to move assertively. This arrangement with KCBX is one step towards securing the substantial financial resources we need to go forward.

When KUSP put KBDH San Ardo on the air in 2001, we filled in one of the largest geographic gaps in public radio coverage in California. The transaction completed today maintains public radio service for everyone in or passing through the 91.7 signal area, something we felt was vital. And, having finished this particular transaction, we hope to explore future collaborations with KCBX in other ways that strengthen public radio in central California overall.

I wouldn’t leave this subject without thanking the hundreds of KUSP supporters in southern Monterey and northern SLO County who have listened and contributed to our station these past eight years. As Internet and mobile device technology improves (and this is happening at lightning speed) we’ll still be a listening option for many of you.

We hope that these changes benefit everyone in the long run. Indeed, we’re confident they will.