Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

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.