Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

On the first weekday of the new year, KUSP will be changing the air times of three of our mid-day programs.

We’re making this change in collaboration with KALW in San Francisco,our production partners for “Your Call” with Rose Aguilar. Beginning on January 3, “Your Call” will start one hour earlier, at 10:00 AM Pacific.

The change for “Your Call” leads to two other changes. “The Diane Rehm Show” will also start one hour earlier, at 11:00 AM. Both hours of Diane’s show will air in succession, rather than being broken up as it is now, so it will run until 1:00 PM.

BBC Newshour continues live from London at 1:00 PM, and will now be followed by “The Story” with Dick Gordon, which moves from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Based on listener surveys and informal feedback, we think “Your Call” will reach more listeners in the earlier time slot on both KUSP and KALW (the program originally was scheduled at 10:00 on KALW, prior to the time we joined them as partners in the show in the fall of 2008). We’re also responding to listener feedback that preferred the two-consecutive-hour format for “The Diane Rehm Show.”

The rest of our schedule remains unchanged, and as always, I’ll be interested to hear your feedback on these changes. Thanks!

Seizing on the opportunity presented by NPR’s termination of Juan Williams’ contract, Congressional Republicans have put a high priority on eliminating federal funding for (variously) NPR, public radio stations that are NPR members, or public broadcasting in general.

The GOP leadership did not wait until the new Congress (with a Republican majority in the House) convenes. Instead they sought to amend a bill unrelated to public broadcasting to prohibit Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds from being used by radio stations to pay for NPR programming and other services. It would also have prohibited direct support of NPR by CPB.

Like almost all NPR member stations, KUSP does use CPB support to pay a portion of our NPR programming costs, so the legislation would have directly affected KUSP. [Note: if anyone is interested in the deep accounting mechanics of CPB's grant programs that essentially compel KUSP to use at least some CPB support to pay for our NPR programs, please e-mail me; I fear most blog readers would be bored to tears by this information.]

A procedural vote on the House floor failed today by a vote of 239 to 171 (with 23 members not voting). Here is what I think is significant about this vote: not a single GOP member of the House voted on public radio’s side, so to speak. 3 House Democrats voted with 168 Republicans (John Adler of New Jersey, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, and Gene Taylor of Mississippi).

This lockstep GOP vote against public radio is unprecedented. Public broadcasting has always enjoyed some degree of bipartisan support in the House and the Senate — this is why the 1995 and 2005 efforts to cut off Federal support did not succeed. There were many Republicans who were prepared to vote in line with their own best judgment, and against the wishes of the party leadership of the time.

Such exercise of independent judgment appears to no longer be possible (as is true with so much in national and state politics nowadays). Given that the Republican Party will hold a sizable majority of House seats beginning in January, I have to conclude that the current economic system by which NPR, public radio, and public broadcasting operate is genuinely at risk.

I’m sure I’ll have more to write about on this topic in the months to come. Meantime, follow this link to see what Republican House Whip Eric Cantor had to say today about NPR. NPR’s own announcement about the House vote is linked here.

I’m happy to report that KUSP’s programming management team has reached an understanding with Gary Patton that will continue the broadcast of “The Land Use Report” on our station.

As is true for most of our programs, we receive ongoing feedback from listeners about the Land Use Report — some supportive, some critical. After hearing concerns about two different topics that were reported on this past summer, we initiated a discussion with Gary regarding his dual roles as a volunteer radio contributor for KUSP and as a practicing attorney Of Counsel to Wittwer & Parkin, LLP, of Santa Cruz. In late September it appeared that these discussions had reached an impasse, which led to an on-air announcement on the September 27 Land Use Report that the program would be discontinued at the end of November.

Our discussions continued in subsequent weeks, during which many community members expressed strong feelings about the high value of the Land Use Report as a public service to Monterey Bay area residents.

We now have an understanding about how Land Use Reports discussing topics where Patton has professional responsibilities as an attorney will disclose that fact. Because the 80-second broadcast format of the Land Use Report limits the amount of available detail, additional information about these situations will be made public through the Land Use Report transcripts and links page on our web site.

Reports that the Land Use Report would not continue made it into a couple of weekly newspapers as well as numerous online forums, so we put out a press release today announcing that the program will in fact continue. In that press release J.D. Hillard, Gary’s supervisor and the station’s executive in charge of talk and information programming, is quoted thus:

“This structure for reporting on Gary Patton’s client relationships means listeners will understand how his professional life overlaps with his volunteer role at KUSP. It means KUSP can both preserve the valuable service provided by the Land Use Report and provide the transparency listeners expect from their community public radio station.”

I’d just add that accountability and transparency issues seem to be all over the media these days (for further details, ask Juan Williams, Keith Olbermann, or any card-carrying pundit in the 202 area code). As J.D. says, we take our responsibilities in this area quite seriously. While we can’t please everyone, we hope in this case we’ve acted in a way that is responsible and in the best interests of Monterey Bay area residents who want to inform themselves about and take part in land use decision-making.

Last weekend (beginning Friday night 9/10) KUSP experienced a long interruption in our live audio stream services on the Internet. The signal was ultimately restored on Sunday morning 9/12. The problem was ultimately traced to one of the servers at our primary Internet service provider, Cruzio. We’re assured that changes to that server have now been implemented that will ensure this specific problem won’t happen again.

We appreciate hearing from our Internet listeners whenever you experience a persistent problem. Internet audio delivery is still not as reliable as old-fashioned FM, and sometimes glitches in the system aren’t immediately apparent to us here at the studio.

Final streaming note: this weekend we will present live radio broadcasts of the 53rd annual Monterey Jazz Festival — KUSP’s 30th consecutive year of live broadcasting from MJF. Alas, the Monterey Jazz Festival is the only KUSP program all year for which we do not have Internet stream music rights, so during the hours the live broadcast is on the air, we will insert encore broadcasts of recent KUSP jazz programs on our audio streams.

We would love to bring all our listeners the sounds of the Monterey Jazz Festival, wherever it is you listen, but the Festival management remains steadfast in maintaining strict control over MJF on the Internet. Visitors to kusp.org and to our Facebook page will get ongoing reports from Monterey as the weekend unfolds — consisting of content we create, as opposed to the live musical performances from the MJF stages.

KUSP would probably not exist, or would be nothing like it is today, without Don Mussell. Don came to KUSP in the year of its birth, 1972, and has provided the lion’s share of our technical guidance and support over the ensuing 38-plus years.

In recent years Don’s public radio-oriented time and energy has been concentrated in Hawaii. Hawaiian Airlines features Don in an article in their August-September in-flight magazine, Hana Hou, which is linked here.

It’s a nice piece about the challenges faced by broadcast engineers like Don who make public and community radio possible, in all kinds of places and conditions.

Congratulations to Don, and thanks to Debbie Walsh, one of our soul music programmers from days gone by, for tipping us off about the article!

Last week, Big Sur area listeners began experiencing problems receiving our translator at 95.3 FM. Murphy’s Law dictates that the hardest-to-troubleshoot problems with our equipment will crop up when our Chief Engineer is out of state, and so it was this time.

He’s back now, and went to Big Sur to investigate first thing today. It appears that there’s a problem with the final power amplifier for the translator (the last piece of equipment before the signal goes up the transmission line to the antenna, and out to you). The problem seems to be aggravated by fluctuations in the voltage of the utility power coming into our equipment, which we’re also experiencing.

We’ve made adjustments to the power amplifier this afternoon that we hope will cure, or at least minimize, the audible signal problem. Longer term (as in, before winter) we plan on repairing a more robust power amplifier that is presently out of service and substituting it for the amplifier that’s been pitching a fit.

Big Sur listeners — if you continue to experience reception problems, especially if they persist for more than a few minutes, please phone the station at 800-655-5877 and let us know. We depend on you to help us keep tabs on our occasionally-grumpy equipment…

NPR’s Daniel Schorr passed away this morning at the age of 93. It would be no less accurate to say “America’s Daniel Schorr,” given his unparalleled record of reporting and analyzing the news for the past 64 years — beginning as a foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and concluding with 25 years of service as a Senior News Analyst for NPR.

KUSP broadcast a one-hour retrospective on his career in news tonight at 6:00 PM, but given the short notice I’m sure not as many people heard it as might have liked to. The Dan Schorr Memorial Special is linked from this page at npr.org, which has additional details about the life and career of this extraordinary newsman.

I think all of KUSP’s news and information programs uphold the values of public radio journalism. The approaches differ, which is one of the reasons we carry the range of programs we do.

We try to keep up with, and spotlight, stories on our shows that have special resonance to the communities we serve. One story in particular escaped our advance attention, but it’s an extraordinary piece of public radio and, even though we’ve already run it on the air, I feel that I just have to call it to your attention.

This American Life show #406, which we aired on Sunday 4/24/2010, has as its theme “True Urban Legends.” Most of the first half of the show is focused on Steve Poizner, Republican candidate for Governor of California. It’s not about his political career, exactly; instead it focuses on the time Poizner taught at Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose, and the book he wrote about his experiences there.

This American Life expands on their reporting on this web page, with links to more data that refutes much of Poizner’s characterization of the school at which he taught.

Poizner’s campaign claims their polls show that he is rapidly closing ground on Meg Whitman for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, as this San Jose Mercury News story reports. If so, the more Californians know about Poizner, the better – and the story on TAL certainly taught me something. You can hear the whole show streamed by following the links you see above.

Also: Sunday night we broadcast a debate between Poizner and Whitman, moderated by John Meyers of The California Report. The debate is archived here.

Listeners to three of our FM translators are presently experiencing reception problems that are turning out to be hard to fix. Translators are pieces of equipment that rebroadcast the KUSP 88.9 signal into areas where terrain makes reception difficult.

In Los Gatos (90.3 FM – also serves nearby communities, including Saratoga, Campbell, and parts of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino) we are facing long waiting times for repairs by Verizon and AT&T. The two telephone companies team up to provide the audio link to our translator site (AT&T serves our studio location, Verizon provides phone service in Los Gatos). Something is broken in the link and after several days of troubleshooting they don’t seem close to finding and fixing the problem. The next step is to bring in more personnel, but that isn’t going to happen until next Wednesday, April 21.

As we were doing battle with our problems in Los Gatos both of our translators on the Monterey County coast began to malfunction. We broadcast to Palo Colorado Canyon on 91.3 and to the Big Sur area on 95.3.

The symptoms of the problem, as reported by our listeners, have been inconsistent. Our chief engineer appreciates listener reports of technical difficulty, the more detailed the better. Key information includes telling us when you are experiencing problems (date and time), the nature of the problem, and how best to follow up with you (name, phone number, e-mail). You can send us reception reports via e-mail to brant@kusp.org.

Rest assured that we will put things right just as soon as we are able to.

This week the Carter Journalism Institute at New York University announced their picks for the top ten works of journalism in the decade from 2000 to 2009. Five were produced by daily newspapers, four were books.

The only piece of broadcast journalism so honored was “The Giant Pool of Money,” the first episode of This American Life that was produced by TAL in collaboration with NPR News. “The Giant Pool of Money” first aired on May 9, 2008 and stands out as the most lucid explanation of America’s home mortgage crisis. The show spawned “Planet Money,” NPR’s ongoing blog and broadcast series about the economy.

We’ve been believers in This American Life since it was just getting started. KUSP’s first broadcast was in 1997, about 350 episodes ago… but no episode is more deserving of this honor than “The Giant Pool of Money.” Congratulations to Ira Glass, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, and everyone else involved in the show. And thanks go out to our loyal listener-contributors, whose financial support for KUSP is part of what makes it possible for This American Life to exist!