Soul of a Station

Friday, Aug. 21, 1998 | 9:35 a.m.

In the beginning, the programming was more commodes than Commodores.

In a display of lax water conservation and questionable taste, a student disc jockey broadcasting from a restroom at the UNLV student union would typically bark out the fledging station's call letters -- KJON, get it? -- and follow by flushing a nearby toilet.

Not that the on-air talent at KJON needed to worry about offending a multitude of listeners or the Federal Communications Commission with "Animal House"-quality hijinks. The signal was limited to the student union building.

The station's demographics showed it did very well among UNLV students studying while munching on cheap cafeteria food.

"This station started from the very bottom," said UNLV graduate Joel Habbeshaw, a former deejay at what became FCC-licenced FM station KUNV 91.5-FM, and now the national director of programing at Holywood Records. "I know it was raw at the beginning, but eventually it was a very polished station that was a benefit to the campus and created a lot of opportunities."

Certainly, the campus radio climate has evolved considerably over the past three decades at UNLV. Its lavatory experiment blossomed into a 15,000-watt radio station, which has become a flashpoint in a tussle between student leaders who surrendered control of the station in December 1997 and the full-time staffers who dumped the popular "Rock Avenue" program and switched the station to an all-jazz format.

Consequently, student leaders -- including UNLV Student Senate President Rick Kimbrough and student body President Will Price -- joined with a loosely tied organization calling itself the Rock Avenue Alliance and petitioned the state Board of Regents on Aug. 6 to return control of the station to the students.

"We have the blessing from the regents to work with the university," Kimbrough said. "There will be some changes. But exactly what we'll do, we won't know until we sit down with (UNLV President) Dr. (Carol) Harter to discuss it."

KUNV station manager Don Fuller said he's not aware of his role in the transition of the station.

"I was brought on, on a one-year basis, as the interim station manager," Fuller said. "That was four years ago. I do have a lot of opinions on how the station, a 15,000-watt station, should serve 1.3 million people with a professional sound and approach. That was my goal when I first started."

A matter of taste

The crux of the students' argument is that KUNV should reflect the musical tastes and sensibilities of the campus population. In particular, dumping "Rock Avenue" -- a KUNV staple since it gained its FCC license in 1981 -- was particularly galling to the Rock Avenue Alliance and the student government.

"Before, when the students weren't happy with KUNV, there was a feeling we could do other things with our money," Kimbrough said. "But it seemed like the people who were in charge had it out for 'Rock Avenue,' which showed there was not a strong commitment to the students once they weren't receiving our money. We have to pay for what we want."

At a rate of $90,000 per year, to be precise.

Though Kimbrough has only a vague idea of what the revamped KUNV will provide, he does have some specific thoughts of how the station could better represent the campus climate at UNLV.

"We'd like to see a much wider representation of music on the air," Kimbrough said. "Jazz would be a part of it. We could have classical, rap, Hispanic, 'Rock Avenue,' of course, sports and a news/talk program. But as a campus radio station, I feel like we need an eclectic mix of music, and I think most of the students and the people who have listened to the station in the past would agree."

But mention "eclectic," to Fuller and KUNV Program Director Brian Sanders and they counter with the term, "consistency."

"We have to understand what the people who are listening to this station want," said Fuller, a retired retail sales representative whose only experience in radio was as a college intern in Philadelphia. "What we've found is that jazz is what is preferred, and that the listers like a consistent format."

Prior to the shift to an all-jazz format, KUNV offered a musical potpourri that was popular with many students but could be confusing, Sanders said.

"I was listening to the station one time while I was driving and it was playing jazz, really nice music," Sanders said. "Then I got out of the car, went to dinner, got back in the car and was hit with some guy screaming about death and violence on 'Rock Avenue.' It was completely different, and I hadn't switched the dial."

Sanders has also received a three-inch stack of letters and faxes at the station, the vast majority praising the all-jazz format and bemoaning the proposed change in programing.

"I know the rock format has a lot of fans," Sanders said. "But the jazz format is very popular with the adult, educated community, the people who are active and interested in funding a radio station. I'm not passing judgment on a particular type of music, but jazz is a mainstay of public radio along with classical and news and information."

However, Kimbrough stresses that the swift action of UNLV student government leaders, as well as the 50-member Rock Avenue Alliance (which organized a successful protest concert at the Huntridge Theatre in June that drew 1,300 devotees) indicates the station made a mistake in switching to jazz.

"What's happened, which has been a blessing in disguise, is that this issue has showed a lot of people are interested in what's going on at KUNV," Kimbrough said. "The students who pay the fees should have a hand in making the decisions."

Money matters

However, Fuller bolsters his pro-jazz contention with financial figures from the station's latest fund drive in May. The station raised $51,835 in what was the first of two fund drives this year, with $38,563 donated during 82 hours of jazz programing and $13,272 in 87 hours of rock programing.

"When we had 'Rock Avenue,' our major donors were places like tattoo parlors, which is cool," Fuller said. "But the problem was, they would never pay their bills. That's not cool."

Fuller said the station was wracked with disorganization, inferior equipment and inadequate working conditions when he arrived in 1994.

"We had very archaic equipment by industry standards, equipment you couldn't train a student on to send out into the field," Fuller said. "We had no fax machine, no copy machine, the basics you need to run even a bare-bones radio station."

Through money provided primarily through the university and private donations, the station has either replaced or refurbished each piece of broadcast-related equipment over the past two years and added the needed office equipment.

Fuller also negotiated with the university to add the paid position of program director, previously a student-occupied position. The station employs five full-time staffers, a number Kimbrough would like to whittle down to two.

"Cutting the budget is a high priority," Kimbrough said of the station's $290,000 budget, $185,000 of which is spent on salaries. "It's pretty lavish for a campus station."

But Fuller said he's "very opposed" to trimming the professional staff. "My intent when I got here was to pull the station together, because I was afraid we might lose our (FCC) license," Fuller said. "There was a lot of vulgarity and obscenity going out. We needed to become a professional operation as a 15,000-watt station and you need a lot of experienced people to pull that off."

College or pro?

However, former KUNV disc jockey and UNLV alum Donald Hickey said a campus radio station should expect experimental young deejays to perform their bad imitations of Howard Stern.

"It's like anything else, you have all-stars and you have people who won't make it," Hickey, who helped found the Rock Avenue Alliance, said. "When you have a lot of young talent on the air, you're going to have a wide range of results, some people who are all-stars and some who are awful. That's what campus radio is all about."

Not at a 15,000-watt station, argues UNLV Vice President of Student Services Robert Ackerman.

"It has to be professional because it reaches so many people," Ackerman said. "If it was 150 or 200 watts and just going out to students, it would be different. But this signal reaches the entire valley. You're not only reaching the students at UNLV, but an entire urban area, and we've talked to consultants who have told us that returning to the old format would make it difficult to keep the station going financially."

Also, though Fuller acknowledges that KUNV has never been a major player in the market-wide Arbitron ratings, the station has jumped from an average listening audience of 25,000 per day in the winter of 1997 to 40,000 since the all-jazz format was implemented.

"These people who are listening to jazz are willing to donate money to keep it going," Fuller said. "If the students want a rock-related program or something more eclectic, fine, but they'll have to pick up the slack and pay for it."

Sanders, who took the position at UNLV after working for 15 years as a producer at KNPR, was skeptical about whether a student could step in and efficiently run the station as well as a professional with two decades of experience.

"You want to take the professionals out of the equation, but who's going to provide the training?" said Sanders, who added that UNLV lacks a radio broadcast course. "There are opportunities here, plenty of them, but there has to be some training involved."

Even with a five-person professional staff -- the general manager, program director, business manager, receptionist and development director -- KUNV's staff includes 30 to 40 volunteers.

"If a student has the aptitude and attitude, we have a spot for him," Sanders said. "I had a kid tell me he wanted to be a broadcast journalist, and I told him, 'Great, how would you like to write some PSAs (public service announcements)?' He said, 'No, I want to be on the air.' You can't skip levels. Just because you want to be a pilot doesn't mean you should start out in a United DC-10."

That statement, predictably, draws ire from those who used KUNV as a springboard for a career in some form of radio broadcasting. Habbeshaw, a 1991 UNLV graduate, easily snaps off a list of UNLV contemporaries who list KUNV as their first broadcast opportunity:

Ken Jordan, a front man for the techno-dance band Chrystal Method; Kim Soliz, a program director for a station in Springfield, Mo.; Brett Green, the regional director of promotion for Sire Records; and Dana Crammer, a writer for BAM Magazine. Also, UNLV's current sports broadcast manager Tony Cordasco got his start at KUNV.

"The thing we all have in common is we were all students," Habbeshaw said. "We were students working at a campus station that was to benefit the students first, and we are all in our careers because of that."

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