New (radio) wave
The University of Colorado's AM revolution
by Jeremy Breningstall

It started with Spiritualized's "Electricity Mainline" cutting into Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." At 7 a.m. on November 4, the University of Colorado finally hit the public airwaves, 24 years after the first funds were set aside for that purpose. Radio 1190, "the AM Revolution," can now be picked up without a cable current.

After having to deal with floods, consultants, referendums, threatened budget elimination, and an attempted co-opt by professors at the School of Journalism, the donation of dial space by the Jacor Corporation (who had exceeded their legal limits for the number of stations they could own in one market) brought a substantial sense of relief to the members of the one- time KUCB.

"We never had too many listeners, and we were mostly just being heard in the dorms," said Stacey Thompson, the station's student general manager.

"Actually just being able to hear ourselves is something that I'd never realized what would be like."

"I actually slept at the station the night we went up so we could get in. We didn't have keys yet," said Justin Crowe, production director. Amidst a radio landscape that can be narrowed down to about six bands, Radio1190 is staking its claim on names like Jets to Brazil, Silver Jews, and Appleseed Cast.

Crowe said of the competition, "Radio in Colorado is dominated by very overtly commercial stations who don't really take very many risks. They have a homogenized format where you pretty much know what you're going to hear on any given day.

"We're not singles-based. It gets very tiring hearing the same song over and over again-especially when you work at a radio station."

Jason Mueller, music director, said that during the day, shows on KVCU will be a mixture of pre-selected programming (chosen by the members of the station's music department) and songs picked out by the disc jockies.

Part of the obligation Mueller's department feels is in sorting through 50-odd music genres to pick out songs that people haven't heard, present them, and put them into context. While sticking primarily to a college-alternative format, KVCU is attempting, with varying degrees of success, to bring depth to that format.

From 7-9 p.m. during the week is an all-request hour, where purportedly you can call in and request just about anything at all, and hear it on the air.

"We're open to stuff that you wouldn't think you'd hear on radio, period," said Mueller. "We have a lot of local bands calling in to request their CDs."

Following that, the slots from nine till one a.m. are taken up by specialty programming (garage, rockabilly, punk, industrial, jazz, etc.). At one o'clock the station goes off the air, to return at seven the next morning.

Sunday evenings are composed of the Sunday Magazine shows (news, wrestling commentary, movie criticism, etc.), and news and sports updates are also interspersed throughout the week.

"It's almost like listening to a station in progress, a work in progress," said Jim Musil, the newly imposed professional general manager, whose previous work was at the University of Minnesota.

"We're here to train students in all areas of broadcast. Also, we're here to be a public radio voice for Denver and Boulder. Public radio has always served to challenge the listener without being controlled by commercial interests."

Crowe said, "I don't think we'll ever kowtow to the administration too much ... If somebody swears on the air, they're out. We take care of that."

KVCU's programming is still too far into the embryonic stages to predict what role the administration will ultimately play. The programming has been aesthetically challenging (they have the best rock gig going in town), but not politically provocative.

"We fostered a really cooperative venture between what the university wanted, and what the students wanted. Despite what they might all say, they're not really all that different," Musil said.

"(The Student Union) had been giving us money the whole time, while the rest of the university was still stuck in paperwork," adds Thompson.

Everyone must be happy that the station can be heard beyond a few blocks. Crowe, thinking back into the lore, talks of going into the station at nine or ten at night, only to find a chicken roaming around the place. "That was when KUCB was in its darker days," he said.