Jacor Communications Vice President Lee Larsen, Dean Willard D. Rowland Jr. and CU-Boulder Chancellor Richard Byyny cap the celebration of Jacor’s donation with a pose in front of the new call letters.
The gift, valued at $1.5 million, adds a new dimension in broadcast opportunities and curriculum for students at the School and across the campus.
Call letters for the new station are KVCU, representing "The Voice of CU."
Cincinnati-based Jacor donated the frequency used by KBCO-AM in Boulder at 1190 khz and a transmitter site east of Boulder. The station will begin broadcasting Aug. 15. "It’s a donation to the University that we have long sought," said Dean Willard D. Rowland Jr. "It came about due to deregulation in radio and changing opportunities broadcast companies have for building up multiple stations within a market area."
Jacor, which owns AM giant KOA and several other stations in Denver and along the Front Range, recently reached an agreement to obtain an FM station in Fort Collins. But the Federal Communications Commission regulates how many stations a corporation can own in a given market, and Jacor was at the limit
"We found ourselves in the happy circumstance of having one more station than we were allowed legally," said Lee Larsen, vice president and general manager of Jacor Broadcasting Colorado.
The University jumped at the chance.
"I was very enthused about it," said Richard Byyny, chancellor of CU’s Boulder campus. "It seemed like a good opportunity."
Rowland said CU was more than willing to own a local radio station.
"The lower 20 percent of the FM bandwidth is largely reserved for non-commercial stations, but in this geographic area none has been available for quite awhile. So the School and the University have kept feelers out for the donation of a station," he said.
KVCU will be administered through the School "on the Academic Affairs side of the campus," Rowland said, and will have three primary elements:
- To provide educational and extracurricular opportunities for students.
- To provide service to its listening area, which is largely Boulder County.
- To provide exposure to University activities.
Rowland said he expects KVCU to have a format that reflects the University’s diverse student and academic interests.
"Students have a wide variety of musical formats they are interested in," Rowland said. "The station will have student operators under professional management and a mix of news, music, sports and special, often short features intermixed throughout the day.
"What we’re hoping for is that many students will get involved with news and entertainment features relating to the music. We’re also hoping to attract students from other fields, such as music, art, dance and theater, to write and perform for radio."
Although the station will be publicly owned (initially by the Foundation), Rowland said, it won’t be much like those carrying a full schedule of National Public Radio programs.
"It will include some national syndicated services, however," he said.
Keeping KVCU up and running -- from programming, engineering and on-air talent to the business side -- will require students from many academic disciplines.
"We expect we’ll have students involved in all areas of management and operation," Rowland said. A general manager with professional experience will be hired and placed in charge of the station.
KVCU will operate out of studios now occupied by student-operated KUCB, a "carrier-frequency" station located in the basement of the University Memorial Center. CU students decided to make the studio space available for KVCU.
For students at the School, the new station presents all kinds of new opportunities.
University lost earlier broadcast opportunities An interesting historical footnote to Jacor Communication Inc.’s donation to the University is that one of the company’s stations helped CU lose its first broadcast facility, according to Dean Willard D. Rowland Jr. In the early 1920s, the University was authorized to have a 1,000-watt station. That station, KFAJ, had its power cut to 100 watts by federal authorities when KOA in Denver went on the air as a heavy wattage regional operation. Uninterested in maintaining broadcasts with such a weak signal, the University allowed its license to lapse in 1925. Over the past 70-odd years, KOA changed hands several times and now is a Jacor property. "It is wonderful to know the circle is being completed," Rowland said. Rowland also offered this sidelight. A return to the airwaves for CU seemed imminent in the late 1960s when Corporation for Public Broadcasting incentive programs encouraged colleges and universities to apply for program grants. The University applied for and obtained a license and construction permits from the Federal Communication Commission and even got a federal facilities-construction grant.> The University returned everything, however, after students and administrators couldn’t work together on the project. Some students involved with the project later became involved with the creation of public radio station KGNU-FM in Boulder. |
"I
expect the School will add a radio track," Rowland said. Associate Dean Meg Moritz said the School is trying to fast-track curriculum changes that could range from new courses to new majors. "I’ve been looking at the possibility of creating a radio specialization track in the broadcast sequence, similar to the existing broadcast news and broadcast production management tracks," said Moritz, head of the School’s electronic media sequence. "I’m working with our other broadcast faculty trying to bring this together with possible approval for fall. The idea would be for a student to get four or five courses aimed specifically at radio. The students could participate in maybe two or three practicums at the new station." The donation required Jacor, the University, the School and students to sort out dozens of complex academic, technical and legal issues. Rowland was chair of the committee that arranged the donation. Three subcommittees were formed. Moritz served on the programming subcommittee and Assistant Dean Steve Jones was appointed to the governance subcommittee and the facilities and equipment subcommittee. Formal arrangements for the donation were handled through the University of Colorado Foundation. After months of fine-tuning, the donation was announced at a March 30 celebration sponsored by the Foundation in the Koenig Alumni Center. During the ceremonies, Larsen explained his company envisioned the gift as something that would benefit the students, the community, the University and the broadcast industry. "We do want to have the opportunity to see the students in as realistic a situation as possible," he said. "I started my career in college radio. We’ll be listening because we’re always looking for good talent." Following Larsen, Rowland hinted that Jacor’s gift may also boost School ambitions well beyond KVCU’s listening area, with the help of some power upgrades and networking agreements. "We would like to someday provide an opportunity for The Voice of Colorado to be heard around the state," he said. |