Open Letter to the KPSU Community

Dear KPSU Radio Community, members of the past and the present,

I love you. When I was 11, I was involved in the Talented and Gifted program at my elementary school due to my high achievement in math, reading, and science. Along with a friend of mine, I attended a camp at Oregon State University for “kids like me,” at which we essentially enrolled in different courses, which we’d attend every day for two weeks. I decided to give radio a try, and my top 40, Eminem lovin’ self was thrown in with nine or so other kids, from ages 10 to 13. I can’t remember why I decided to do it, but all that matters now is that I did. I remember the exhilarating feeling that made over me, the rush of adrenaline which accompanied my first sentence spoken on air. It was likely a Public Service Announcement about the harmful effects of smoking or something, but that’s really irrelevant. After those weeks of camp, my new love for radio burrowed into my soul, not really knowing when it’d have the chance to emerge again. 

Cue junior, maybe senior year of high school. When looking at colleges, two things were important to me. Well, maybe three. The school had to be in a big city. It also needed a study abroad program. The third necessity? A radio station. In high school I geeked out over the similar taste to mine DJ’s at McMinnville’s Linfield College seemed to have, and longed to be part of such a community. 

I finally had my chance when I moved into the dorms at PSU during Fall of 2009 and attended a DJ orientation. I remember walking in, not necessarily feeling welcome, but sitting down on the couch with a grin, despite my newbie awkwardness. I was with a new friend of mine from the dorms, and a handful of others trickled in as the minute hand approached and then surpassed the 12. I was given a training checklist, with a list of people I needed to talk to, a looming ‘demo’ I was going to have to create, and the daunting task of finding two DJ’s to apprentice with. This all seemed rather terrifying, yet exciting all the same. I got through the training as quickly as possible, settling soon after into a time slot and a name, Haircut Meganomics. My heart pounded all the way through my first hour on the air, as I’m sure yours did, fellow DJ’s. 

Throughout my turbulent first year away from home, my radio show and my place in the KPSU community was sometimes the highlight of my week. I drifted in and out of social oblivion, having a hard time making friends who’d stick. My radio show was always there. I could always count on plopping on the couch at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays, playing whatever music I wanted, and venting awkwardly into a microphone, not caring who was listening. Without you, KPSU, I would have dropped out of school that first year. February of that crazy freshman year, I did something crazy, considering I was 18 and the rest of the paid staff were 21 or older. I applied to be the assistant music director. And I was offered the job. Suddenly I was one of three women among the 10 staff members, and by far the youngest. I reviewed music, received dozens of emails per day from bands and promoters, and opened a pile of envelopes addressed to the station, filled with discs of mysterious tunes, some much better than others. I made friends with the rest of the staff, at least as much as I could without being able to go out to bars with them after work. Working at KPSU became my life, a life I loved, and was proud of. Now I’m merely a DJ, spending 90 minutes there a week, following a year abroad. But KPSU is still and always will be an important place to me.  A place where people love radio, and music, and talking about it and creating it. Where people are enthusiastic and welcoming and passionate and supportive. Without being a part of this community, my freshman year would have been hell. And my current life would be a lot less rich. 

I see a bright future for you, with enough money raised to acquire a city-wide FM signal in the next year. The thought of it makes me want to stay at PSU forever, although I'm sure I'll have moved away from Portland. Best of luck, and I'll be back to finish often!

Thank you, KPSU!

-Megan Stahl aka Meganomics!

The Search for a Signal

I was a staff member when KPSU lost their leasing rights to KBPS, the A.M. signal we'd used for 15 years. It was awful, and awfully dramatic. Losing a signal meant losing credibility as a station, and although we received moral support from local businesses, there was really nothing to be done at the moment. We'd from then on be broadcast solely from our website at KPSU.org. On the bright side, we no longer had to abide by FCC regulations, a truth which led to perhaps an overuse of profanity by DJ's in an act of angst following our untimely unplugging. I experienced our transformation first-hand as a DJ, from a station with a signal to one without. I still value my show just as highly, and want to produce good content with a weekly theme, or at least provide information about artists when I talk on-air. When I consider the issue, it is a shame we don't have a signal, but I don't let it discourage me too much. The reason we don't have a signal is that it's tricky, expensive business, and most signals are taken. There are tons of rules concerning signals that I can't even begin to understand. Less than a year ago, one DJ in particular, now the programming director, took it upon himself to truly look into getting a new signal. Now, we're fundraising in order to afford the signal he's arranged.

In response to this anticipation, current Station Manager Jay Turk has decided to bring FCC rules back to the station, to be enforced up until 10 p.m. This means none of the "7 Deadly Words" can air, either spoken by DJs and their guests, or in songs. DJs have had to carefully plan their shows, checking lyrics of every song, in order to avoid breaking these rules. As he explained in a KPSU community-wide email,

        "The reasons for the switchback are two fold. First and foremost, we are working on increasing the wattage of our LPFM signal in the near future. Several of us DJs have been meeting over the last month, and have made a great deal of progress. In order for the FCC to grant us a bigger signal, we must prove we can broadcast under FCC rules. Second, we have received some complaints from folks on the first floor of Smith, where we are currently broadcast 24/7. This return to FCC Clean radio ensures our continued good standing with administration and other campus groups."

This change in the policy was an important step in the direction back toward more traditional airway friendly FM college radio, and was necessary and largely embraced by the DJs.

People outside of the community have asked me about the station, knowing that I'm involved there. Besides what type of music I play on my show, a common question is, what's the number of the station? In response to this, I currently have to say that we don't have a real signal, and only broadcast online. This is met with a telling "oh...cool," which says to me that the whole thing has been made way less impressive in their minds. A good friend of mine, who was a DJ at KPSU for around a year from 2009-2010, says, "I think it's lame because other cities have college radio... why can't we have it?" I lack the terminology and patience to explain exactly why to everyone; to outsiders it seems simple. Just get a signal! Programming director Luke Carlson is now hopeful, however! He wrote, in an introduction of himself to the community,

        "All last year a small band of unstoppable DJs began the long process to get us on the air. The real airwaves will add more of a concrete audience and give DJs a great way to reach people here in the Portland metro area."

With a real signal will be a real audience, that is, Portlanders driving around in their cars who want something else to listen to other than NPR and 94.7. People will finally have the chance to discover us, on accident, maybe while "seeking" through the FM stations in their car. Reaching people around the world is great, but being bigger parts of the lives of people right here in Portland, Oregon, will tie us closer to the local communities that surround us.

As longtime KPSU DJ Tage "Starheim" Savage puts it, "It sucks that people can't find good music [KPSU] randomly in this town. And by randomly I mean radio surfing to and from bar to bar, or alone in a dark room off of an alarm clock - the way I first listened to KPSU."

Some DJs feel that a real signal is less necessary and feel liberated by the total lack of FCC control. My friend Jon, who used to host an online-only radio show on a Seattle-based station, feels this way.

        "My radio show was on an online-only radio station, Hollow Earth Radio, for 5 years. It's a great feeling though to know that the FCC doesn't govern us and anyone from anywhere in the world can tune in at any time. There's a real freedom to it and I haven't felt like I was missing out by not being broadcast on a terrestrial station."

In my opinion, though, KPSU really has no choice but to move forward and arrange for a signal as soon as possible. The members of the KPSU community and listeners alike will notice a difference, and will surely benefit!

KPSU Community Spaces

The most obvious place where KPSU Radio community members gather is the station itself, in the sub-basement of Smith Memorial Student Union at Portland State University. Anyone who walks into the station (or rather, rings the bell at the locked lobby door) will run into or be greeted by members of the KPSU community, at least if it’s between 10 am and midnight on any day of the week. That’s not to say that several members are ever in the space at the same time. Often only 2 or 3 DJ’s will be in the lobby at a time, with one doing a show, one having just finished their show, and another preparing to go on the air for the next hour, since DJ’s are required to arrive 30 minutes before the start of their show each week. Even if we don’t always see one another here, we’re all familiar with the equipment there, and the staff members who are often stationed there during their office hours during the week. Because this where our radio programming is produced, it’s an extremely important place to the community.

DJ Megan Stahl (a.k.a. me) showing some love to one of many drawers full of CDs at the station

At monthly all-station meetings, new volunteers are welcomed, important issues are discussed and announcements made, and most importantly, everyone in the community is brought up to speed, leaving on more or less the same page. All-station meetings occur twice a month, usually during the same week. One will be on Wednesday, and another on Sunday, to allow for people with varying schedules to be able to make at least one, hopefully. These meetings are held in a meeting room in Smith Memorial Student Union, and are very important places for community members to gather all at once, strengthening the sense of the community itself, along with reciprocity and loyalty to the station.

A third gathering place for the KPSU community is a virtual one: the KPSU website. Here we house the weekly schedule of radio shows, email addresses of staff members, log the playlists of music we played on our show (thereby informing the music director, who is in charge of submitting the charts of airplay for certain albums at the station). We are also able to listen to another’s shows, either live or by downloading them as podcasts. All of these actions strengthen the community, and without the internet, our listenership would suffer significantly, not to mention knowledge and details about our community would be fuzzy. We all use the website weekly, if not daily, and it’s very important to both community members and supporters of the station in the community and around the world!

the KPSU website

I believe these places are vital to our community, and will remain the same. If we were to lose our number one place, the station itself, the station would cease to exist. I’m guessing if the station were somehow destroyed, the members of our community wouldn’t simply give up. We’d stick together, and try to slowly rebuild our station, finding a new place to broadcast from and whatever new equipment we could muster, perhaps from donations or personal resources. If we lost the meeting room, we could simply find another one, or even just meet outside at the park blocks. Losing the website would affect the community a lot, since without a far-reaching signal, there’s no other way to listen to the station besides online. Without the website, we’d be irrelevant and intangible, less promotable, and not reputable. 

History of KPSU

According to Don Nasca, the Project Coordinator of Project KPSU and first ever Station Manager, a PSU "Popular Music Board" of students came together to start a college radio station for PSU in 1992. Aided by a Student Advisor named Sharon Brabanac, students founded a non-funded student organization called "The Friends of KPSU."

In 1993, The Friends of KPSU received written support from the editor of the PSU Vanguard Newspaper in the form of a letter to the Incidental Fee Committee, and by February, the IFC allotted $8,000 for the hiring of Nasca as Project Coordinator, along with $1,000 to held fund a plan for development. Nasca was an MBA student at the time with a history in business and radio, so he seemed perfect for the job. He conducted lots of research about what it would take to get on the air, and recruited volunteer Joanne Lau who worked late nights trying to get things up and rolling.

By 1994, Nasca and other volunteers were in talks about renting airtime from KBPS, an AM station owned by Portland Public Schools which was low on funding at the time. After obstacles ranging from protests by the IFC and PSU president to space issues, KPSU was finally given space to broadcast in the sub-basement of Smith Memorial Student Union, a place the station remains to this day. In October, the first radio program aired, hosted by Nasca. In the following years, the budget for KPSU grew slightly, and the college student group continued to lease airtime from KBPS until late June, 2010.

As reported by Casey Jarman in this Willamette Week article, on June 25, it was announced that KPSU would no longer air on 1450 AM KBPS, as it had for the last 15 years, due to an on-air incident involving a discussion of sodomy. Even though this conversation took place during "safe harbor hours," that is, after 10 p.m. at night, the General Manager of KBPS, Bill Cooper, was personally offended and decided to take drastic measures in what was a very big controversy at the time. Throughout the time Bill Cooper oversaw the broadcasting of KPSU on KBPS, he dictated that shows' content had to be school-age appropriate, something which clashed with the values of the station as a free-form usage of free speech, but KPSU needed a signal badly enough to abide.

Since this incident, KPSU has been broadcasting online only, at KPSU.org, with the exception of a very weak FM signal, which really only covers part of the PSU campus itself.

KPSU Community Description

As I mentioned in my previous post, the boundaries of the community for the purposes of this project included DJ's and staff members with active radio shows. The five data points I chose were members' genders, ages, length of time they've been involved at the station, majors in school for students, and whether they consider themselves to be native Oregonians, to try to get a feel for where members are coming from. I made an online survey and promoted it on Facebook to DJ's only, and sent it out on the KPSU listserv, encouraging people to help me out and take it. I had 18 responses, not too bad of a showing.

Introduction to the KPSU Community

Members of the KPSU Radio community are primarily the paid staff members and volunteer DJs. All staff members are required to host radio shows, and in addition to their specialized duties which keep the station functioning, this gives them the strongest ties to the station. Each staff member is essential, and would be missed if they suddenly left, though not entirely irreplaceable. Staff members must be Portland State University students, but DJs include a few community members (non-students or alumni) who are allowed to have shows if they can find underwriting in the form of sponsorship from a business or individual.

Members of the community can also be our listeners, and those who sponsor the station through underwriting, or donating during our annual pledge drive. For the purposes of this Travel Guide, however, I am going to focus on those who directly run the station, that being the staff and DJs.

KPSU is an example of an elective community, one which people choose to join because they want do. Group membership isn't a compulsory part of student life, so anyone who chooses to do more than just come to class likely feels passionate about radio, journalism, music, or some sort of media.

As the infed writer explains in the "Community: A Review of Theory" reading,
interpersonal ties are important in communities, and provide support, a sense of belonging, and contributes to a social identity. KPSU DJ's must undergo rigorous training process before they're given a time slot and show, which ensures that all who take the mic are ready for whatever comes at them. DJ's follow rules, like cleaning up after oneself, and not swearing on-air, and must complete 10 volunteer hours per term helping at events, covering other DJ's shows when they can't make it, and helping out around the station. These expectations help hold DJ's accountable, helping them to feel valued and important to the health of the community. Whether they favor obscure '90s grunge or top 40 hip hop when it comes to their playlists, all community members care about the station, and want it to survive and thrive.

Attached is a map I've drawn of the social network. Staff members with a more direct connection to DJs (strong ties) are connected with a solid line, and weaker ties are indicated with a dotted line.

First post

Hello everyone, this is my first post on the site I'll use to complete my Community Travel Guide project for my SINQ, which will be about the community I'm a part of at KPSU Radio. I chose Blogger because I have lots of experience with it after running a fashion blog off and on last year. Stick around for more!