Andy Kline, our new Co-Program Director, officially started full time in his position this week. Welcome Andy!
We received the music “library” for the station we are currently calling “Excellent Radio”. This is the mainstream station that will feature a good mix of top 40, new artists on the scene, college rock, etc. The library is on a hard drive and includes about 5,000 songs. We look forward to vastly expanding on this in the weeks and months to come.
We have lots of new volunteers! Jeff Brown and I trained close to 50 new radio volunteers this last month. These folks have all sorts of great ideas for new call-ins, debates, remotes, music shows, and other radio features.
]]>Andy Kline, our new Co-Program Director, officially started full time in his position this week. Welcome Andy!
We received the music “library” for the station we are currently calling “Excellent Radio”. This is the mainstream station that will feature a good mix of top 40, new artists on the scene, college rock, etc. The library is on a hard drive and includes about 5,000 songs. We look forward to vastly expanding on this in the weeks and months to come.
We have lots of new volunteers! Jeff Brown and I trained close to 50 new radio volunteers this last month. These folks have all sorts of great ideas for new call-ins, debates, remotes, music shows, and other radio features.
]]>Will Judy, KTOO’s IT Director, and I spent the afternoon in Gustavus yesterday doing a site visit and facilitating a town meeting. About 15 listeners joined us for a discussion about the upcoming radio changes and mapping out listening options for the community which will only be able to get one station due to an FCC translator freeze. Mike Atkins, owner of the Homeshore Cafe, was gracious enough to publicize and host the event.
Also this week, KTOO held its first listener discussion group. Participants represented a range of KTOO supporters, from casual listeners with particular program concerns, to core audience members and volunteer dj’s. The two hour conversation was lively and informative.
We continue to map out the three program schedules. They are still a work in progress but we plan on having what we feel are great schedules available for the public to respond to in the next couple of weeks.
Keep the comments and questions coming!
1) West of the Mississippi, all call signs start with the letter “K�.
2) The obvious signs are probably taken, especially calls that spell a word, like KING or KTOP.
3) The calls we choose should be easy to say aloud. KWBW, for example, is really hard to say. KONE is easy to say (but it’s taken).
4) Often calls have place significance. KJUD, for example, stands for Juneau-Douglas. KTKU for Taku. KJNO for Juneau. KSTK stands for Stikine, and KFSK stands for fisk, which is Norwegian for fish.
5) Sometimes call signs are funny, or an inside joke. KCHU in Valdez is a sneeze. KWMD in Anchorage stands for “Weapon of Mass Discussion.� The call letters KMXT stand for Michael X. Tremaine, the on-air name of the first manager.
6) The meaning of KTOO is somewhat vague, except that we’ve heard the founders liked KBOO in Portland.
7) If a call sign we like is taken by a TV, AM or LP station, we can ask their permission to use it for one of our FM stations. Likewise if a call is reserved by the Coast Guard, we can probably get it released.
E-mail your ideas using the comments form below, and we’ll check the FCC database to see if they are available!
Have fun…
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Also this week, we got a handful of applications for the new half time Operations Manager position, we met with Scott Miller from the McDowell Group who will help facilitate our listener programming discussions, and the KTOO Community Advisory Board met to talk about the project.
Our preliminary thinking is that we will have three distinct public radio streams - one for News/Talk, one for Contemporary Music, one for Classical and Jazz. All three services will be a mix of syndicated and locally hosted shows. All of our current programs will remain somewhere on the air, we just don’t have it sorted out yet exactly where their home will be.
So what qualifies as Contemporary Music? We see it as a full range of music: blues, rock, pop, country, folk and world tunes from both the creators of each style all the way up to today’s newest emerging talents. Our hope is to have a sound that is hip, fresh, and entertaining. Certainly many of our current locally hosted shows like Crosscurrents, World Beat, and Stormy Weather fit well, but the range of music is really up to YOU! Let us know what you want! If there’s enough community interest, and local folks who want to be DJ’s, then we will work to find a place for that style of music on the airwaves!
Pledge Drives: Yup! The new stations will have them! As public radio stations, it’s just part of the deal. I’ve talked to a number of stations around the country who are offering multiple streams and the industry wisdom is that you do all three simultaneously. Our first “three ring circus” will be next April, at which point I plan to have my cloning technique perfected. Actually, I’m looking forward to an intense but exciting week on the air with a whole lot of community involvement.
Programming requests: I’ve gotten lots so far and want even more! Use the form below to send me your wish lists and suggestions.
In the coming days we’ll fill you in on the upcoming listener groups and the online programming survey. Until then, happy listening!
Cheryl
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