No more radio for KUSF

It's the end of an era: San Francisco's little college station that could, KUSF, is off the FM airwaves, seemingly for good.

KUSF's broadcast license was held by the University of San Francisco (USF), a private institution. Today, USF announced it was giving up that license.

The university has reached an agreement to assign the FCC license for radio frequency 90.3 FM to Classical Public Radio Network, which is launching a non-commercial classical music station in the Bay Area. CPRN is owned by University of Southern California.

The station's nearly all-volunteer staff was caught by surprise, and USF apparently wasn't much interested in such niceties as allowing the currently on-air DJ to sign the station off properly, as is typically required (by the FCC) when a radio station stops broadcasting. According to the Bay Citizen's's account:

At 10 a.m. this morning, Irwin Swirnoff, a DJ and music director at KUSF, was doing some volunteer work in the station when he heard an alarming thing: silence. Or rather, the sound of static as USF, per an agreement with USC-owned Classical Public Radio Network, cut the transmitter.

To those present at the station, including the on-air DJ, Howard Ryan, it seemed that no one had been given warning of the sale.

Here's an excerpt from the SF Weekly's story:

USF officials abruptly shut the doors to KUSF, the college's well-known indie radio station today, locking out students and DJs with no notice.

Security guards walked into the station on campus this morning in the middle of a show and ordered everyone out, according to one student DJ. The university then shut down the station, and allowed staff to go back inside and get their things.

The deal is part of a larger rearrangement of the Bay Area radio dial in which classical commercial station KDFC (102.1 FM) will change formats and call letters, simulcasting San Jose station KUFX, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The actual call letters "KDFC" will be assigned to the old KUSF frequency, 90.3 FM, on which CPRN's noncommercial classical music feed will air. (Apologies for the awkward phrasing, but I'm not interested in clarifying it for the nonce: read the linked articles for the full picture.)

The Bay Guardian also has a piece on the incident, as does the San Francisco Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub. (Note that Hartlaub wrote both an article on the classical-music angle and one on KUSF proper, links to both of which are in this entry.)

Now, I must disclose that I have had an on-again, off-again association with KUSF for a long time. I've been a DJ on New Music Programming and other programs, and I've done my share of recorded announcements for the station, too. I've put in countless hours of my time and provided my own music, at my own expense, for some of my shows. I'm therefore no dispassionate observer of this fiasco.

As you can probably tell, I think it bites. As the license holder, USF was free to dispose of the license as it saw fit, but to do so without notice to the volunteer staff or to the community at large that listens to the broadcast signal was insensitive at best. The word "loutish" best captures my sentiment, I think.

Rather than rehashing what the referenced articles say, allow me to read the tea leaves from USF's own public statements.

According to the University, only the broadcast license was sold; "KUSF" will continue to be heard online.

The call letters KUSF were not sold, and the KUSF logo and all music inventory will remain USF property. All KUSF staff will be offered similar positions at KUSF.org.

The move to online-only distribution gives KUSF a powerful opportunity to grow its worldwide audience. Previously, the station was limited to 100 online listeners at a time, but capacity will be increased to accommodate thousands of listeners.

Also from the press release:

As it shifts to an online-only format, USF will focus on the station’s primary purpose as a teaching laboratory for students.

As a "teaching resource," KUSF's value lay in its operation as a radio station. The station's format -- well, let's clarify that KUSF did not adhere to a single "format" as most people understand that term. KUSF boasted an eclectic range of programming that didn't hew to a single theme or even organizing principle. On weekdays, from midnight to 6 PM, "New Music Programming" held sway; this is the format that gained KUSF most of its fame, as it focused on breaking new and often "difficult" music that commercial stations would not touch -- until KUSF and other college stations helped to build an audience for it. The heyday of KUSF's influence in this regard was the 1980s and early 1990s, when acts like R.E.M. and Nirvana crossed over from college stations to commercial recognition.

However, KUSF's programming went well beyond "New Music." Weekday evenings between 6 PM and midnight, as well as weekends, were given over to a variety of programs, some of them in other languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Farsi, German, Finnish, French, Italian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani, to name only the ones I can recall), some of them non-musical in nature and focused on specific subjects like theater or food, and still others focused on specific types of music like soul, dance, electronica, obscure classical, heavy metal, etc.

These programs all had small but loyal audiences, as their like didn't and doesn't exist on the airwaves. Also, because they aired on a radio station, they also were far more likely to be locally oriented, even after KUSF became available as an Internet stream. They and New Music Programming promoted local businesses and people, too, either as on-air guests or as underwriters (businesses which donated money, goods or services in support of the station).

It's this web of locality, and the sense of community it nurtured, that USF is giving up. USF is forcing the San Francisco Bay Area to give it up, too.

So, now that we have a better understanding of KUSF's programming, what does USF's declared "primary purpose" for KUSF, "as a teaching laboratory for students," signify?

Well, it depends on what USF is interested in teaching students, doesn't it?

In the old days, KUSF existed to teach students what they needed to know to work at a radio station. (Indirectly, a number of volunteers learned valuable lessons about how to work in the music industry, too, as this reminiscence from former DJ Denise Sullivan notes.) The specific programming on KUSF came about organically due to the need to fill 24 hours of air time, seven days a week; the content of the programming was not of as much concern to the University as the opportunity to practice being on the air (and to cut tape, and to produce recorded announcements).

Now, again, what's USF interested in teaching students?

After that dramatic buildup, you might think I have some clever answer up my sleeve. Sorry, I don't. I wish I did, believe me.

If USF were interested in demonstrating how to construct an insanely diverse, wildly divergent set of audiences for the same 'net feed, I think the current programming would stand an excellent chance of surviving. If USF were interested in demonstrating how a university could nurture goodwill in its local community, I think the current programming would be around indefinitely.

I doubt USF is interested in these things. And unfortunately, whatever its real interests and intentions, I'm not sure how the current programs will fit.

At the moment, the future of the entity formerly known as the FM station KUSF is in flux. I'll be keeping tabs on it.