KUSF in Exile

Well, that was a blast, hearing my fellow former DJs on the air, including long-ago host of "Hip Hop Slam" Billy Jam doing the MC honors.

About a dozen other independent radio stations around the country simulcast the "KUSF in Exile" broadcast, physically originating from Amoeba Records San Francisco. As WFMU's Gaylord Fields said when doing the FCC-mandated legal IDs at the top of the hour for all of those stations, reading their call letters and cities was not so much calling off a list as reading an honor roll.

• 91.1 FM, WFMU, Jersey City, NJ
• 88.9 FM, KXLU, Los Angeles, CA
• 91.1 FM, KZSU, Stanford, CA
• 89.3 FM, WXYC, Chapel Hill, NC
• 89.7 FM, KFJC, Los Alto Hills, CA
• 91.1 FM, WREK, Atlanta, GA
• 88.9 FM, WITC, Cazenovia, NY
• 90.3 FM, KDVS, Davis, CA
• 91.7 FM, KVRX, Austin, TX
• 90.7 FM, KALX, Berkeley, CA
• 88.3 FM, WCBN, Ann Arbor, MI
• 92.5 FM, KRFP, Moscow, ID

(There may have been another station that joined in at the last minute, from what I heard during the simulcast.)

I can't imagine how much sweat equity went into pulling this off. WFMU and Billy Jam deserve huge kudos for spearheading this and making it happen.

I have to say, though, that this broadcast didn't capture the breadth that made KUSF such a valuable part of the San Francisco Bay Area community. KUSF's knowledgeable music-oriented DJs were only a part of the sound, and to be absolutely honest, they -- we -- contributed the least distinctive aspect of the station's programming. There are, after all, other stations in the Bay Area, to say nothing of the Web, that provide smart and challenging music programming in diverse genres. (A few of them simulcast KUSF in Exile.)

Far more important, if you care about "the community" in the broadest sense, were the foreign-language and non-music programs KUSF aired. Where, for instance, is the Cantonese-speaking community to turn for local news and affairs programs now that Chinese Star Radio and Good News for Today are no longer available on FM? How about the German-speaking community (Radio Goethe)? At various times KUSF boasted shows broadcast largely or entirely in French, Italian, Finnish, Persian, Polish, and Azerbaijani (those are the ones I recall offhand).

It's these communities who were most screwed by USF's secretive sale of its broadcast license. It's these communities to whom USF should be forced to answer. Unfortunately, USF has ignored these communities entirely.