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Show f Broadcaster rates KPCW news high by Rick Brough The music on KPCW needs improvement. It should be more than just a bunch of different styles jammed together, according to Tom Thomas, the president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB). But he gives the station high marks in other departments. A KPCW staffer paraphrased Thomas's opinion in a somewhat more blunt fashion: "He said we're pretty good at raising money, the news is not bad, but the music sucks." Actually, he wasn't that harsh. Thomas said the station is still achieving something higher than the usual Top-40 format of commercial stations. KPCW, he said, has a tremendous amount of financial support from local individuals and firms. "Particularly "Par-ticularly in its support from business, it is leaps and bounds ahead of many stations," Thomas noted. Another strong area is news. "For the size of this community, the extent and quality of their news coverage is a very important accomplishment," he said. But this points up an irony. "Everyone knows good radio journalism takes skill and training. But people think presenting music is just Maw- pulling together some nice discs and putting down the needle," he said. Community radio has the potential, he said, to present a well-thought-out music program. "There are innumerable in-numerable threads of connections con-nections between the various genres of music," he said. "It would be exciting to help the audience learn the influence in-fluence of jazz on pop music, the way folk songs figure in classical works, or the connection con-nection between African drum rhythms and contemporary contem-porary sounds." But if such a mixed format isn't done with skill, it tends to sound like a jumble, he said. KPCW is handicapped, he said, because it has few regular sources for records and must rely on the private collections of the disc jockeys. The NFCB was the midwife mid-wife at the birth of KPCW. According to station manager Blair Feulner, the station would never have gotten on the air, if not for Thomas and Nan Rubin, NFCB's director of station development. The idea of a Park City radio station was dreamed up by Fuelner and a group of broadcast veterans. "We'd all been in radio before, but we had never built a station," he said. The commercial stations that get on the air, Fuelner said, are those with the best engineer and attorney. They also ha vp 3n Ann nr $35 000 tn us," Thomas said. Community radio, he said has a unique quality o reality. The D.J.S are not th usual professional voices. Thomas preaches an up beat attitude to underdo community stations. If problem develops, "try 1 1 enjoy the crisis," he said. He gave an example fron his days on KDNA, a com munity station in St. Louis At one low point, the elet tricity was cut off becaus s the financially-strappe I station had not paid its bill. Thomas and the sta: f scampered over to thei -transmitter, which was lcoated on St. Louis' tallest building and where the engineer had thoughtful plugged the transmitter intp the building's electricajl system. The next morning, as thte sun rose, Thomas was broadcasting to all of St. Louis from the building roof. 40 stories up. With this impromptu im-promptu gimmick, they launched a fundraising marathon, garnering both money and publicity in the process. A determined attitude is needed to get stations like KPCW on the air, he said. And the same thing can help it to improve in the future. "It means taking a deep breath and making a collective collec-tive act of will," said Thomas. "You say, 'We're gonna have some good programming, dammit.'" Tom Thomas "For the size of this community, com-munity, the 4 extent and quality of their news coverage is a very important accomplishment." -Tom Thomas get started. (KPCW's budget was $8,000 the first year.) Commercial outfits can also hire the expertise to weave through the FCC bureaucracy and acquire a license, he said. Feulner said Thomas and his organization were invaluable in-valuable "in steering us through that bureaucracy." Otherwise, he said, an aspiring station can spend hours inst finrlincr the ripht broadcast groups, said Thomas. Only six or seven were on the air; the other twelve were in the process of starting. While community radio was still in its infancy in the 1970s, the first such station actually began about 35 years ago. KPFA was founded foun-ded in Berkeley in 1948. Others followed at a leaden pace. Seven years passed before a second station began in Los Angeles. A third, in Seattle, began in 1960. "Today, there are 68 stations across the country that are members of NFCB, plus another 12 benighted souls who have yet to see the virtues of affiliation with person to talk to. Thomas smiled as he dubbed dub-bed NFCB, "the alternative to money." Ten years ago, there wasn't much call for a national organization to help radio stations. NFCB was founded by 18 community |