Advisory Board Wants to Put KCSN’s All-Country Music Format Out to Pasture

Maybe you can’t take the country out of the boy, but there are plenty of people who want to take it out of the radio.

The people in question are a majority of the citizens advisory board of KCSN-FM (88.5) at Cal State Northridge, and they want the station to change its format of traditional country music.

The country format has yet to round up all its potential listeners, station officials say, and fiddling with it would be a mistake.

As if the dispute over programming weren’t enough, the advisory board and the station are at odds over other issues as well. Chief among these is a budget shortfall that has threatened the continued airing of the award-winning National Public Radio shows “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

Complicating the picture is uncertainty over the effectiveness of the station’s new mountaintop transmitter. Since September, KCSN’s signal has been beamed to a much-enlarged area. But federal regulations forced the station to drop transmitter power from 3,000 watts to 52 watts in exchange for a 2,230-foot gain in altitude.

‘Shadow’ Zones

Because FM waves travel by line of sight, the signal reaches areas well beyond the range of the station’s older rooftop antenna. But critics say the wattage reduction and the creation of “shadow” zones near hills have hurt reception in many areas.

One of poorest spots for station reception is the place where the signal originates--the Cal State Northridge campus.

“We’re disappointed that we’re not received as well as before on campus,” said Jack Brown, general manager of KCSN. “But what some people don’t realize is that we’re not a university station, we’re a community service of the university.”

The distinction was cited frequently last June when the station went to a single format. KCSN had been broadcasting several hours a day of Bluegrass, folk, Cajun and other traditional country music. Management went all-country by dropping 60 hours a week of rock and classical music and axing a wide variety of shows staffed by 26 community volunteers.

Brown and others said that in order to grow, the station needed to identity itself with only one type of programming.

“All the people we consulted have told us we should go to a single format,” said Lennin Glass, dean of the School of Communications and Professional Studies and the CSUN official with final authority over station operations at KCSN. “People like it when they can depend on what they’re tuning in to.”

Traditional country was the best single-format choice, station management said, largely because other options were closed. KCSN receives funds from the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which prohibits it from duplicating the programming of other public stations in its service area.

KUSC-FM already had an all-classical format, KLON-FM had all-jazz, and there appeared to be a glut of rock and modern country programming on private stations.

But several members of the advisory board contend that the decision for an all-country format was a poor one.

“It’s almost as if we have a radio station and we say, ‘What are we going to do with it? Well, no one’s doing traditional country, so let’s do that,’ instead of saying, ‘What are the needs of the community?’ ” complained board member Bob Steward.

Steward, development director at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, spoke at a meeting Monday of the board’s programming committee, which he chairs. On a 9--0 vote April 20, the full board declared that the traditional country format had produced disappointing ratings and fund-raising drives and should be amended or dropped. Steward and others hoped to discuss specific proposals with station management at Monday’s meeting, but the time was taken up with general discussions of the station’s direction.

“I’ve been on the board a few years and we have presented lots of wonderful ideas which are never picked up and worked on,” said member Beverly Grigsby, a professor of composition and music at CSUN. “I have never seen KCSN carry any of these ideas forward.”

The board, which is unpaid, can advise station management but cannot order any changes.

Range Grows, Audience Doesn’t

Member Jeff Seagall, of the Southern California Gas Co.’s video department, said ratings show the country format is failing. The most recent Arbitron figures are from last winter and estimate that 32,000 people listen to KCSN at least once each week. The fall figure also was 32,000.

“We have a bigger service area,” Seagall said. “We have the whole Santa Clarita Valley now, so you would expect it to go up.”

KCSN depends on public contributions for about a quarter of its $474,000 annual budget, and advisory board members are critical of country music’s fund-raising clout. In spring 1987, when the station had a mix of programming, a fund-raising drive brought in about $35,000.

The first drive during all-country programming came in September, two weeks after the transmitter switch-over, and brought in about $24,000. A mini-drive in December and a regular drive in February, which management lumps together, collected $30,384.

Board member Karen Kearns, who teaches radio classes at CSUN, said the drives show that traditional country music does not draw a large audience. Kearns believes that unrealistic fund-raising expectations by station management are behind a looming budget crisis.

The station subscribes to National Public Radio and airs NPR’s daily news shows “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” as well as NPR specials. However, KCSN was unable to pay fees to NPR for the second half of the station’s fiscal year, which ends June 30. The money, about $40,000, was paid by the university.

The station’s NPR budget was used to hire six part-time employees at the station, said general manager Brown. The recent fund-raising drives did not have specific goals, Brown said, and thus were not failures. However, he said, management had hoped to make up some of the borrowed NPR budget from increased public contributions.

Tough Choices

Alternatives for the future include canceling NPR, laying off the part-time workers or persuading university administrators to continue paying for at least part of NPR.

Brown said the station has a full-time staff of six, “not nearly enough to run this station 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If we lose the part-time people, it will have a very serious impact on what we do.”

Kearns and others, including Mike Emery, chairman of the CSUN journalism department, said losing NPR would be a serious blow to KCSN’s standing as a disseminator of news. About 80 journalism students produce local news at the station, Emery said, and “All Things Considered” is an excellent lead-in for their half-hour main show, which airs at 6 p.m.

A CSUN administration spokesman said no decision has been made on whether to help finance NPR. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting requires recipients of its grants to carry national news, so KCSN would have to subscribe to another, presumably cheaper, service if it cancels NPR.

A solution may not come swiftly because agreement on any aspect of radio operations seems difficult to reach.

In the meantime, Robert M. Light, president of the advisory board, has urged members to recruit both donations and programming ideas from the business community. Light joined the board in October. For 29 years he has headed the Southern California Broadcasters Assn., a trade group representing 120 radio and 21 television stations.

Light is the advisory board member with the most confidence in KCSN’s management. He abstained when the board voted to change the all-country format.

“There is some animosity there,” he said of relations between the board and the station. “There is a personality clash that I don’t like to see.”

Before joining the board, Light was part of a group that evaluated KCSN and recommended undertaking a thorough demographic study determine what sort of programming the station’s potential listeners want. Nearly everyone agrees that the study would be useful, but the cash-strapped station does not have the necessary $15,000 to $20,000 to conduct it.

Although others are critical of the budget shortfall that threatens the NPR programs, Light said it is “too late to be upset.”

He urges patience with the traditional country format, saying it has not had an adequate tryout.

“I’ve been in broadcasting long enough to know that success never comes overnight,” Light said. “People listen to between two and three radio stations. That’s a tradition and it goes back I don’t know how far. People don’t go looking for something new. You stumble on something you like and stay with it.”

Brown points out that although the station’s ratings didn’t rise in the latest period, they are higher than they were a year ago.

“That’s an indication we’re making progress,” he said.

But Steward, chairman of the board’s programming committee, disagrees.

“The station has been substantially traditional country for four years,” he said. “We have to seriously question how much of an audience there is for it.”