Campus Radio Station Is on an ‘Alternative’ Wavelength

No one could accuse Pomona College student radio station KSPC of going commercial.

Bands like Headless Chickens and Dog Bowl compete for air time with reggae and rap segments.

Listeners in Lakewood tune in for the polka hours.

And deejays would not dream of playing Madonna, Paula Abdul or U2 on this “alternative” station, situated to the far left of the FM dial at 88.7.

With 3,000 watts of power, KSPC has one of the strongest signals of any student-run college radio station in the area, with a listening radius of 35 miles and an estimated audience of about 10,000.

The problem is, hardly anybody on campus tunes in.

“KSPC. It’s a radio station, isn’t it?” said Hi Chang Choi, 20, a junior at the college, interviewed recently while he was having a Swiss burger at the Student Union.

His comment was partly sarcastic but partly a reflection of KSPC’s standing on campus.

A survey of Pomona students conducted by the Student Senate last year found that fewer than 40% of those surveyed listen to KSPC for more than an hour a week. The survey found that about 65% of the students surveyed believe that the station should better serve the college community.

“Three people said ‘Blow the damn thing up,’ and a lot of people said they wanted to change the station,” said Brian Azevedo, a member of the Student Senate who would like to see KSPC’s format changed to something more mainstream.

“I’m just trying to make KSPC a bit more responsive to the students,” said Azevedo, a sophomore transfer student from the University of Texas. “I guess that it’s just that the community that KSPC serves isn’t necessarily the community that is paying for KSPC.”

Azevedo persuaded the Student Senate to include questions about KSPC on the survey, which was distributed in campus dining halls and also included queries on other topics. He said he has no concrete plans for changing the station’s format but believes that the tastes of more of the college’s 1,400 students should go into deciding what is played.

However, students who work at the station defend their playing of the likes of Big Black and Firehose. Such alternative rock accounts for half the music played on KSPC.

“There’s enough good music that is not mainstream that there’s no particular obligation for us to play mainstream,” said Franklin Bruno, the music director.

Robert Vodika, a Pomona graduate and former deejay for the station, added: “There’s just all kinds of music from all over the world, virtually, that doesn’t get played on commercial radio stations and even most college stations. And KSPC is a forum for that music to be heard.”

Even the station’s non-rock offerings are a bit unusual. But they also have their passionate partisans.

One of the biggest hits is the polka show.

“It’s a kind of ritual with us on Saturday and Sunday mornings,” said William Workman, 60, of Covina, who listens to the shows with his wife.

Workman explained that “they play some real way-out ethnic stuff,” such as Serbo-Croatian and Gypsy music.

“Polkas don’t all sound alike except to the person that’s never heard one before,” he commented.

Another popular show, “The Boss Guy in Claremont,” airs Sunday night and showcases alternative music from the ‘60s.

“It really plays what I listened to during the ‘60s as opposed to what passes for that today on classic rock stations,” said Darrel Frank of Placentia, who calls himself a “huge fan” of the show. He points to artists like the Savoy Brown Blues Band and Roy Gallagher and to big-name performers’ lesser-known songs that are overlooked by most commercial stations.

Friday night’s funk rap show also has a loyal following, said Julie Frick, the station’s director and only paid full-time staff member.

“The thing is, we’re not here just for the college students,” said KSPC deejay Erik McGuinness, a Pitzer College senior who is eligible to work at the station because his school, like Pomona, is one of the Claremont Colleges. “We have a wide listenership, much larger than the college students.”

As for McGuinness, he acknowledges that the alternative rock he plays is not for everyone. “If you are a woman who is easily offended, perhaps you should plug your ears for this one,” he tells his listeners as he spins the hit “Sleazeball,” the latest from the band Zoogz Rift.

“It’s all pretty random,” said McGuinness, who became interested in alternative rock at first because “it was funny” with “a lot of cheesy and ridiculous” music.

“I’m a proponent of variety over quality, myself,” McGuinness said.

Among local colleges, KSPC’s broadcasting power is equalled only by Loyola Marymount University’s KXLU, which plays an eclectic mix of educational, hard rock, jazz and classical programming.

KSCR, the student-run radio station at USC, does not “shy away from artists just because they’re considered commercial,” said music director Raymond So. However, the station, whose only broadcast outlet is a campus dining hall, also plays “new artists that commercial radio wouldn’t touch,” So said.

Part of KSPC’s annual budget of more than $60,000 comes from the Student Senate budget, but most--75%--comes from school administration. The station’s budget is justified because it gives almost 100 volunteer student deejays and staffers an extracurricular activity and because it boosts the college’s name recognition by broadcasting it often, Frick said.

And then there’s that music.

“This music is really by some of the most vital and important artists around,” Vodika said, “and it’s not on television, not at the movies, and not on mainstream radio.”