Jazz Fans Downbeat as Airwaves Clash at 2 Campus Stations

Ever since radio station KKGO switched to a classical music format, the greater Los Angeles area has been left with only one jazz station--KLON, which is broadcast from Cal State Long Beach.

Each day, KLON broadcasts a wide range of jazz, from the syncopated rhythms of ragtime to the big-band swing of Duke Ellington and the excitement of be-bop, from the mournful melancholy of the blues to the high-tech sounds of fusion.

But some jazz fans living near Cal State Northridge were unpleasantly surprised recently when they tuned in to the station, at 88.1 FM, and found they could no longer hear the music loud and clear.

The reason: KLON’s signal is being blocked in the area by a low-power translator recently installed by the Northridge campus radio station, KCSN, which transmits at 88.5 FM.

Now, instead of hearing jazz, those who tune in to KLON pick up static and echoes from KCSN, whose format includes country-Western and other popular types of music.

“What you have is one Cal State University school jamming another,” said Guy Coleman, 48, a jazz-loving Northridge resident who used to listen to KLON regularly. “It’s ridiculous.”

Ken Mills, KCSN’s general manager, said the station began using the low-power translator last month to solve a reception problem that the campus area has had since 1987.

That problem arose, ironically, when the station moved its transmitter from the campus to the San Gabriel Mountains in an attempt to broadcast to a wider area. The result was that receivers farther away picked up the station loud and clear but those nearer the campus could not.

Mills said the low-power trans lator boosts reception near the campus by rebroadcasting the signal from the San Gabriel transmitter at 88.3 FM. But he acknowledged that it also interferes with the reception of KLON’s signal--at 88.1 FM--in the Northridge area.

Several people, he said, have called the station to find out why they can’t receive KLON any more. “People are curious about it,” Mills said.

But Coleman is more than curious. Coleman is downright angry. He wants his jazz back.

“There is only one jazz station left. It’s a regional resource,” he said. “I listened to it all the time but now what you hear is interference--static or buckshot.”

KCSN has offered to install a filter on Coleman’s antenna that Mills said would allow Coleman to hear jazz on KLON.

But Coleman said he has doubts about the filter’s effectiveness. And even if it works, he said, his portable radios and car radio still won’t pick up the KLON signal in the Northridge area.

Coleman, who says he is sure that there are other jazz fans in his neighborhood who are infuriated by the problem, wants the station to dismantle the low-power translator altogether. He is writing letters fast and furiously to try to make that happen.

He has written to KLON, KCSN and the Federal Communications Commission, and might also write to the president and the governing board of the Cal State system.

Coleman, a Hughes Aircraft engineer, said there are many ways-- such as increasing the power level of the San Gabriel transmitter--for the station to solve its transmission problem without blocking his music.

What doesn’t make sense, he said, is for one Cal State station to jam another, particularly when the jammed station offers programs that are unavailable on other stations.

“Northridge broadcasts country and Western and you can get that on a number of stations around here, but KLON is the only jazz in town.”