CLU’s Station Survives Its 1st Year on the Air

Sitting behind a desk in his Cal Lutheran office, Dan Kuntz nods reverently at a date that he scrawled with a felt-tip marker on a memo board one year ago and breathes a sigh of relief.

“This time last year, I was staying up at night, wondering if we were going to be able to broadcast the next day,” said Kuntz, general manager of Ventura County’s first and only local public radio station, KCLU, 88.3 FM.

When he scribbled the date one year ago to this day, the station--which replaced Cal Lutheran University’s student station to bring the county its own mix of jazz and new music, National Public Radio programming and local news--was about to go on the air amid chaos.

Its three full-time staff members were settling into an office still under construction. They were scrambling to build a skimpy compact disc collection. They had to train a ragtag crew of volunteers to sound like polished disc jockeys.

On top of it all, they were trying hard not to sound like “some funky public radio station that doesn’t know what it is doing,” according to Mike West, the station’s programming director.

That the staff has managed to provide programming 18 hours a day without fail--save a two-hour stretch caused by a power outage--seems more than the station could have hoped for, Kuntz said.

“We were starting with nothing,” Kuntz said. “We didn’t expect anything. We had zero audience and zero money to do any studies on how many people would sign up to support us.”

But since then, the station has worked out its kinks.

Its CD collection has swelled from 80 to 2,000. At last count in March, the station had an average following of 13,300 listeners in any given week. And during its first weeklong fund-raiser in April, the station coaxed about 300 listeners to offer contributions, boosting its pledge-paying membership to more than 600.

But despite those successes, staff members say they are still not as well-known as they would like. And with federal funding on hold because of congressional budget cuts, they aren’t quite sure how to mount an advertising campaign to get the word out.

The station is counting on its local news programs to attract listeners. At noon each day except Sunday, the station airs “Ventura County Matters,” a 10-minute interview with local leaders on issues concerning the community. “Ventura Talk,” an hour of open phone lines with panelists on topics affecting the county, airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7 to 8 p.m. In addition, the station has broadcast more than 4,000 public service announcements from local groups.

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News programs offered by other public radio stations that can be picked up in the county focus on their own regions, not Ventura County, according to Mary Olson, marketing director for the station.

For instance, although KCRW in Santa Monica bills itself as the NPR station for “more of Southern California,” most of its news--such as the one-hour talk show “Which Way, L.A.?”--focuses on the city of Los Angeles.

“We are the only public radio station in the county offering the people of Ventura County local news, local weather, local traffic,” Olson said. “You want to hear about base closures, malathion spraying, violence in the Simi Valley schools? You are not going to get that anywhere else.”

KCRW, although dogged by complaints from listeners who say they have trouble finding it on the dial and keeping it tuned in, has 30,000 listeners and 5,000 dues-paying members in the county, according to a station spokeswoman.

Ruth Seymour, general manager of KCRW, said the station made a large investment in Ventura County in 1993 when it opened a full-power transmitter in Oxnard and went on the air as KCRU 89.1 FM. That station’s programming is the same as KCRW’s, with the exception of broadcasting Oxnard City Council meetings on Tuesday evenings.

In addition, Seymour said, the program “Which Way, L.A.?” addresses not only the problems important to Angelenos, but those facing residents of such places as Oxnard and Ventura as well.

“We bill the show as one that deals with life in Southern California because we recognize that our area is now from Palm Springs to Santa Barbara,” she said.

For now, while KCLU waits for federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the station is dependent largely on word-of-mouth advertising and channel surfers who happen upon 88.3 FM.

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When they boost their budget, one of the station’s first steps--in addition to maintaining its state-of-the-art equipment and building advertising--will be to beef up its news department and begin covering local news with a vengeance, Kuntz said.

Already, the station’s small staff has managed to get four of its locally produced news stories--including the county’s floods and Newt Gingrich’s visit to the county--broadcast nationally on NPR member stations.

The staff is confident that when the word spreads, its audience will soar.

“Once they find us, they stick with us,” Kuntz said.