Stations May Have Signals Crossed

One is a student-run college station with a small volunteer staff and a dizzyingly diverse format. The other is a polished evangelical Christian station, with a signal that’s twice as strong as the first. But this odd couple does have one thing in common--they both occupy 88.9 on the FM dial.

And that’s the problem. KXLU, the radio station of Loyola Marymount University, has complained to the Federal Communications Commission that its signal is being obliterated by the transmissions from Lancaster-based KTLW, the Living Way Radio Network. In March, the latter station erected a device in the Verdugo Hills to extend its signal into the San Gabriel and La Crescenta valleys.

“They started transmitting from the hills of La Crescenta,” said KXLU general manager Dan Rowan. “That area is a huge area for us--Silver Lake, Glendale, Burbank. We have a strong listener base there.”

According to the FCC, in December KTLW requested and was granted a permit for a translator, a device that can boost a station’s signal into an area where it otherwise wouldn’t reach. The station already employs about 15 translators to extend its signal from Alaska to Illinois, and general manager Gary Curtis said KTLW felt it had potential listeners in the area around the Verdugo Hills that weren’t being served.

Concerned KXLU listeners no longer getting their dose of reggae, blues or opera have contacted Rowan asking if the station had gone off the air or been bought by KTLW, he said. “And the people who can hear us, it’s half us, half them, and static. It’s not a good thing.

“If we don’t have those people in October when we do our annual fund-raiser,” Rowan said, “it will make a huge difference. I’m thinking that it will be at least a third less money.”

Rowan said he complained to the local FCC office, and that attorneys for the university have begun looking into the matter. Also, since about mid-June, KXLU has placed advertisements in the LA Weekly asking affected listeners to write the station.

“The next day in the mail, we got 50 of them back. It was really cool,” Rowan said, adding that hundreds more have arrived since then.

The station is also circulating petitions at concerts it sponsors. Rowan said that when he told KTLW about the complaints, the station asked for the respondents’ names and addresses. He said he refused out of privacy concerns.

“I didn’t feel it would be polite to be sending information over to people who they consider the enemy,” said Rowan, 21, a sound engineering senior from Sacramento.

Curtis said his station wants to contact the complaining listeners to see if there truly is a problem, and if so, to figure out a remedy, such as installing home antennas.

“If people are affected in that area, we’d like to be able to meet them and see what we can do for them,” Curtis said. “KXLU has erroneously stirred up a number of responses from people who live outside of the affected area. They have people from Malibu, Long Beach, Venice.”

According to FCC rules, every radio station is supposed to have a protected broadcast zone in which its signal is free from interference by stations elsewhere, at the same position on the dial. Miles outside that perimeter, if no other station interferes, listeners might still be able to hear the first station--but the area is up for grabs.

“Every station has a protected zone,” said an FCC spokeswoman in Washington, “but it doesn’t reach to infinity.”

“If it is an area that’s affected, we’ll seek to address that,” Curtis said. But if the interference is coming from KTLW’s main transmitter in Lancaster, or is happening in an area outside KXLU’s protected zone, the listeners are out of luck.

KXLU’s Web site vows that the interference “is neither appreciated, nor will it be tolerated.” And Curtis said that some of the complaints he’s received have gotten personal: “They may not like our station--they have attacked us for being a religious broadcasting station. I’m sorry for their intolerance.”

Such dismay is not surprising, though, as the two stations could scarcely be more different.

KXLU, which broadcasts at 3,000 watts from the school’s Westside campus, traces its roots to Loyola’s radio club of the 1920s. It features shows such as the “Molotov Cocktail Hour,” with its “sinister” jazz; “Alien Air Music,” playing international electronica; “We Came From Beyond,” L.A.’s longest-running hip-hop show; and “Alma del Barrio,” which for 27 years has showcased the best in Latin music.

KTLW, which broadcasts at 5,800 watts, began five years ago as an outreach of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys. It features Christian music and ministry, including programs such as “Messianic Minutes,” a show “aimed at bringing the Gospel to the Jewish people”; “Joni and Friends,” a 22-year-old program delivering the “message of Christ to people who are affected by disability”; and “The Pat Boone Show,” a music and talk show with the Christian recording artist as host.

The FCC spokeswoman said KTLW’s application for the new translator would have been checked by the agency’s engineers before approval, to make sure it didn’t interfere with neighboring stations. She said the Washington office hasn’t yet received a complaint from KXLU, but would investigate if it does.

Killing with kindness: Temple Grandin has lost count of how many thousands of cattle she’s watched being slaughtered. She’s not a factory farm worker, though, but a consultant and watchdog for McDonald’s who ensures that the slaughterhouses supplying the fast-food giant comply with the chain’s rules for humane treatment of the animals.

Grandin is one element of “McDonald’s New Farm--Fast Food and Animal Rights,” a report scheduled to air at 11 a.m. Saturday on KCRW-FM (89.9). It’s produced by American Radio Works, a joint venture of Minnesota Public Radio and National Public Radio News.

Reporter Daniel Zwerdling looks at farms and the fast-food industry, and examines how McDonald’s--to the shock of its critics in the animal-rights community--has taken the lead in making conditions better for the livestock on its menu.

“I was really astonished at how cruel a lot of the conditions are for animals,” Zwerdling said. “We’re really out of touch with the way animals are raised.”

But after years of protests by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other activists, McDonald’s imposed new requirements on its suppliers--changes estimated to cost the company up to $10 million.

When he heard about the changes last year, Zwerdling said, he was “genuinely captivated and intrigued by the whole issue.” While the humane conditions are good for business--animals that go to their deaths calmly produce fewer hormones that detract from the meat quality--McDonald’s officials also say that the changes are “the right thing to do.”