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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 26, 1981)
Focus, The 'Battalion f\ TKursday, Fetiruary 26, 1981 Radio offers jazz, classics By Susan Hopkins due to the emergence of TV. v" a a 47 t Staff A * A A T T • All the programs broadcast by KAMU-FM, Texas A&M Uni- the station are essentially the yersity s 3-year-old radio sta- choiceofthe"well-educated,in- taon, has not been around long telligent, discerning people" enough for Aggies to consider it who listen to KAMU-FM, Cotro- a tradition, but it has established pia sa s Most listeners are a listening audience and catalog Texas A &M professors or others of music and drama programs from the community, she says, that suggests years of develop- although students also make up lo J alt y * nd backbone. part of the audience. With ftve full-time staff mem- " 0 ur aim is to provide an bers and several part-time stu- alternative to what else goes on dent disc jockeys, the novice on ra dio stations in the area," radio station airs nine local prog rams and a gamut of music shows off an automation system. Melissa Cotropia, KAMU-FM program director, said the radio station is a minor teaching tool for broadcast students as well as a service to the public. "We're (KAMU-FM) a real live radio sta tion," she said, "but our prog rams are a hybrid between regu lar radio and TV." She said clas sical music can be heard on 90.9 of the FM dial during the day, with jazz music on Friday. Radio drama, public affairs, live con certs and the locally-produced shows add a TV touch to the radio at various times during the week, she said. Students and volunteers from the community have come up with the nine popular weekly programs: Poetry Southwest, with Texas A&M English profes sor Dr. Paul Christensen, re flects ideas, through interviews, of poets who write about the Southwest area of Texas; Radio Active, hosted by Carol Parzen, presents local and special events and personality interviews on the 30-minute talk show; Prime Cuts, a jazz music program hosted solely by volunteers who lend records to the station for broadcast. Special Prime Cuts themes include a two-part series on the evolution of jazz, the black history of jazz giants and famous female jazz vocalists; Thank Jazz it's Friday, a popular Friday afternoon jazz program produced by Cotropia; Enerjazz, a jazz request line hosted by De bbie Monroe Friday mornings; Collector's Choice, a selection of rare classical music, presented by a Texas A&M physics profes sor; Brazos Blue Grass, especial ly for blue grass music lovers; Best of Broadway and Holly wood, with Lee Schink playing the sounds of famous Broadway musicals — from Rose Marie to Hair; Classics for the Common Man, a program for those with a mild taste for popular classical tunes; and 15 Minutes, pro duced by Texas A&M broadcast students. KAMU-FM is a National Pub lic Radio station. With this satel lite affiliation, Cotropia says, an "incredible amount" of prog rams are offered for the station's use. She said all the major-city operas and orchestras, news magazines similar to "60 Mi nutes" and a variety of British Broadcasting Corporation prog rams are available for radio. Two new programs to be aired in March, "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and a radio adaptation of "Star Wars," will bring back a part of broadcasting — radio drama — that died out she says. "Listeners know they can't get the programs we offer any other place, and we are very responsive to the people — they are like partners to us." To raise annual funds of $29,500, she said, listeners are asked to support the station with contributions. "They (con tributors) tell us what kind of music they want to hear, and we take that into consideration when planning our format," Cotropia said. Another form of support from the community is underwriting, where businesses in Bryan- College Station pay for the sta tion to get certain programs. Cotropia said the station hopes to eventually have all programs underwritten. When student announcers take over after 5 p.m. each day, they play music off tapes or direct from satellite, and are re quired to play from the station's format. Although they must re port the weather and news, Cot ropia said, the DJs "do not have to be great personalities," since most of the programming comes directly from the automation system. Cotropia said there are no radio proauction classes at Texas A&M, so the DJs, who are paid for their work, are either students from non-journalism fields of study or are in a com munications special topics course that gives school credit for work. KANM, the Texas A&M stu dent government radio station, is the only other University- supported radio station. [Television Explains Public Television Reports Pul Revision Reports Public Television Discovers Pul television Discovers Public Television Explores Pi : Television Explores Public Television Thrills Pub lie Television Thrills Public Television Dances Pul 1 KAMU-TV: teaching plus By Kate McElroy - Battalion Staff Somewhere on your cable TV dial between Channel 11 and season, the head football coach's feature (this Simply stated, the station officially exists in ^ cy, the strange area between channel 2 and channel 13 labelled "U." But since most set owners in the Bryan-College Station area subscribe to cable television, the station is usually found on Chan nel 12 because that's where local cable companies have placed it. Now that you know where KAMU-TV is on the dial, it's time to find out what the station actually is and does. The forerunner of KAMU-TV was a University closed circuit system which operated from the old Bagley Hall, which was on the site of the Harrington Educational Tower. Mel Chastain, now station general manager, came to Texas A&M in 1965 to serve as program manager for the system. The system was connected to several campus classrooms and presented academic programs like features on writing 500-word essays and working difficult calculus problems. But Chastain said that when he came here, the University had plans to expand the station to include full broadcast facilities. University President Earl Rudder then gave permission for the station to apply for a Federal Communication Commission license. By 1970, KAMU-TV station started broadcasting. In 1972, KAMU-TV moved in its current facility, located near the University varsity tennis courts by Jersey Street. The building, named for Joe Hiram Moore, houses two production studios and tire radio sta tion, KAMU-FM. The television station is affiliated with the Public Broadcasting System, so it does broadcast its share of national educational programs like "Sesame Street" and "Mister Rogers' Neighbor hood." And of course, it seems like KAMU-TV airs "billions and billions" of cultural programs like Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." Actually, the station's strength lies in its local pogramming. KAMU-TV is one of the few PBS-affiliated stations that produces a local news show. "15 News" runs at 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. m is active in local production, it's still to educate Texas A&M communications students. Students in the beginning television production class produce a 14-mjnute live program actually aired cm puMc airwaves. The shows, which run for two days near the end of every semester, are reminiscent of the early days of televi sion when everything was live and bloopers were commonplace. In the second production class, students produce segments for the weekly series "etc." And in a class called "The Television News cast," student assignments are run on the nightly news shp#. This is one of the few schools, Chastain said, that uses student work extensively for actual broadcasts. University of Houston's KUHT and University of Texas' KLRN do not. All the anchormen for the KAMU newscasts are students. The station still produces dosed-curcuit programs for the Uni- Education. To help with all this production, the television and radio stations hire 27 student employees who gain on-the-job experience, the absolute minimum requirement needed to find a job in journalism. To afford all these productions the station, like other PBS sta tions, holds an auction, which this year runs April 5-9. Last year the auction, which consists of good donated by community resir dents and businesses, raised $15,(XX) for the University station. University for both salaries. Community support, about $110,000 to $140,000 each year, pays for other expenses like production and advertising costs.