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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 31, 1984)
Tuesday, July 31,1984/The Battalion/Page 3 po; Clay Buchanan, a junior building construe- tion major from McAllen, washes his bike outside his home early Monday. Buchanan is giving his bike final touches of tender lov ing care before he sells it to help pay for his fall tuition. New radio station, KKYS, begins broadcasting By LESLIE HEFFNER Reporter If you constantly flip the radio dial hoping to find a better radio sta tion, there now is another spot on the dial you can flip to: KKYS, 105 FM. Skip Bishop, station program di rector, says KKYS’s music format is designed to be a non-irritating rock station. “It is not a kiddie station,” Bishop said. About a year ago a study was done to find out what Bryan-College Sta tion listeners wanted to hear. Bishop said he needed to find out if the Bryan-College Station listeners were pleased with the music they were nearing. Most of the local stations do not have a wide variety of listeners be cause their music format is not di verse, he said. For instance, a station would play only heavy metal music which appeals to the 12 to 15 age group. To combat this problem, KKYS plans to play a variety of mu sic meant for a variety of listeners. Bishop explained “We want to ap peal to the widest audience avail able.” Another unique trait of KKYS is the limited number of commercials it plays. Most stations usually play eignteen commercials per hour, Bishop said, but KKYS plans to play nine per hour. “Our advertisement rates are a little higher,” he says, but then goes on to boast that the station can play more than 25 minutes of commercial free music. The new radio station had been in the planning stages for many years because of government red tape, and many steps had to be taken be fore it could go on the air. First the Federal Communications Commission had to approve a con struction and frequency permit. The construction permit is basically an approval to have a transistor, a con trol room and an office. The fre- ? [uency permit is for the designated requency to be used. Once the per mits have been granted the FCC opens them up for bids. Interested parties then travel to Washington D.C. to plead their case before the commission. The parties have to explain what they will use the station for, why they want it, and how they are going to do the broad casts. The FCC then selects the owner. In KKYS’ case, says Barry Turner, station owner, two corpora tions filed for the permit, so the FCC held a comparitive hearing process, which is handled like a trial. During that process, the corporations pre sent their cases and a judge selects the one he thinks is best qualified to serve public’s needs. The corporations which filed for the KKYS permit were Brazos Me dia and Scott and Davis Enterprises. The judge ruled in favor of Scott and Davis, but Brazos Media ap pealed. During the appeals process John Culpepper and Turner, the owners of Brazos Media, agreed with Bob Bell, the majority owner of Scott and Davis, to have Brazos Me dia withdraw its appeal. Bell then sold his interest in Scott and Davis Enterprises to Turner and Culpep per. The whole process took eight years. Bishop said Culpepper and Turner found that Bryan-College Station is a great town for radio. Through re search “the company found that a wide range of very diverse people live in the area,” he said. “So much goes on in this town, and there is such a strong base of people that are so proud of this town.” The KKYS facility is unique to this area. What used to oe The House of Jeans in Manor East Mall now is the plushly-carpeted, glass-enclosed of fice of KKYS. Bishop said the glass allows peo ple can see how the facility operates. “People have a mystique to radio sta tions,” Bishop said. “They want to know what announcers look like and what the facilities look like. “We want everyone to actually see how the studio and staff works,” he said." Bishop said he’s proud of his staff and wants people to observe them at work. Bishop took six months to choose what he considers the best people in the world for his staff. He chose announcers from Minnesota, Florida and Alabama to come and work at KKYS. Bishop said spinning records is not the only job his announcers do. Each one of them has another job as signment. They either research what type of music people want to listen to, write commercials, develop adverstising concepts or research life-styles. He said he gives the an nouncers extra responsibilities be cause people are more motivated when they nave more to do. Texas Transportation Institute helps LA avoid major traffic jams University News Service Traffic signal coordination devel oped by the Texas Transportation Institute is being used by engineers in Los Angeles to help avoid olym- pic-scale traffic jams at the summer games. Edmond Chang and Dr. Carroll J. Messer, researchers with TTI at Texas A&M University, learned this week that improvements they made to a widely used computer program for traffic signal timing, PASSER II, had been adopted by Los Angeles traffic engineers to plan intersection signalization around the Olympics. “They said it is working very well,” said Chang who is enhancing and evaluating PASSER II for his doctoral degree. The improved pro gram is called PASSER 11-84. TTI researchers originally devel oped PASSER II many years ago for tne State Department of Highways and Public Transportation. PASSER 11-84 also was prepared for the de- artment in cooperation with the ederal Highway Administration, Chang said. The Olympic planners use the f irogram to generate signal patterns or lights that carry heavy traffic to and from the Olympic games. An important part of the new computer program, Chang said, is that it allows one-way directional traffic flows. “The continued demand for ur ban mobility requires that the high est degree of traffic service be ob tained from existing urbanarterial streets and intersections,” Chang said. PARADISE FOUNDl Your search for a new apartment can now end, happily. At Treehouse Village, you’ll discover another world in apart ment living - one that’s perfect for a student’s way of life! Treehouse Village is ideally located just blocks from camp^us along the regularly- scheduled shuttle bus route. These efficiencies and one-and two-bedroom furnished and unfurnished floor plans are full of extras that - before now - you could only dream of. Find out how great apartment living was meant to be. Discover Treehouse Village. Your haven in the apartment jungle. £ TREEHOUSE VILLAGE- APARTMENTS A&M LEASE NOW FOR FALL 1984. Treehouse Village Apartments. From $295. For information, visit the Treehouse Village Apartments Leasing Office at 800 Marion Pugh Blvd. at Luther Street 409/764-8892 Professionally managed by Callaway Properties.