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.
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