KUOM
Encyclopedia
KUOM, known as "770 Radio K", "Real College Radio" is a college radio station operated by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Likely the oldest station in the state, Radio K broadcasts an eclectic mix of music from its transmitters—a variety that has been praised by radio critics. Prior to the transition to a music radio format
in the 1990s, KUOM was known as University of Minnesota Public Radio (independent of Minnesota Public Radio) and broadcast public affairs, arts, classical music, and a variety of other programming. Because of this, the station is operated by the university's College of Continuing Education, but receives funding from a number of sources including donations from the public.
The station has broadcast on the AM band at 770 kHz since the 1920s, but is subject to clear channel restrictions on that frequency and shuts down at night, in order to protect New York City's WABC
and KKOB in Albuquerque. Radio K now has three small FM
transmitters set up as translators to carry the signal.
Due to their limited range, the station largely relies on Internet radio
to reach listeners at night. As a side effect, these netcasts have given Radio K a small but loyal international following. KUOM is a member of Minnesota
's Independent Public Radio
network (previously known as AMPERS).
Radio K gives airplay to a wide range of new and old independent
and alternative
music during variety shifts. It also features specialty programming dedicated to ambient and post-rock
, metal
, hip hop
, EDM
, R&B, electronic
, ska
and reggae
, punk
, and world music
, as well as an award-winning show for local Minneapolis music. In 2010, Radio K was named the Best Radio Station of the Twin Cities by City Pages
editors.
professor C. M. Jansky, Jr. (the older brother of Karl Jansky) was doing broadcasting again by 1920. He had previously been at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
, where he had helped at station 9XM (soon to be called WHA
). Jansky used the call sign 9XI and provided reports on farm markets and weather. In February 1922, when a heavy snowstorm knocked out newswire services into the region, personnel at the Minneapolis Tribune convinced operators to help them retrieve the day's news through a roundabout series of amateur radio
relays.
s, concert
s, and football
games. In the 1930s and 1940s, the station broadcast a considerable amount of educational material and was used for distance learning—a practice that continued into the 1990s. The station had a paid staff, unlike a smaller campus-only station that emerged later. The call sign was changed to KUOM on June 1, 1945.
A polio epidemic in 1946 that resulted in temporary school closings and the cancellation of the Minnesota State Fair
led the station to create programming for children who were homebound. Those programs, along with others broadcast in the 1940s, were recognized for their importance and led to several awards being given to the station.
For nearly 70 years, WLB and later KUOM time-shared the already daytime-restricted 770 kHz frequency with WCAL
-AM of St. Olaf College
in Northfield, Minnesota
, so each station averaged just about 6 hours of programming each day. The University of Minnesota eventually made an agreement with St. Olaf where WCAL would get land for a powerful FM transmitter on U of M land near Rosemount, Minnesota
in exchange for the shutdown of WCAL's AM transmitter so that KUOM could transmit exclusively on the frequency during the day. The agreement came to fruition in 1991.
. Focused on providing a service for the student body, it originally broadcast via carrier current
on campus, using the frequency 730 A.M. (hence the oft-used tag-line "Radio 73"). Legend had it that the WMMR call sign was actually assigned to the station by the FCC, pre-dating the assignment of those same call letters to the well-known Philadelphia station WMMR. The legend continued that the FCC forgot that it had allowed carrier current stations to use a call sign, and gave away the sign to the Philly station. The Minnesota students stuck to their guns and never changed their call sign, and there were of course no legal repercussions given that carrier current stations do not actually go over the air. By the 1970s, this legend lived merely as a tale passed down from year to year in an oral tradition, and has never been documented enough to confirm.
The station's volunteer engineers famously talked themselves into the campus steam-tunnel system from time to time when they needed to maintain the cables that connected the station's studios to the small transmitters located in each of the dormitory buildings. Tales were told of singed eyebrows from coming too close to the hot steam pipes used to heat the buildings. Eventually the station added an FM signal to the Minneapolis
cable television
system.
This was an entirely student-run operation, relying on volunteers. By the mid-'60s through the end of its life, the station tried to emulate the management structure of a typical AM rocker of the day, with an appointed General Manager, Program Director, Music Director, and other management positions. From time to time, somebody actually sold an advertising slot, but the station more or less maintained itself using a small stipend from the Speech Communications department. Even then, the volunteers managed to put out programming for nearly 18 hours a day most days of the school year, and taught many a student the ins and outs of how to operate a studio. A news and sports operation broadcast daily reports, and the basketball, football and hockey programs were usually broadcast with live play-by-play. A number of live broadcasts from the Whole music club and the Great Hall at the union also took place, and the station served to promote other campus events such as the 'Campus Carny' held annually in the old field house.
Garrison Keillor
, the well-known host of Minnesota Public Radio
's A Prairie Home Companion
, began his radio career broadcasting classical music on WMMR as a student in the early 1960s. He then worked at KUOM from 1963 to 1968.
Radio K has received accolades from local newspapers and magazines, especially the weekly City Pages
which has consistently ranked the station among the best for music in the region.
Pitchfork Media
founder Ryan Schreiber also commonly cites the station's influence as having been an integral factor in his decision to start an online publication dedicated to the coverage of independent music. The station receives about 120 new recordings each month which are filtered through a large group of reviewers and disc jockey
s. Recordings that pass muster are added to a large playlist
that is constantly updated, and on-air DJs use the list for about 60% of the music played while choosing the rest on their own.
One notable program in the first decade of Radio K was Cosmic Slop. The show, which first went on the air in the waning days of WMMR, searched through the station's considerable library of 1970s pop music, playing both the best and worst from that decade (with occasional forays into the recordings from the rest of the 20th century). The hosts of the program finally ended the show at the end of 2004, saying that their itch had been scratched.
A news program called Access Minnesota http://www.accessminnesotaonline.com/ began in 2004 and has already gained a reasonable following. It is carried on several dozen radio stations across the state, both commercial and non-commercial outlets. Focusing on politics and the media, the program is produced by Radio K and the Minnesota Broadcasters Association http://www.minnesotabroadcasters.com/.
Radio K DJs have gone on to do various other projects. A few personalities from the station went on to work at REV-105, a short-lived but influential station that played a variety of music in the 1990s. Brian Oake
, Steve Nelson, and Thorn all worked at Radio K and then Rev before going on to other things. Oake and Thorn continue to try to stretch the playlist at Cities 97, a Clear Channel Communications
-owned station in the Twin Cities. The others eventually found their way to Minnesota Public Radio and started that company's new third service at KCMP
in 2005 (KCMP had formerly been St. Olaf College's WCAL).
The sports department has recently grown and gained recognition. The department began a weekly podcast, the Radio K Sports Desk, in the fall of 2008, with episodes during the academic year. A series of stories about the Minnesota football team (by sports reporter Marco LaNave) received a national finalist honor in the 2008 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards, and also received two regional honors. Sports reporter Bobby Baumann made appearances as an analyst on Jayhawk Sports Talk on KUJH-TV in December 2008, and on the Sports Uncut podcast with Daymon Johnson in July 2009.
In 2008-2009, nine different sports reporters contributed multiple stories to the weekly news program, Minnesota Notebook. Several reporters also made appearances on Gopher Sports Update, a weekly program produced by the Minnesota Broadcasters Association. The department also covered the first two rounds of the NCAA Women's Soccer Tournament at Elizabeth Lyle Robbie Stadium (St. Paul), the NCAA Volleyball Tournament at the Sports Pavilion on the campus of the University of Minnesota, the NCAA Basketball Tournament at the HHH Metrodome (Minneapolis), the NCAA Hockey Tournament at Mariucci Arena (Minneapolis), and the NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships at the Sports Pavilion on the campus of the University of Minnesota.
.
The station's main AM non-directional signal operates at 5,000 watts. Like most 5,000-watt AM stations in the Midwest, it has comparable range to a full-power FM station due to the area's flat land and excellent soil conductivity. It can picked up across the Twin Cities region, with grade B coverage in St. Cloud
and Mankato. It is broadcast in daylight hours from U of M's St. Paul/Falcon Heights
campus, though it is licensed to Minneapolis. It shuts off at sundown to protect WABC
in New York City and KKOB in Albuquerque. The exact time that the station goes off the air varies from month to month, ranging from 4:30 p.m. in the winter to 9:00 p.m. in the summer.
At night, on weekends, and during the summer, Radio K also broadcasts on the 8-watt KUOM-FM 106.5. This frequency is shared with KDXL
, a station at St. Louis Park High School
in St. Louis Park
, which began broadcasts around 1978 (originally at 91.7 FM). While class is in session at the school, the transmitter is used for KDXL and at all other times KUOM-FM is on. Setting up KUOM-FM took several years of negotiations with the Federal Communications Commission
. In 2004, the transmitter was moved from the high school to a location in southwest Minneapolis near Lake Calhoun, near the St. Louis Park city limits, and raised to a greater height on a high rise residential building, expanding the range of both KUOM-FM and KDXL. Even with the increased height, the station operates at such low power that it can only be heard clearly in Minneapolis itself. It has fringe coverage at best in St. Paul (subject to occasional interference from a 197-watt translator of CCM outlet "The Refuge" in the southern suburb of Elko New Market), and cannot be heard at all even in most of the inner-ring Twin Cities suburbs.
Radio K also transmits via a 99-watt translator W264BR 100.7 FM which is co-located with the main AM transmitter. When it went online in late July 2005 the original 10-watt transmitter limited the covered area to only the U of M's St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses with spotty coverage even within the inner-ring suburbs. In early July 2011 the transmitter was upgraded to 99 watts. This significantly expanded the covered area to include almost all inner ring suburbs and many outer ring suburbs with the potential for reception as far away as Hastings, MN or Hudson, WI under favorable conditions.
Radio K operates another 99-watt translator K283BG at 104.5 FM whose transmitter is located near Radio-K's studios in Rarig Center on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota. Before W264BR's transmitter was upgraded K283BG was important for offering at least secondary coverage to most of the inner-ring suburbs. Through these two translators KUOM is able to broadcast 24/7 all year. This substantially improves KUOM's ability to serve the entire metro area, especially between sunset and sunrise when the station's AM signal must sign off.
, featuring live recordings. The most recent version, volume 7, was released in 2011.
Radio format
A radio format or programming format not to be confused with broadcast programming describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. Radio formats are frequently employed as a marketing tool, and constantly evolve...
in the 1990s, KUOM was known as University of Minnesota Public Radio (independent of Minnesota Public Radio) and broadcast public affairs, arts, classical music, and a variety of other programming. Because of this, the station is operated by the university's College of Continuing Education, but receives funding from a number of sources including donations from the public.
The station has broadcast on the AM band at 770 kHz since the 1920s, but is subject to clear channel restrictions on that frequency and shuts down at night, in order to protect New York City's WABC
WABC (AM)
WABC , known as "NewsTalkRadio 77 WABC" is a radio station in New York City. Owned by the broadcasting division of Cumulus Media, the station broadcasts on a clear channel and is the flagship station of Cumulus Media Networks...
and KKOB in Albuquerque. Radio K now has three small FM
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
transmitters set up as translators to carry the signal.
Due to their limited range, the station largely relies on Internet radio
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
to reach listeners at night. As a side effect, these netcasts have given Radio K a small but loyal international following. KUOM is a member of Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
's Independent Public Radio
Independent Public Radio
Independent Public Radio is a public radio network in Minnesota. It is the second-largest public radio organization in the state, after Minnesota Public Radio...
network (previously known as AMPERS).
Radio K gives airplay to a wide range of new and old independent
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
and alternative
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
music during variety shifts. It also features specialty programming dedicated to ambient and post-rock
Post-rock
Post-rock is a subgenre of rock music characterized by the influence and use of instruments commonly associated with rock, but using rhythms and "guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures" not traditionally found in rock...
, metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
, hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
, EDM
EDM
EDM may also refer to:In information technology:* Electronic direct marketing, another term for E-mail marketing* Electronic Direct Mail*Electronic document management, the tracking and storage of electronic documents...
, R&B, electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
and reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, and world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
, as well as an award-winning show for local Minneapolis music. In 2010, Radio K was named the Best Radio Station of the Twin Cities by City Pages
City Pages
City Pages is an alternative weekly newspaper serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It features news, film, theatre and restaurant reviews, and music criticism. It is printed in a tabloid format, and is available free every Wednesday...
editors.
Translators
In addition to the main station, KUOM is relayed by three additional frequencies to widen its broadcast area.History
Radio transmissions at the university date to 1912, when a professor named F. W. Springer began experimenting with broadcasts, though he probably just used a spark gap transmitter. Activities were suspended by World War I, but electrical engineeringElectrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
professor C. M. Jansky, Jr. (the older brother of Karl Jansky) was doing broadcasting again by 1920. He had previously been at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, where he had helped at station 9XM (soon to be called WHA
WHA (AM)
-External links:*Jeff Miller . *Randall Davidson. PortalWisconsin.org...
). Jansky used the call sign 9XI and provided reports on farm markets and weather. In February 1922, when a heavy snowstorm knocked out newswire services into the region, personnel at the Minneapolis Tribune convinced operators to help them retrieve the day's news through a roundabout series of amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
relays.
Focus on education
The University received the first AM license in the state on January 13, 1922 for the call sign WLB (the same day as Wisconsin's WHA), and programming was extended to include lectureLecture
thumb|A lecture on [[linear algebra]] at the [[Helsinki University of Technology]]A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history,...
s, concert
Concert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
s, and football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
games. In the 1930s and 1940s, the station broadcast a considerable amount of educational material and was used for distance learning—a practice that continued into the 1990s. The station had a paid staff, unlike a smaller campus-only station that emerged later. The call sign was changed to KUOM on June 1, 1945.
A polio epidemic in 1946 that resulted in temporary school closings and the cancellation of the Minnesota State Fair
Minnesota State Fair
The Minnesota State Fair is the state fair of the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its slogan is "The Great Minnesota Get-Together." It is the 2nd largest fair in the United States, and the largest state fair in the United States in terms of average daily attendance, though the State Fair of Texas runs...
led the station to create programming for children who were homebound. Those programs, along with others broadcast in the 1940s, were recognized for their importance and led to several awards being given to the station.
For nearly 70 years, WLB and later KUOM time-shared the already daytime-restricted 770 kHz frequency with WCAL
KCMP
-WCAL:The station began with physics experiments in 1918 when five students and a professor built a small radio transmitter at St. Olaf College. Using a wire antenna strung between the campus chapel and the college's "Old Main" , signals from these experiments were picked up as far away as New...
-AM of St. Olaf College
St. Olaf College
St. Olaf College is a coeducational, residential, four-year, private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. It was founded in 1874 by a group of Norwegian-American immigrant pastors and farmers, led by Pastor Bernt Julius Muus. The college is named after Olaf II of Norway,...
in Northfield, Minnesota
Northfield, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 17,147 people, 4,909 households, and 3,210 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,452.2 people per square mile . There were 5,119 housing units at an average density of 732.1 per square mile...
, so each station averaged just about 6 hours of programming each day. The University of Minnesota eventually made an agreement with St. Olaf where WCAL would get land for a powerful FM transmitter on U of M land near Rosemount, Minnesota
Rosemount, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 14,619 people, 4,742 households, and 3,931 families residing in the city. The population density was 434.2 people per square mile . There were 4,845 housing units at an average density of 143.9 per square mile...
in exchange for the shutdown of WCAL's AM transmitter so that KUOM could transmit exclusively on the frequency during the day. The agreement came to fruition in 1991.
Campus radio
Another station, WMMR (for "Women's and Men's Minnesota Radio"), was created on campus in 1948, with studios in the Coffman Memorial UnionCoffman Memorial Union
Coffman Memorial Union is the student union on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, United States. It anchors the south side of Northrop Mall, on the south side of Washington Avenue, overlooking the Mississippi River...
. Focused on providing a service for the student body, it originally broadcast via carrier current
Carrier current
Carrier current is a method of low power AM radio transmission that uses the AC electrical system of a building to propagate a medium frequency, AM signal to a relatively small area, such as a building or a group of buildings...
on campus, using the frequency 730 A.M. (hence the oft-used tag-line "Radio 73"). Legend had it that the WMMR call sign was actually assigned to the station by the FCC, pre-dating the assignment of those same call letters to the well-known Philadelphia station WMMR. The legend continued that the FCC forgot that it had allowed carrier current stations to use a call sign, and gave away the sign to the Philly station. The Minnesota students stuck to their guns and never changed their call sign, and there were of course no legal repercussions given that carrier current stations do not actually go over the air. By the 1970s, this legend lived merely as a tale passed down from year to year in an oral tradition, and has never been documented enough to confirm.
The station's volunteer engineers famously talked themselves into the campus steam-tunnel system from time to time when they needed to maintain the cables that connected the station's studios to the small transmitters located in each of the dormitory buildings. Tales were told of singed eyebrows from coming too close to the hot steam pipes used to heat the buildings. Eventually the station added an FM signal to the Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
system.
This was an entirely student-run operation, relying on volunteers. By the mid-'60s through the end of its life, the station tried to emulate the management structure of a typical AM rocker of the day, with an appointed General Manager, Program Director, Music Director, and other management positions. From time to time, somebody actually sold an advertising slot, but the station more or less maintained itself using a small stipend from the Speech Communications department. Even then, the volunteers managed to put out programming for nearly 18 hours a day most days of the school year, and taught many a student the ins and outs of how to operate a studio. A news and sports operation broadcast daily reports, and the basketball, football and hockey programs were usually broadcast with live play-by-play. A number of live broadcasts from the Whole music club and the Great Hall at the union also took place, and the station served to promote other campus events such as the 'Campus Carny' held annually in the old field house.
Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...
, the well-known host of Minnesota Public Radio
Minnesota Public Radio
Minnesota Public Radio , is the flagship National Public Radio member network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, News & Information, Classical Music and The Current, MPR operates a 42-station regional radio network in the upper Midwest serving over 8 million people...
's A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show runs on Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. Central Time, and usually originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, although it is frequently taken on the road...
, began his radio career broadcasting classical music on WMMR as a student in the early 1960s. He then worked at KUOM from 1963 to 1968.
Radio K
In the early 1990s, after a great deal of lobbying by WMMR General Manager Jim Musil—who also designed the original Radio K logo—the university began to examine the idea of merging WMMR and KUOM. The university explained the transition to a music format by saying that most of the educational value of KUOM had been superseded by other media outlets by this time. To avoid the lack of direction found at some college music stations, the new "Radio K" had a small full-time staff to oversee operations and provide a certain level of continuity, while students would provide much of the on-air talent while going through their radio studies. The transition finally took place in 1993, and the station started broadcasting as "Radio K" on October 1 that year.Radio K has received accolades from local newspapers and magazines, especially the weekly City Pages
City Pages
City Pages is an alternative weekly newspaper serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It features news, film, theatre and restaurant reviews, and music criticism. It is printed in a tabloid format, and is available free every Wednesday...
which has consistently ranked the station among the best for music in the region.
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
founder Ryan Schreiber also commonly cites the station's influence as having been an integral factor in his decision to start an online publication dedicated to the coverage of independent music. The station receives about 120 new recordings each month which are filtered through a large group of reviewers and disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
s. Recordings that pass muster are added to a large playlist
Playlist
In its most general form, a playlist is simply a list of songs. They can be played in sequential or shuffled order. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of radio broadcasting and personal computers.-In radio:...
that is constantly updated, and on-air DJs use the list for about 60% of the music played while choosing the rest on their own.
One notable program in the first decade of Radio K was Cosmic Slop. The show, which first went on the air in the waning days of WMMR, searched through the station's considerable library of 1970s pop music, playing both the best and worst from that decade (with occasional forays into the recordings from the rest of the 20th century). The hosts of the program finally ended the show at the end of 2004, saying that their itch had been scratched.
A news program called Access Minnesota http://www.accessminnesotaonline.com/ began in 2004 and has already gained a reasonable following. It is carried on several dozen radio stations across the state, both commercial and non-commercial outlets. Focusing on politics and the media, the program is produced by Radio K and the Minnesota Broadcasters Association http://www.minnesotabroadcasters.com/.
Radio K DJs have gone on to do various other projects. A few personalities from the station went on to work at REV-105, a short-lived but influential station that played a variety of music in the 1990s. Brian Oake
Brian Oake
Brian Oake is a radio broadcast personality in the Minneapolis, Minnesota radio market. Oake currently is a host on KTCZ-FM , in the afternoons, and also hosts a special weekend program on that station called Freedom Rock....
, Steve Nelson, and Thorn all worked at Radio K and then Rev before going on to other things. Oake and Thorn continue to try to stretch the playlist at Cities 97, a Clear Channel Communications
Clear Channel Communications
Clear Channel Communications, Inc. is an American media conglomerate company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It was founded in 1972 by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs, and was taken private by Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP in a leveraged buyout in 2008...
-owned station in the Twin Cities. The others eventually found their way to Minnesota Public Radio and started that company's new third service at KCMP
KCMP
-WCAL:The station began with physics experiments in 1918 when five students and a professor built a small radio transmitter at St. Olaf College. Using a wire antenna strung between the campus chapel and the college's "Old Main" , signals from these experiments were picked up as far away as New...
in 2005 (KCMP had formerly been St. Olaf College's WCAL).
The sports department has recently grown and gained recognition. The department began a weekly podcast, the Radio K Sports Desk, in the fall of 2008, with episodes during the academic year. A series of stories about the Minnesota football team (by sports reporter Marco LaNave) received a national finalist honor in the 2008 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards, and also received two regional honors. Sports reporter Bobby Baumann made appearances as an analyst on Jayhawk Sports Talk on KUJH-TV in December 2008, and on the Sports Uncut podcast with Daymon Johnson in July 2009.
In 2008-2009, nine different sports reporters contributed multiple stories to the weekly news program, Minnesota Notebook. Several reporters also made appearances on Gopher Sports Update, a weekly program produced by the Minnesota Broadcasters Association. The department also covered the first two rounds of the NCAA Women's Soccer Tournament at Elizabeth Lyle Robbie Stadium (St. Paul), the NCAA Volleyball Tournament at the Sports Pavilion on the campus of the University of Minnesota, the NCAA Basketball Tournament at the HHH Metrodome (Minneapolis), the NCAA Hockey Tournament at Mariucci Arena (Minneapolis), and the NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships at the Sports Pavilion on the campus of the University of Minnesota.
Studio and transmitters
Initial broadcasts originated in the electrical engineering building on the Minneapolis campus, where a transmitter was mounted on the roof. The facilities were moved to Eddy Hall in 1936. Four decades later in 1974, the studios were moved again, this time to Rarig Center just across the Mississippi RiverMississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
.
The station's main AM non-directional signal operates at 5,000 watts. Like most 5,000-watt AM stations in the Midwest, it has comparable range to a full-power FM station due to the area's flat land and excellent soil conductivity. It can picked up across the Twin Cities region, with grade B coverage in St. Cloud
St. Cloud, Minnesota
St. Cloud is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the largest population center in the state's central region. The population was 65,842 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Stearns County...
and Mankato. It is broadcast in daylight hours from U of M's St. Paul/Falcon Heights
Falcon Heights, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,572 people, 2,103 households, and 1,434 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,487.9 people per square mile . There were 2,136 housing units at an average density of 953.7 per square mile...
campus, though it is licensed to Minneapolis. It shuts off at sundown to protect WABC
WABC (AM)
WABC , known as "NewsTalkRadio 77 WABC" is a radio station in New York City. Owned by the broadcasting division of Cumulus Media, the station broadcasts on a clear channel and is the flagship station of Cumulus Media Networks...
in New York City and KKOB in Albuquerque. The exact time that the station goes off the air varies from month to month, ranging from 4:30 p.m. in the winter to 9:00 p.m. in the summer.
At night, on weekends, and during the summer, Radio K also broadcasts on the 8-watt KUOM-FM 106.5. This frequency is shared with KDXL
KDXL
KDXL is a student operated radio station at St. Louis Park High School in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. The station's frequency is 106.5, which it shares with the University of Minnesota's KUOM in a timesharing agreement. The station is currently owned by Independent School District #283....
, a station at St. Louis Park High School
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
in St. Louis Park
St. Louis Park, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 44,126 people, 20,782 households, and 10,557 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,122.5 persons per square mile . There were 21,140 housing units at an average density of 1,975.0 per square mile...
, which began broadcasts around 1978 (originally at 91.7 FM). While class is in session at the school, the transmitter is used for KDXL and at all other times KUOM-FM is on. Setting up KUOM-FM took several years of negotiations with the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
. In 2004, the transmitter was moved from the high school to a location in southwest Minneapolis near Lake Calhoun, near the St. Louis Park city limits, and raised to a greater height on a high rise residential building, expanding the range of both KUOM-FM and KDXL. Even with the increased height, the station operates at such low power that it can only be heard clearly in Minneapolis itself. It has fringe coverage at best in St. Paul (subject to occasional interference from a 197-watt translator of CCM outlet "The Refuge" in the southern suburb of Elko New Market), and cannot be heard at all even in most of the inner-ring Twin Cities suburbs.
Radio K also transmits via a 99-watt translator W264BR 100.7 FM which is co-located with the main AM transmitter. When it went online in late July 2005 the original 10-watt transmitter limited the covered area to only the U of M's St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses with spotty coverage even within the inner-ring suburbs. In early July 2011 the transmitter was upgraded to 99 watts. This significantly expanded the covered area to include almost all inner ring suburbs and many outer ring suburbs with the potential for reception as far away as Hastings, MN or Hudson, WI under favorable conditions.
Radio K operates another 99-watt translator K283BG at 104.5 FM whose transmitter is located near Radio-K's studios in Rarig Center on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota. Before W264BR's transmitter was upgraded K283BG was important for offering at least secondary coverage to most of the inner-ring suburbs. Through these two translators KUOM is able to broadcast 24/7 all year. This substantially improves KUOM's ability to serve the entire metro area, especially between sunset and sunrise when the station's AM signal must sign off.
Funding
The station is partially supported by donations, and frequent listeners (of which there are about 25,000) are implored to "Become a Member" in fundraising drives known as "PowerSurges." Approximately 40% of the station's funding comes from this support, while the rest comes from money provided by the state and federal governments, along with the University of Minnesota. Radio K has put out a series of music compilations under the title Stuck on AMStuck on AM
Stuck on AM is the name used for a series of music compilations made from live recordings at Radio K at the University of Minnesota.-Disc 1: Amplitude:#Rex Daisy "Stuck on AM" #Big Red Ball "Drown"...
, featuring live recordings. The most recent version, volume 7, was released in 2011.
See also
- KUMD-FM – University station in DuluthDuluth, MinnesotaDuluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Saint Louis County. The fourth largest city in Minnesota, Duluth had a total population of 86,265 in the 2010 census. Duluth is also the second largest city that is located on Lake Superior after Thunder Bay, Ontario,...
- KUMMKUMMKUMM is a radio station broadcasting an Alternative format. Licensed to Morris, Minnesota, USA. The station is currently owned by University of Minnesota Morris.The station is a member of Minnesota's Independent Public Radio network...
– University station in MorrisMorris, MinnesotaAs of the census of 2000, there were 5,068 people, 1,929 households, and 985 families residing in the town. The population density was 1,183.2 people per square mile . There were 2,067 housing units at an average density of 482.6 per square mile...