I Nebraskan a j. o t? a l • « Puc
Wednesday, January 25,1989 AftS & ElltCrt 31111110111
I Tune played 2,220 times in publicity stunt
By Andy Upright
Staff Reporter
If you weren’t in Lincoln over
the winter break, or you failed to
tunc into KKNB 104.1 FM, then
you probably missed out on the
best chance all year to really “rock
around the clock.”
Starting at 5 p.m. on Jan. 6,
KKNB played the Bill Haley and
the Comets classic ‘ ‘Rock Around
The Clock” non-stop. After play
ing the song 2,220 times, back to
back, they decided 4 4 it was time to
stop,” according to station pro
gram director Roger Agnew.
The new station’s promotional
stunt was aided by its status as an
all-compact disc format.
“We have slate of the art com
pact disc players, on them you can
program a repeat mode,” Agnew
said. “That’s what we did.”
During the period of rocking
around the clock, the station re
ceived a lot of feedback from its
audience, according to Agnew.
“No one got irate or annoyed,
but someone called 911 thinking
that our disc-jockey had a heart
attack,” Agnew said. “It was kind
' of fun. Someday we plan to have a
meltdown of that disc.”
Since then, the station has sub
mitted the story to the Guinness
Book of World Records, he said.
The intent of the “contempo
rary mass appeal station” is to
attract listeners in the 18-49 age
bracket. He describes the music
that KKNB plays as being “popu
lar contemporary music.”
Agnew and his brother Doug,
KKNB general manager, recently
purchased the Crete radio station
and moved it to Lincoln. In doing
so, they upgraded the system from
3,000 to 50,000 watts. A third
brother, David, fills the role of
KKNB’s chief engineer.
While KKNB is an entirely new
project, other Lincoln radio sta
tions are taking on new identities
as well. KFRX 103 FM scared
many on Dec. 7 when the station
played its last song.
The song played directly alter
was given “first song” status,
since it was played by the new
KFRX 102.7
“When we started our station,
most radios had a rotary tuning
dial,” explained general manager
Roger Larson. “Now most radios
are digital. To better represent
ourselves we call it 102.7. We also
changed the jingle and decided to
call attention to it by burying 103
all together.”
While KFRX’s change was pri
marily numerical, KLIN-FM has
undergone a format change.
Last November, KLIN stopped
playing “beautiful music” and
took up a more popular “EZ
Going” format, according to sta
tion manager Mike Elliott. The
station now features “music with
words, recorded by the original
artists.”
The station now plays artists
such as Dionne Warwick, Kenny
Rogers, Lionel Richie among oth
ers, according to Elliott.
“We’ve moved out of the ele
vator,” said Elliott. “Without a
doubt we have gained many many
new listeners.”
Tammy Taylor/Daily Nebraskan
■Grant to theater pays tor new equipment
PI The Friends of the Sheldon Film
IBrhcater received a $10,(MX) grant
Bfrom the John D. and Catherine T.
Brtac Arthur Foundation,
jjj 1 'he grant will pay lor half of a
jM$20,(XX) project to buy new- equip
jBment for the theater’s projection
H>ooth and auditorium.
About $4,(XX) has already been
Braised to match the grant.
M According to a press release, Dan
BI adely, curator of film at the Sheldon
Memorial Art Gallery said some of
(■the old equipment was more than 20
B years old.
H New equipment w ill include anew
I screen, a power supply unit, two
35mm lamphouses and xenon bulbs,
and two integrated anamorphic
lenses.
In 1985, a similar project brought
a Dolby stereo sound system into the
theater.
The Sheldon Film Theater was
established in 1973, and is a year
round film exhibition program of the
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.
The theater has screened a wide
diversity of film and video, including
innovative American independent
works, classic foreign and American
cinema, documentaries which exam
ine a wide variety of issues of con
cerns, films about other art media and
contemporary foreign films.
The Friends of the Sheldon Film
Theater was created in 1975 to help
raise funds for the film exhibition
program. The group now has more
than 350 members.
The film theater is one of 53 cen
ters in 20 slates that will receive new
grants from the MacArthur Founda
tion.
jonn t. Lomally, president oi the
foundation, was quoted as saying that
media arts centers provide independ
ent filmmakers the distribution they
need at very little cost.
As a result, he said, the centers
free independent filmmakers from
commercial constraints and encour
age creativity.
The Mac Arthur Foundation has
supported media arts centers since
1986. The Foundation has invested
more than million dollars in vari
ous centers, making itihe largest non
government contributor to such cen
ters.
William T. Kirby, a MacAnhur
Foundation director, said the invest
mcnt has borne Iruit. The improved
media centers proposed projects that
will ensure long-term stability by
making money.
“These projects will help media
arts centers develop from struggling
experiments to permanent institu
tions,” Kirby said.
I roet to give seminar
By Chris Carey
Staff Reporter
Hilda Raz will give a seminar
titled “A Reading: The Computer
Uses of Natural Language” at 3 p.m.
today at St. Mark’s-on-the-Campus.
Raz, editor of the Prairie Schooner
literary magazine, will use her poem,
‘‘Computer Uses of Natural Lan
guage, ’ to frame readings from other
poems, combined with a discussion
Hof how language plays with experi
ence in her work.
“Computer Uses of Natural Lan
guage” is a poem from the recently
published book, “What is Good.”
Raz said she will show the ways in
which the poems in her first book,
“What is Good.” contrast with the
poems in her second book, “The
Bone Dish,” which will be coming
out in February.
Contemporary poets such as
Robert Lowell, Maxcnc Kumin and
Ellen Bryant Voigt have influenced
her writing, but her inspiration comes
from a phrase that catches her atten
tion and helps her spark a new idea,
she said.
Ra/. began writing poetry in high
school and said that her favorite
poem is the one she is currently work
ing on. The themes in her poems are
about language and human experi
ence.
Along with being editor of the
Prairie Schooner, Raz works with the
Nebraska Arts Council five weeks a
year as a consultant to teachers in the
public school system. She is also the
president of the Association of Writ
ing Programs, an organization of
writers who teach.
At the same lime, she is a fellow at
the Center for Great Plain Studies at
UNL and a fellow at Middlebury
College in Vermont. As a fellow for
CGPS, her research area is poetry and
she writes on other authors’ poems,
book reviews and essays, she said.
Raz also spends a lot of her lime
travelling to universities across the
country giving readings and lectures,
and her free time is spent writing, she
Raz said she is pleased to have her
books coming out and hopes people
will read and enjoy them. She also
said she hopes people will subscribe
to Prairie Schooner magazine.
As part of the seminar scries, the
CGPS will also be featuring other
speakers in February and March.
In April die CGPS will be having
an annual symposium concerning
Hispanic presence on the Great
Plains. The CGPS conducts monthly
seminars so that lellows, such as Raz,
can present research 1 indings in a way
that scholars can discover what other
scholars are doing.