KZUM approaches a milestone anniversary
Lincoln’s KZUM celebrates 15 years on the air with a fundraising telethon this weekend.
KZUM is the city’s only community radio station.
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Station beginning
16th year on air
I
By Mark Baldridge
Senior Reporter
This weekend KZUM kicks off its
fund-raising marathon in celebration
of its 15th anniversary as Lincoln’s
only community radio station.
Dick Noble, general manager of
the station since May, and Caroline
Tetschner, program director, said the
station had big plans for the future.
Noble said he dreamed of a station
with a larger underwriter base, more
money, and more and better equip
ment. Cultural diversity is“part of our
mission,” he said.
“I think, philosophically,that’s our
reason for being.”
Tetschner said she would like to
see more variety.
“I’d like to see more women’s
shows and minorities myself,” she
said.
And the station is expanding. Plans
are in the works to take over more
office space next door to its current
location on the top floor of the Termi
nal building at 1 Oth and O streets.
With its expanding facilities, its 80
volunteer disc jockeys and five full
time employees, the station has made
a long trip from its more humble
origins.
KZUM began, by all accounts, as
something quite different from what
it has become.
In 1978 KZUM went on the air for
the first time, broadcasting from the
basement of what was the Open Har
vest grocery store — where there
were dirt floors and mice in the rafters.
Ron Kurtenbach was there from
the beginning.
“If any one person could be said to
have started the station, it would be
myself,” he said.
Known tomany Lincolnitesas“that
guy on channel 14” from the various
shows he hosts on the public access
station, Kurtenbach is a man of in
tense political activity.
“I remember going to meetings—
about the proposed station — at St.
Mark’s, and no one would come,” he
said.
‘We waited five, six years to get a
license.”
“To some extent it came out of the
antiwar movement,” he said of the
station’s origins. “It came out of the
lack of access in the commercial me
dia for the Left.
“Some of us wanted to change the
world,” he said.
These days, Kurtenbach said, the
station is only a “sophisticated juke
box/’ But he said he believed all that
could change.
“The people have to take the sta
tion back from those who have come
to misrule it.” he said.
“If a hundred subscribers came
down to the board elections on
Nov. 14 — they could take over the
board.”
Such an event would almost be par
for the course at a station with such a
tumultuous history.
Noble agreed that things often got
a little strange around the station.
“This place can be chaotic,” he
said. “But I’d rather be driven crazy
than be bored to death.”
There’s little chance of that at a
radio station that plays every con
ceivable kind of music at one time or
another, and is always looking for
more variety.
Besides what Tetschner called the
“two mainstays” of the station, jazz
and blues, KZUM offers the Grateful
Dead Hour, shows that feature polka,
Celtic and folk music, reggae, Span
ish programming, talk shows and
woman’s focus music.
“We’ve got soul or urban—what
ever they’re calling it this week,”
Noble said.
Ana anyinmg you near on ivz.u m
you can be sure there is no commer
cial motive.” Tetschncr said.
The station takes in most of its
money through members and under
writers.
“We tell our underwriters that, if
they listen to the station 24 hours a
day, they’ll hear something they don’t
like.” Noble said.
“Something that pisses me off is
that Lincoln nas a terrible self-im
age,” he said.
Noble and Tetschner said they
hoped that would change, at least as
far as community rad io was concerned,
as KZUM worked to gain a higher
profile in the coming years.
--
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A brilliant surgeon (Alec Baldwin) and the wife of a college dean (Nicole Kidman) are
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Lack of action slows ‘Malice’
“Malice”
Although the film “Malice” is
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Most of the advertising has
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Baldwin’s character isn't going to
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See MALICE onTT
