Independent, community-run radio allows for the widespread, uncensored sharing of information that is truly by the people, for the people. This community faced a serious setback at the beginning of the year with the shutdown of San Francisco station KUSF.
On Saturday, April 23rd Common Frequency, a local non-profit supporting innovative independent student and community-run radio, is holding a free event and concert to reveal and discuss these growing threats and the ways in which they may be resisted.
The Davis-based group is currently assisting twenty west coast stations launch by 2012 while also commencing a campaign to launch new broadcast facilities in Marin, Sonoma, and Merced counties.
The goal is to form a coalition of stations on the west coast that will bring cultural interest and independent radio to areas that do not yet have such resources.
The event held this weekend will directly benefit these campaigns through Common Frequency and will discuss the importance of independent radio to the community.
The discussion panel, titled “Who’s Stations? Our Stations! Community Voices, Educational Radio, and KUSF in exile,” begins at 7 p.m. and will involve the attendees with a question and answer period.
The colloquium will deal with a number of topics regarding community-run radio including ways low power radio can be sustained and how to keep student radio safe from buyouts. The privatization of the university system will also be discussed in regards to student-run radio.
Commercial radio will be compared to underground radio to express the need for fewer mainstream messages. The importance of broadcasting more diverse information in addition to locally specific interests will be a point of discussion.
Telecommunications attorney Alan Korn, former music director of KUSF Irwin Swirnoff, and University of San Francisco associate professor Dorothy Kidd will be speaking on the broader nationwide problems facing student and community-run stations as well as the current KUSF crisis.
On January 18th KUSF was sold to a commercial all-classical music format owned by the University of Southern California. The station was the sole independent, student and community-run station in San Francisco.
KDVS’s publication, Kdviations, recently published an interview with Irwin Swirnoff of Save KUSF in which the former music director discussed the necessity of independent radio to the community.
One of his main points remarked upon the extensive musical libraries of such stations as KUSF and KDVS which, due to their broad scope, are able to “connect eras and connect movements to tell a story.”
As collectors of both of these cities cultural histories along with an overall chronology of musical history, these stations give listeners a considerably deeper understanding of their communities and the arts.
As well as being major musical and cultural resources, independent stations encourage and broadcast a diverse range of viewpoints to the public as they are run by a “blend of community volunteers as well as students.” Rather than voicing a single genre or angle, independent stations allow for a multiplicity of both.
For the Davis community in particular, KDVS is incomparable in its scope and involvement in the music and culture scene.
Sharmi Basu, former KDVS funding director and DJ as well as fundraising director for Saturday’s event, describes her experience with the station as being the formative influence for her “entire educational experience at UC Davis.”
Along with providing experiential learning through their programs in addition to free advertising and sound equipment to every organization on campus, KDVS creates an environment of acceptance to everyone who wishes to be involved.
The station’s “mission is to not just be alternative but to accept everyone who does not feel accepted and to basically just be an empathetic human being.”
Although KDVS is technically owned by the UC Regents and therefore risks the possibility of being sold, it is a mainly community-funded organization.
Two-thirds of this student-run radio’s funding comes from its listeners. To help KDVS maintain its position as an independent, educational resource, tune in during the station’s fundraiser week of April 18-24th to donate.
KDVS will be involved in the Common Frequency event which will begin at 6:30 in the Technocultural Studies building on the UC Davis campus.
Dinner, served by local catering collective The People’s Food, will be provided for a sliding scale donation of $5-35. Food is donated by Full Belly Farm and The Davis Food Co-Op.
The concert will begin at 9:00. Hip-hop, soul, and rock band The Dirt Feelin’, experimental rock group Mucky the Ducky, electronic pop solo-artist Pregnant, and legendary Davis punk band The Magi-Cool Doods will be performing.
