Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover story: All that jazz

Nearly five years after its format change, has KUNV found itself?

By Andrew Kiraly

The question comes up at the tail end of a recent interview: Technically speaking, just what is KUNV? Is it a community radio station? A college station? Public radio? Or student radio?

Program director Travis Tharp and general manager Erika Engstrom carefully pick their way over an answer that comes off like a chorus: "KUNV," they chime, "is a nonprofit public radio service affiliated with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas."

It doesn't necessarily clear things up, but it's as close as anyone has come in years to pinning down the station's identity--an identity that's been discussed, bickered over and fussed about everywhere from Board of Regent meetings to bars to newspapers. It seems that just when the original furor over then-interim general manager Don Fuller pulling the plug on the station's award-winning "Rock Avenue" show in May 1998 had finally quieted down, the boat got rocked again, this time in the form of seminal electronica show "Dimensional Dance" getting canceled after nearly 10 years on the air. The timing is sadly apt: This May will mark five years since KUNV--citing that timeworn plaint of the public radio maven, money woes--shrugged off its rock roots and began to remake itself as a jazz station, trading in its quaint patchwork of day programming for a solid jazz format. So long Ministry, hello Mingus. Goodbye Built to Spill, welcome Buddy Guy.

"We are a jazz station," says program director Travis Tharp. "We offer additional eclectic programming in order to better serve the listening community, to provide a venue for certain formats that aren't represented anywhere else. However, the station's main format is jazz."

Tharp's cancellation of "Dimensional Dance" about a month ago--replaced, in part, by a satellite-fed show by Chicago's renowned jazz expert Bob Parlocha--affirms his mission statement of what might be called The New KUNV.

And make no mistake, it is a new station. For one, GM Engstrom has been with the station for two years; Tharp, mere months. It's no longer located on the UNLV campus, either, shoved off a few years ago by a student government facing a constant space crunch; the station now has more spacious digs in an East Tropicana Avenue office park. Fundraising has been streamlined, professionalized, pumped up; the station now puts on two annual pledge drives instead of one, and the last pledge drive, says Engstrom, happily exceeded their goals. The station's most recent "cume" (cumulative listenership, a common radio yardstick that tells the total number of unique listeners in a week's time) is about 42,000, about twice that of five years ago.

But sour notes dot this would-be swan song. Five years after the jump to jazz, the station is in many ways still looking for a foothold. With no student funding--a $90,000 chunk that used to provide a third of the station's budget through much of the '90s--pledge and membership drives are as crucial as ever. Money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides a quarter of the station's pie, is valuable but shaky, especially since the station is under pressure from the nonprofit group to get with the program. In order to keep the CPB money flowing at its current rate, KUNV has to meet muster on a series of fronts from listenership to pledge money--and according to CPB officials, the station has yet to make the grade.

To tie up loose ends--and perhaps maintain its increasingly tenuous connection with the university--the station depends on a curious arrangement with the College of Urban Affairs. Depending on whom you talk to, the college either gifts the station grant money or it's considered a loan (Engstrom is associate dean of the College of Urban Affairs).

On top of all that--whether it's handwringing over the good old days or a reminder of the meaning of community radio--former KUNV jocks persist in questioning the station's jazzward lurch. What is the definition of community radio? they continue to ask. Does it entail chasing the largest untapped market? Piecing together a quilt of "eclectic programming" for a largely imagined audience? And how should a station contribute to diversity? By adding one voice too many? Or should it be a chorus in itself? Five years later, KUNV is a new station--but it's facing some familiar problems.

Money changes everything

The good news is that, at least in theory, the station is in a better position than ever to rake in dough from well-heeled fans of jazz. The bad news is that the station is more expensive to operate than ever, and--in one of those Catch-22s that mark public radio's constant grant scramble--the station has to prove it can make its own money in order to keep the funds flowing from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Like most public radio stations, KUNV must meet minimum listenership and fundraising standards.

"And right now we're not meeting those standards for this size market," says Engstrom. "We've been on continual probation, and we'd like to continue to be around, so we're working toward getting more listeners, and getting those listeners to become members." Engstrom says the station currently has 600 dues-paying members.

Jay Youngclaus, manager of radio projects for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, says the station is meeting neither of the CPB's listenership or financial benchmarks, and hasn't been for years. The "probation," or review, isn't punitive; in fact, it's geared toward getting the station on its feet by providing an Audience Service Challenge grant that, for example, has allowed the station to hire a consultant to work out the kinks.

Those kinks need to be filled with money. Add to the station's hurdles two state-provided staff positions that might not weather the budget storm, the loss of student government money to the tune of $90,000, the station getting ejected from its longtime home in UNLV's Moyer Student Union, and the belt is even tighter. Its new home in an office park near the university (interestingly, the same office park that now-defunct alt.rock commercial station KEDG once called home) takes about a $3,800 bite out of the station's budget. They're issues that marketing/membership director Lori Huerta confronted when she arrived at the station about a year ago.

"My initial impression when I arrived was that there was just a lot of money being left on the table," she says. "The station wasn't even close to effectively tapping the community for support. We were hitting them once a year through a 10-day pledge drive. They were doing the best they could, but even that pledge wasn't operating at maximum efficiency."

The station standardized its "premiums" package for those who pulled out their checkbooks, added a second pledge drive, and also plans to kick off a direct-mail campaign and forge sponsorship deals with other local venues and companies. The result so far: Huerta says the new second pledge drive last fall netted an extra $37,000 for KUNV coffers.

"A lot of it is just making it more smooth, more routine, more predictable," she says. "It's not that they weren't doing a good job before, it's just they never actually had a full-time, stable staff that's been there consistently."

Show me the pledges

Under the new regime, diversity is nice, but it's the numbers that count. That's why "Dimensional Dance" was tugged off the airwaves almost a month ago. Tharp and crew say it had so few listeners that the show barely registered on the charts; the long-running show that anticipated the rise of electronica--and then, ironically, became irrelevant during the very dance club explosion it in many ways foretold--had a rating of zero for its last few showings.

"It ran for 10 years, but it just wasn't happening anymore," Tharp says. "It happens all the time. It's unfortunate when something you love on TV or the radio is canceled--I was upset when they took 'Magnum P.I.' off the air--but it had to be done. It was the only show that had zero listenership. I do think we have some sort of mission, and part of it is outreach and diversity, but when that jeopardizes the entire existence of the station, you have to make those kind of decisions."

It's the kind of decision that marks the modern era of public radio; galvanized into action by a mid-'90s funding crisis, many stations are forced to operate much like their commercial cousins, keeping in mind markets and audience shares.

Nonetheless, KUNV honchos, "Dimensional Dance" DJ Eric "Big 'E'" Rebollo and show founder Matthew Tuttle (DJ Shoe) met last Tuesday to discuss the fate of the show. Tuttle and Rebollo say they'd hoped for some shot at reviving the program under new terms, but Tharp characterized the meeting as a "debriefing."

"It was hard," says Engstrom. "It wasn't a light decision, like 'Ha ha, let's get rid of this.' We have to serve an audience that has a need that's out there."

But instead of axing the show without warning, why not find ways to pump it up? Though the show has been off the air for weeks now, it's a question that still nettles Rebollo. As he tells it, changes at the station doomed the show that he says was once one of the major fundraisers come pledge drive season. First off, the station canceled its College Music Journal account. With the station no longer listed in the journal--a veritable bible for smaller record labels looking for airplay--label mavens stopped sending promo material to KUNV. With no new material to play, "Dimensional Dance" got stale. Listeners tuned out.

"I'd get 25-30 new titles a week," Rebollo says. "Six months after it was canceled, stuff still trickled in, but for the last year and a half, it was all stuff I bought or borrowed from Shoe. I won't put the whole blame on the station for the numbers going the way they did, but I do put the majority of it on them."

He adds: "It's like having a car. If you don't do anything to it, it'll break down. And I rode the show until there was nothing left to do." Rebollo thinks they shouldn't have consigned "Dimensional Dance" to the junkyard without trying a tuneup. It's not hard to imagine other weekend programs being subject to the same vicious cycle.

Matthew Tuttle, who inherited the show in '93 when it was called "Danceteria," renamed it and expanded its scope, says: "The ironic thing is that we were among the shows that helped buy the satellite equipment that ultimately phased us out. That's why there's such distaste with the direction the station is going in."

Tharp counters: "In order to maintain CPB funding, which is critical to our doors being open, we have to maintain a minimum listenership. I love electronic music. But sometimes you can't make decisions based on your heart. You have to use your head."

Diversity or consistency?

In that case, why not go jazz seven days a week? The proposition has been made by more than one party--including, Tharp says, CPB consultants who school the station in how to pump up revenue. But Tharp says the jazz-borg image aside, the weekend programming won't be squeezed out by the station's main format.

"Two years ago, [CPB consultants] said, 'You need to cancel everything on the weekend, do it overnight, lock the doors, go all jazz,'" says Tharp. "We've been ignoring that advice for some time, and we're pretty adamant about it. I wouldn't do that unless I was ordered to. Part of the reason I even applied for this job was because of all the extra stuff on the weekend that was going on. I would not have bothered to move 2,300 miles for a station I didn't believe in."

But, technically speaking, there's nothing to stop station heads from replacing the weekend's hodgepodge of Hawaiian music, reggae, salsa, hip hop and blues with jazz. Youngclaus says the CPB has absolutely no say in a public station's programming.

None of this is to say the weekend shows aren't helping pay the bills. Under the new management, many of the volunteer DJs are encouraged to drum up their own underwriting for their shows. Some of the weekend DJs accept the new reality, while others aren't so certain of their future.

George Lyons, who hosts weekend jam show "The Lyons Den," is one of the former. His case is rare in that he came to the station five years ago--managing to slot a jam band show while the station began its jazzward march. He doesn't balk at the station's need to keep an eye on both the bottom line as well as its musical roster.

"Your worth to the station has to do with what you can bring to the station," says Lyons, who adds that "Dimensional Dance" was the show that initially drew him into KUNV. And "The Lyons Den" has proved its worth; Lyons says he raises a thousand dollars more each year, with the last two pledge drives netting about $6,000 for the station. "If you're not bringing money into the station, there's a likelihood that there's a larger jazz listening audience out there than there is for your speciality program."

The emerging picture suggests the only thing saving the weekend from being slotted with jazz is Tharp's stated commitment to diversity. But some unlikely voices--not just from CPB consultants--are encouraging the station to give up the patchwork quilt in favor of a single sheet. Longtime public radio figure Lamar Marchese, general manager of KNPR 89.5-FM, has watched KUNV's rocky ride for years, and says things are finally smoothing out for the station. But they could be even smoother.

"They have more listeners than they ever had in their previous incarnation as an eclectic station," he says. "In radio, people want consistency. When they can't figure out what the station is doing from one day to the next, it leads to listener dissatisfaction." As for the weekend programming, Marchese characterizes it as a "vestige of the former program format" that station bosses would do well to replace with jazz.

But isn't there value to diversity? Marchese concedes there is, but the problem is that in the real world, not enough people listen--and open their wallets--to make it economically viable.

"For years, KUNV's mission was to serve lots of different unserved audiences," he says. "That's an old model that was popular in public radio about 40 years ago. As the industry grew up, we realized we can't be all things to all people. You have to have a niche, and hopefully you fill it super well and it will support you. More consistency means more success. KUNV is heading in the right direction. Now that they know they're going to maintain the jazz format, they need to extend it. They need to be consistent as much of the day and night as possible."

As for the station's quirky, tossed-salad past, the weekend remains a vestige of and testament to that--but for how long?

"My feeling has always been that KUNV is about diversity," says Kay Tuma, who hosts world music show "CQDX." "That was our original charter. In my viewpoint, the only radio stations that can be eclectic and diverse are the public radio stations, the community radio stations. Admittedly, we aren't going to make as much money as if we were a one-format station, but I don't see that as our mission. Our mission is to bring diverse music to the Vegas Valley--and that's a niche no one else can fill."