I'm the Harry Lime of college radio
Truly amazing - after ten years I am still...STILL notorious as the guy who "killed" KLSU according to this post.
Notice the societal speck who wrote this is an oh-so-tragically hip indie scenester bitching about being squashed by the powers that be. He also goes on about how he got to hang out with Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. All this is very familiar to anyone who shared the basement with me around 1994-1995. Y'know, for a group of people who call their worldview "progressive" and view their perch on the societal ladder as much better than the general public, little progress has been made. These morons were swooning over Sonic Youth and obsessing about indie cred way back when!
For the record, and I am not afraid to say it, there would be no KLSU without the plan I had to save the station. In November 1993, KLSU was a clique with an old transmitter, and a tower that was decaying rapidly. Something had to be done. I decided to be more attentive to the desires of the 25,000 students who paid for KLSU to operate. This was the heyday of the alternative rock explosion, and if there was ever a time when college radio and college students were close to being on the same page, it was then. So I made some adjustments - required DJ's to play 6 cuts from a 50+ cd stack, or something like that - and the response was as if I'd slapped their mamma. I realized I couldn't work with the existing staff so I dumped them and started over. Not everybody, but enough of the old garde, er, guard. I knew I had the administration's blessing as long as I dodn't create headaches, and I knew the majority of students would be receptive. And I was right. The fees for KLSU were increased to $5 per student each semester, which in recent years provided the deejays with a salary and the station with financial security it has never known. (Underwriting was never that big of a money maker for us and I'll bet it still isn't.) This little asshole who is bitching about being stepped on should be grateful that he got a check for a job that in the post Clear Channel radio world is dwindling.
If I could only get people who are important to give a damn what I do then I could be a true scoundrel, which is what I have aspired to for quite some time. My tenure at KLSU was valuable to me in many ways, not the least of which was the discovery that liberals and leftists base their arguments on some cosmic inspiration as oppossed to the reality that conservatives and libertarians specialize in. Today, I push those ideals in the arena of public discourse and government. That should really frighten those indie brats!
