Hide Article Text (OCR)
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Sunday, July 12,1996THE EDGE: New station broadcasts on 104.7Continued from Page D-1“One guy told us, ‘They call themselves The Edge—I’d like to push them over the edge ’ ”“It’s too bad they didn’t come up with a little more creative format for 104.7,” Diseth added. “They’re all slight variations of each other, except for KIAK andKJNP.”Programming on 95.9 KXLR FM has also recently changed. In early July, the locally produced weekday morning show was eliminated to cut costs, said Bill Holz-heimer, general manager of Northern Television’s two radio stations in Fairbanks.Now, the station’s music programming all comes via satellite from Los Angeles.Borealis Broadcasting, owner of two FM stations and one AM station in Fairbanks, also uses satellite feeds for much of its FM programming, except during the morning and late afternoon hours, called “drive time.”“These programmers from big stations in the Lower 48 get every opportunity to get their hands on new music,” said Terry Walley, Borealis president. “The announcers that are on the air are actually live. People here can call 800 numbers and can actually talk to the announcers.”One of his FM stations—103.9 KUWL—is now broadcasting a new sound. After swapping frequencies with the University of Alaska Fairbanks-owned and operated KSUA about two years ago, Borealis began spinning country tunes on 103.9 FM, competing with Pacific Star’s 102.5 KIAK FM.“That format wasn’t doing as well as we thought it would and the staff did not have their hearts into running a country radio station,” Walley said. “Country is still a big format that does verywell in Fairbanks—they’re the leading station in the market right now—and country audiences are very loyal to their stations.”Borealis disc jockeys were more interested in alternative music, Walley said, so the company switched to that format inNovember 1997.“Fairbanks was ready for it,” he said. “The college station was pulling some good audiences even though they’re not commercial ... due to the alternative music on that station. I knew there is definitely a market there.”But the university-owned and operated 91.5 KSUA FM is morethan just alternative music, said program director Christopher Hrycko. Diverse is a better adjective describing the music and programming mix.“During the day, you’ll hear fairly mainstream alternative music, but in the evenings, we go into speciality shows,” he said. “We try to appeal to as many different people as possible ... Latin American, world music, blue-grass, jazz—if there’s a style of music out there, I probably have a show for it.”The station is funded by student activity fees and is staffed by mostly volunteer disc jockeys, eliminating advertising revenue and constraints. “That frees us from appealing to a specific audience,” Hrycko said.KUWL’s alternative format isdesigned for male-oriented audiences, Walley said. “But it’s pulling in a lot of female numbers,” he added. “This format plays in about 60 other markets and it’s doing well in female numbers, just dumbfounding all the programmers.”The music mix that Michaels created for 104.7 is also tailored for male listeners, which compliments Pacific Star’s other stations in Fairbanks. Magic 101.1 KAKQ pulls mostly a female audience, while KIAK 102.5 FM listeners are both male and female country music fans.“In theory, advertisers can do one-stop shopping with us,” Hutton said.Promotional material detailing the typical 104.7 listener also fitsthe stereotypical Alaskan guy who drives a truck carrying either a jet ski or snowmachine in the back, owns or plans to purchase the “biggest, baddest” four wheeler and has a bumper sticker that says “He who has the most toys wins!”“It’s our persona as an Alaskan enjoying the outdoors and everything else,” Hutton said. “This is not a format that, without being tailored quite a bit, would play in Anchorage.’And the play lists, while based on some industry research, are original to the new Fairbanks radio station.“We did look for national formats, but we couldn’t find anything that we liked as much as what Clint put together,” Hutton said.While programming remains the same—traditional Christianmusic and shows—the organizational structure at 100.3 KJNPFM changed about a year ago.The 25,000-watt station andtransmitters are now run as a nonprofit station, instead of a commercial operation.That move helped the business open a third radio station in Houston, which went on the air Wednesday morning. It features programming from both the AM and FM religious stations at North Pole, bounced off of satellites to the Houston station.“We filed (to get a new frequency) a number of times in Houston, but a secular group would file on top of us and we could not afford to fight them to keep it,” said Gen Nelson, president of KJNP. “Our attorneys advised us to go nonprofit.”Northern Television also filed a request about three years ago with the Federal Communications Commission for a new Fairbanks radio station.The application has not yetbeen granted, and remains under review by the FCC, Holzheimersaid, iliSl i“We’re still stuck—it may be another couple years,” he added. “If someone else gets it, it’s not economically feasible to run by itself. It needs a mother ship, a multiple station to operate it.”That’s because Northern already owns equipment needed for broadcasting and employs workers trained in radio. “Shy of the transmitter system, we’reready to add it now,” HolzheimersaidAnd adding another station could give Northern, the only commercial broadcaster in Fairbanks with only one FM station, more radio listeners.“Basically, the pie will not get larger—it’s the way it’s divided up. It will enable us to get more of a specific slice of the pie,” he said.If granted the new station, it would likely carry a music format similar to Northern’s local AM station, which spins oldies in between talk shows.“We wouldn’t go for anyone’s slice of pie,” Holzheimer said. “Operationally, it would be more convenient for us to do it that way ... there would be no increase in employment.”With revenues from their frequency and transmitter sale, KUAC plans to start its second noncommercial FM station in Fairbanks. Diseth said it would likely be a low-power station, providing service for only Fairbanks radio listeners.“Basically we feel that there’s a big audience for classical music,” he said. “As we have moved into news talk format, we’d like to be serving those people again that we feel like we’ve lost.”It could take up to a year or more for KUAC to get FCC permission to start up the new station, he added.
Newspaper Details
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
Fairbanks, Alaska, US
Sun, Jul 12, 1998
Page 29
Full Page
Clipped by
Sammi B.
NA 31 May 2020
Other Publications Near Fairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
Daily News Miner
Fairbanks Weekly News Miner
Fairbanks Evening News
Fairbanks Daily Times
