Chris Banyas
Staff Writer
The Toxic Avenger keeps stern watch over the KISU office from the confines of his poster, menacing all who enter with his deadly mop. Not far away stands John Denver, grinning out from his sliver of tacked up glossy paper, seemingly content to share the wall with a mutant.
Blondie gazes across the room at 12 different images of Hall and Oates, each representing a month from 1984. Here a record hangs, there an Explosions in the Sky poster.
These decorations have likely never been hung together before but make sense at KISU, where the motto is “your ear to the world.”
They represent a world of variety and the passion of those who run KISU.
KISU 91.1 FM went on the air as a public radio station in June of 1999 and initially offered no student-generated programming other than local station ID breaks and weather forecasts.
Richard Hetland was brought in by Idaho State University from Tucson, Ariz., and single-handedly built the station from the ground up over the course of almost two years.
Hetland then moved back to Arizona and was replaced by Jerry Miller, who still serves as the station’s general manager today.
“KISU was an almost unknown entity,” said Miller. “It broadcast at its main transmitter up here on Howard Mountain at 400 watts. 400 watts with an FM signal will go quite a way, but if there are any hills or buildings in the way, it is easily stopped.”
Two major factors that helped the station grow after its launch were its continuous coverage of the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001, and the broadcasting of women’s sports, especially basketball.
Initially there was no automation software, so every change in programming had to be dialed in by hand.
“We had announcements and everything that were prerecorded, like a weather forecast, that we would put on a digital audio tape,” said Miller. “You would do a live station ID, and then you would start that tape which would play about a minute of music while you ran in the other room and switched transponders and ran back up and changed all of the busses on the main board so you could bring up the right program coming up next.”
Today the station is run with the help of computers. While more efficient, this change has not been positive in every way.
“It becomes much more specialized. It’s not something that you can really train people to do on a five- to ten-hour-a-week basis,” said Jamon Anderson, programming director for KISU. “So that’s been a negative thing, and my impression is that we’ve enjoyed less involvement from students and from other people, because it’s counterproductive to train somebody to be here for a semester or even for a year.”
Anderson creates templates for the programming to ensure that everything fits together, and he handles many extremely technical areas of the station. He has worked for KISU for 11 years but finds himself still learning.
Aside from offering updates, news, sports broadcasts and general information to the campus and community, KISU offers a wide variety of music.
Anderson cites Radio Lab, Beat City Radio, and Sonic-Electronic as being among his favorite programs currently on the air.
There are also currently multiple student shows on the air.
KISU has gone from an unknown entity to a station consistently recognized among the top stations in the area, but, even in light of this, recently had its budget cut.
“For my money I think KISU FM may be the very best public relations tool that Idaho State University has, and it’s difficult to see the budget cut because of that,” said Miller. “It hampers our ability to represent the university and keep a quality product on the air.”
More information and programming schedules for KISU 91.1 FM may be found at the station’s webpage at http://www.isu.edu/kisufm/.
