This is an excerpt from the radio show Our Metropolis, a half-hour issues and affairs program that airs Tuesdays at 6 p.m. on KUNV 91.5-FM and is hosted by the Greenspun Media Group’s John Katsilometes. Tune in next week to hear the rest of this interview with KUNV General Manager David Reese, who was there to talk about the station’s pledge drive:
An editorial in a recent issue of the Las Vegas Sun bemoaned the fact that federal funding for public radio and public television would be cut in half under a budget proposal issued in February by President Bush for 2009 and 2010. That’s $200 million from $400 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2009, and $220 million from $420 million in 2010. How does this affect what happens at KUNV?
It is something that we seem to go through on a regular basis, in that they announce a particular budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and then either the president or Congress says no, we’re going to cut it way back, there’s a big hue and cry, and we end up getting close to what they had originally announced. However, that’s not a guarantee. We do get a community-service grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These are unrestricted funds that, for the most part, are a big chunk of our operating budget—unrestricted funds that we can use to keep the station going in various ways. There is an additional smaller programming grant that helps pay for some of the programming that we carry on the station. So, if it truly got cut in half, that would be a pretty big impact for a station like ours.
Ten years ago the university decided to drop the popular Rock Avenue program, the contemporary rock program favored by a lot of students, in favor of jazz. There were a lot of complaints from the students that the decision came from on high and that the students had lost control of their station. Today there is a lot of variety in the weekend format on KUNV. How did that evolve?
I think that, as a university station, we have an obligation to serve a lot of different audiences in the Las Vegas Valley. Of course, at the time there was not a lot of jazz on the radio, and that’s true in many markets. But it is a great American art form, and we thought, let’s become champions of that format. But then on the weekends, we really switch gears, and we go to a more traditional college or university programming, where we have two hours here, three hours there, four hours there. Within that weekend package we’re really able to offer blues, reggae, Hawaiian, folk, world music … you can’t touch everybody, but there is certainly a big variety there, and certainly the [Sunday night] Lyons Den really hearkens back to the Rock Avenue days—kind of a progressive rock format.
What is KUNV’s chief competition?
KNPR. Most people would consider them the public radio station in town, because they carry the public radio-branded program. So, certainly a lot of our listeners will listen to that station, and it becomes a choice—do I support both stations? They might think, I’m already giving to the public radio station because I am giving to KNPR. Where it can get a little strange is because we are in the public radio system, we are holding fund drives at the same time, so we really are literally competing for the listeners’ dollars. But we like to think that there is enough unique audience for both stations that there is enough support for both of us.