Testimonials

Yo La Tengo Supports KUSF

To whom it may concern:

I'm sure you're getting flooded with emails like this, and probably deleting all of them unread, but just in case I'm wrong, let me not only add my voice from the other side of the country in protest, but focus on one particular disturbing issue.   It strikes me as anti-everything a university should stand for to have failed to give KUSF an opportunity to purchase the station.

In addition to playing in Yo La Tengo, I have the opportunity to work at WFMU, a radio station in New Jersey that owes its existence to having purchased the station from Upsala College safely in advance of that institution's bankruptcy.  WFMU, as a unique radio voice--and love it or hate it, it is most certainly unique--is not only serving a community, and in the internet age, that's now a worldwide community, but has forged a community all its own.  KUSF was certainly serving that purpose as well.  Now it will be another NPR station, and nothing against NPR, but putting it mildly, that's a shame.

KUSF has served various communities admirably in its tenure, not just its local listenership, but those that have been inspired by its example.  The University of San Francisco is betraying both the local community by depriving it of KUSF's voice, but also everyone out there who is watching.  To have pulled the plug on the station without giving them a chance to continue is an outrage against expression.

sincerely yours, Ira Kaplan

 

A Failure of Our Duty to Nation's Airwaves

Ted Dively
Saturday, January 29, 2011

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/28/ED8L1HFMAH.DTL#ixzz1CbWI3Zkm

San Francisco Chronicle January 29, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Without warning at 10 a.m. on Jan. 18, the 3,000-watt KUSF (90.3 FM) transmitter was shut off, and armed campus security personnel removed its staff of students and volunteers from the station, including a DJ and a band gearing up for a live interview. Acting in secret, University of San Francisco President Stephen A. Privett entered into a complex three-party arrangement with the University of Southern California and for-profit broadcasting giant Entercom. He sold the KUSF license without public hearing or notice, not even to USF students or faculty.
This is a complete failure of stewardship of the public airwaves and a bad business decision. For the sum of $3.75 million, the equivalent of a few four-year student tuitions, Privett sacrificed unique educational and career opportunities for his students as well as a thriving communications hub for San Francisco's diverse cultural and ethnic communities.
This is not about a format change. Privett squandered a precious public resource, and his decision caused irreparable harm to the local community.
Some facts:
-- KUSF has been a learning laboratory for USF students for 34 years. Many chose to attend USF because of the unique media-education and career opportunities that KUSF provided.
-- KUSF served as a free communications nexus for a wide variety of small businesses, civic groups, arts organizations and venues for independent film, authors, educators and musicians from the Bay Area and beyond. This loss will cause lasting harm to the local economy as well as the culture and civic life of San Francisco.
-- KUSF broadcast programs in 13 languages, having served many local ethnic communities that had no other voice on the broadcast spectrum. The programs included 90 minutes of Cantonese programming every weeknight. Census data shows that San Francisco has 157,000 residents who are Chinese by birth or descent.
-- KUSF student and community volunteers raised approximately $50,000 in one week to repair the transmitter when it failed a number of years ago. USF did nothing and has now sold that transmitter, leaving those who donated for the purpose of keeping KUSF on the air with nothing. By accepting the first offer to drop on his desk and signing a nondisclosure agreement, Privett acted in bad faith with his faculty, students and all San Franciscans.
He failed in his stewardship of a public trust and ill served his university's educational mission, besmirching USF's good name at home and abroad. The Federal Communications Commission should reject this transfer of license because the transfer does not serve the community.

Ted Dively is a co-organizer of Save KUSF and an 18-year broadcaster with KUSF New Music. Go to savekusf.org to learn more.

(This article appeared on page A - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle)