Please communicate with yor listenership (even if it’s difficult stuff) & with your sponsors & underwriters.
& let us know how we can help.

Thank you

This plan would keep the 88.9 signal. The ‘signal section’ was actually missing from the page. Thanks for pointing this out! It’s posted there now.

If this option was edited up by paid professional staff, that’s possibly why it could overestimate the need for paid professional staff. Plus, as described, are there some staff-intensive bells and whistles included that may not be the most important, compared to a shot at meeting budget?

KUSP has had a lot of revenue, but somehow lacked the gumption to live within means. I heard it stated at one of the current meetings that the move away from volunteer programmers and local content in 2008 increased revenue and listeners, but evidently the full result was more calamitous when the accompanying budget cost is factored in.

As a longtime public radio listener, I’ve wanted to encounter some programming that reflects diverse and genuine human personality and conversely needn’t have that sometimes over-polished professionalism of paid staff hosts. I’m fine when the real human being is not laundered out; don’t we all recognize authenticity when we hear it?

We live in a time when climate change could cancel the future we’d hope for, when people born here may not be able to afford living here, yet the community conversation about vital issues like that is not so well represented on KUSP. Instead, we have recycled episodes of Car Talk. And when I want inspiration and relief, not much surpasses music personally curated by those who know and love it.

To survive, KUSP needs to crunch the money numbers, but it also needs to build the community that loves having KUSP on the air. Not merely people with a lot of money, but a lot of people with a lot of love and some money.

There can be a staged transition that involves a lot more community volunteer involvement in the selection of programs and programmers. I propose that a broadly representative group serve as a programming committee with a clear, agreed set of criteria. That demo tapes be submitted and screened intitially by a three-member panel that looks only at quality, not content, then a larger group — between 7 and 13 — be asked to evaluate the demo tape using a standardized set of criteria and a rating sheet. Three cutpoints would be reject, consider, accept. Consider should be the largest group and should be discussed at a live (virtual or in-person) meeting of the Programming Committee.

On a different note, I think a financially viable model might be to continue Morning Edition, presumably a net revenue positive NPR offering that might also result in NPR forgiving much of the current debt) and possibly hourly news (or not) other NPR, PRI, and BBC programs; to FEATURE local economic sectors — ocean sports or ocean recreation (O’Neil as a prime example);, downtown business;, organic food (production through wholesale and retail) and the people behind these movements (Staff of Life, New Leaf, Harmony Foods, etc.; sustainable forestry (Big Creek); Internent and new IT-dependent technology (Netflix, Google, Cruzio, etc.) and business’ etc. Periodic or episodic programs could have regular sponsors (like some of the businesses names and many more); and to consider excellent locally-produced music programs. All current and post programmers would be invited to submit a proposal and be subject to the review process outlined above.

In the interest of full disclosure – I do not seek and if offered, will not accept another regular air shift.

In the interest of full disclosure, I think the economic interests of all current employees and BoD members should be declared and posted. I am have been working on a grant-funded project for the last 5 years where my and all of the other key players’ potential conflicts of interest are posted on the web site.

Thanks for reading this far. If you wish to reply privately you can to hal dot levin at buildingecology dot com.

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For this proposal, and the Elm proposal, it was my intent that people in the community would be serving the functions which I believe the filtering group assumes will be done by the station. In San Benito County we have people with experience in radio and journalism who would be excited to participate in a regional community radio project. I have no doubt there are people with similar experience in the other parts of the Monterey Bay Area.

There needs to be a new way of thinking applied to this problem. There seems to be some dependence on doing things as they have been done, rather than seeking new ways which might address the situation in a new way.

I believe that we must look at how this might be accomplished with a smaller staff.