KLSU alumni.net

My memories are twofold of KLSU.

Firstly, when I was an undergrad (86 to 90), I was in journalism school and aspired to work in broadcast. I applied constantly to KLSU, and tried incessantly to get some sort of job there, since I hoped to use that time to hone my skills.

But alas, KLSU at that time was simply ELITIST. A student-funded organization taken over by people who didn't really have an interest in promoting great music or developing their skills as broadcasters, just interested in carving out a private club of so-called music aficionados. Sorry, I like Skinny Puppy and Meat Beat Manifesto as much as anyone, but I wouldn't lock out fellow students from opportunity because of that. But they did. And a LOT of talented people were turned away from a student station because of that mindset. Which is a shame.

When I returned in 1993 for graduate school, I found a better environment for pursuing broadcast opportunities, as it SHOULD be in a college-sponsored work situation. The shift in music style had become closer to mainstream, true, but I think that also resulted in a drop in snobbish atttitude. Opportunities for new music to shine STILL HAPPENED. Specialty shows still thrived, but the elitism was gone. Sure it wasn't perfect, but it definitely saw a rise in STUDENT LISTENERS. Also I saw hard-working people given opportunity to pursue their careers, instead of a snobbish society for pushing personal style agendas. It had TRULY become much more open to new ideas and new blood.

You can say what you want about KLSU in the 1990s, but I'll take it over "the good old days" anytime. Sure, running a private little club of teenage music snobs who don't let you play with their toys is fine. But student funding and university affiliation MAKE THAT STATION POSSIBLE. To disrespect the students by closing its doors to those who wish to participate because of a hipper-than-thou stance is deplorable.

Currently, I work in New York as a broadcast producer in radio and television. I am currently producing documentaries and directing music videos as well. And I thank DARREN GAUTHIER personally for bringing me into the KLSU studios so I could develop the skills to make my future career possible.

Hey, I'm not cool. Never have been. In the real world, cool doesn't mean a damn thing anyway.

Sure, there's folks still stewing about KLSU in the 1990s. It's because those self-proclaimed tastemakers of obscurity didn't have their own personal high-wattage record player anymore.

Stevie, did it occur to you that perhaps the reason that you weren't hired may have had something to do with your personality??

I don't know if I was the first to refuse you a show or not (I left in 1987 or '88 ), and I cannot speak for the other CAs, but let me try to set a few things straight on the hiring process in my day. I never hired people because they would fit in our elite little club. There was no such club. Sure, many of us were friends, and sometimes there was a Peyton Place vibe to the group, but there were also many DJs that didn't hang out on Chimes Street or associate with most of the people at the station at all. When I started at the station, I didn't know anybody at all. I just wandered in and hung out until I finally got a show. (And it took me 2 semesters to get a show when the sun was out.)

KLSU had DJs from all walks of life, all different majors. We had Chimes St. types, sorority girls, fraternity guys, Physics grad students, English students, Business majors, Art majors, etc. ... not just journalism majors. This after all, was funded by the whole student population, not just journalism majors (of which I was one). The one thing that united everyone was an appreciation for quality, thought-provoking music that wasn't played anywhere else. Our mission was to enlighten, educate, and entertain.

I sometimes got applicants that didn't put down great artists on their application, but they were hired because they wanted to learn and showed an appreciation for what we did. I also ranked prospects on their voice quality. I usually gave the top applicants a tryout during an overnight show. A couple just had no knack at all for the mechanics, thus weren't hired.

There were a few times that I didn't hire people because they had a bad attitude. Who wants to waste their time training someone who is just going to give you trouble at every turn? A couple applicants just gave me a freaky vibe. Freak a girl out, and she's not going to give you a chance to stick around and do it more.

And sometimes I didn't hire someone just because there were too many good applicants than there were shows. My last 2 or 3 semesters as CA, I hired 2 DJs for each show, and they trained together, supported each other for the first 4 (probation) shows and shared the show as they saw fit. This way, I was able to hire twice the amount (6 -8 ) announcers, but that still left several good applicants that couldn't be hired.

I think that my system worked well. I can't recall a single DJ that I regretted hiring. They all worked out wonderfully. But were they all my friends and in an elite clique? No. There were a few who didn't like me, I'm sure - and there were one or two I didn't care for personally. There were also some that just didn't travel in my circles. But they were hired on their merits for potential.

Perhaps you fell in one of the above categories that just didn't make the cut. It was good that you kept trying and didn't give up. That would've impressed me.

While it is a part of a college station to give journalism students experience (which they get aplenty in the news department), it shouldn't be a tool only for the J-school. Like I said before - the student media fee is paid by EVERY student, and belongs to the entire student body.

I value my KLSU experience. I went from a girl who cried her first show because she was scared of the board, to a woman who is the top female audio engineer in the New Orleans area. (No piece of equipment intimidates me anymore!) While I went on to a TV school and then got a degree in Communications (Film and TV mostly) after LSU, it was KLSU that gave me that first shot. While my being a cute female initially allowed me to hang out at the station, I had to prove my potential before I was actually given a show.

Stevie, before you go around pointing fingers on how wrong people were for not hiring you, maybe you should look within on the reason that you were repeatedly denied.

-Jenni

-Jenni

Interesting position, but let's be honest. The late 80s was simply a sandbox that few were allowed to play in. Considering that I got jobs at the Reveille, LSU Magazine, and LSU-TV during my undergraduate years, your position on my personality falls completely flat.

KLSU was a closed society. Simple as that. Trying to whitewash it won't fly.

I didn't walk in the door expecting my own show. I just thought I'd get at least a fair shake. at participating, but I was made to feel, like many others, that I wasn't anywhere near cool enough.

Jenni, I'm just glad the station changed and afforded more opportunity. The basement of Hodges Hall became a better place for future broadcasters in the 1990s. And considering the statistics of just how many students from that era went on to jobs in the business, it was none too soon.

And congratulations to all who pursued their dreams when KLSU wasn't really student-run, just elitist-managed.

Here's how the process worked for me in the 70's.

I got called in the middle of the night by an overnight guy who was too loaded to carry on. I don't even think I was on a sub list. I knew the guy. When the morning guy came in he found someone he had never seen, who had never been trained-wingin' it.

I got a show.

Of course we came out of the wall sockets in those days....

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roar like a tiger!

Sic him Jenni....

I am trying keeping out of this, just remember the forum is not a bitching platform, but a way to communicate with other forum members.

Don't show up at the door bitching about the group, and then expect to be greated with open arms...

If you felt that there needed to be a change, maybe trying to change the station from within, would have been a better choice. Frankly, not everyone who came through the door into the CA office was going to get a show. Fact of life.

Later

_________________
spawn

"I'm the bad thoughts inside your head"

My Pandora Channels

I don't mean to get bitchy, but I just find the KLSU was better then, because they hired me then sentiment to be pretty shallow.

-Jenni

Scott,

As I understand it, Steve's post was in response to a fair amount of bashing on this forum of former station manager Darren Gauthier. It wasn't random "bitching;" he was coming to the defense of a friend and colleague. I have read these posts as well and they seem inappropriate and misinformed to me too.

As for the suggestion of change coming from within, that's exactly what happened. A new station manager tweaked the format, made personnel changes and tried to establish a new culture at the station. Whether or not it worked and whether it was for the better is obviously a matter of debate, but there are some indisputible facts about Darren's tenure: 1) ratings were up, 2) underwriting was up and 3) a student referendum for increased radio station fees that had failed miserably before the format change passed after the change. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? All signs point to yes, but I suppose anything is debatable.

Either way, this dead horse is soundly beat.

If he was coming to the aid of his fellow friend, guess it would have been better if the response was in that topic - which exists (and yes I bashed him)- vs a new one. it really appears to be an attack on everyone that was involved at KLSU prior to "his " opinion of what the greatest years were... just my opinion....

my dog better than your klsu, my .... la la la la la..

_________________
spawn

"I'm the bad thoughts inside your head"

My Pandora Channels

James and Steve, you guys are fucking awesome. I'm blessed to have friends like you.

We kicked ass, fellas. Instead of a 1960's free form radio model ("now here's a set of music about trains") we tried something fresh and new that was about our generation. Most people STILL don't get what we were doing. We felt the need to make "compelling radio" which demanded listener attention. We felt it less important to make a statement with the music and more about being an integral part of the lifestyle of our audience. And we believed in what we were doing.

Did we give up some of what those in the stadium days held dear? Of course. We knew that. But they had their time, this was ours. Not to disrespect what had been done but we wanted to be of our moment. Radio had never done anything to reach out to our generation so we were going to do it ourselves.

I make no apologies. None. Paul Burt always told us, "we have right on our side. What we are doing is different. We will win." He was right. In these iPod/XM/Sirius days, radio has no idea what to do to grab listeners again. We sure could use that same spirit of "sacred cows be damned". All radio knows to do is put on another classic rock or country station and watch audiences dwindle.

Wow, I haven't been to the forum in ages, and look what happens - some activity!

Now, I have to ask one very important question...

What exactly was so fresh and new about what you guys did in the mid-90's?

I used to listen every now and then (as long as I could stomach it) and KLSU sounded exactly like every other commercial "alternative" station out there. The range of music played was VERY narrow when compared with the KLSU from the mid-80's... with a few exceptions (such as specialty shows, like "Saturated Neighborhood", which Jenni used to do in fact) you guys never seemed to stray far away from the CMJ Top 40.

I don't know if this next part is correct, but I had heard that your KLSU only allowed journalism majors to work there - and that the song list was PROGRAMMED (LOL!!) by the music director or some other station exec. If these are true, then... wow, it sure would explain a lot. If the DJ's don't have the freedom to play what they want, then you get a carbon copy show every few hours. Not imaginative, and not at all interesting. And if only J-skool majors were allowed to work there, then that really limits your pool of on-air talent to the point where you're pulling unqualified people for the jobs. Now I admit, I never heard any technical mistakes during that time - and to be honest, the announcers I heard during that time sounded pretty good (although WAY TOO commercial-sounding for a college radio station).

And then there was the UNFORGIVABLE fact that some dipshit decided to throw out the incredible music collection we had worked so hard to create - without thinking the station might again want those CDs and LPs at some point in the future (which, in fact, they would love them all back now).

So, it's more or less like Scott said - "My dog is better than your dog". Basically, the ONLY people here who actually think that KLSU sounded better in the mid-90's was the three of you (unless you contact more of your buddies to get over here to defend you), and the rest of us disagree.

Honestly, though, which sounded better was simply a matter of personal preference. I will admit that. But I do completely disagree that what you guys did was "fresh" and "new", because there were many stations all over the country (most of them commercial) doing that already.

And the fact that KLSU has mostly reverted back to a free form sound indicates that the experiment didn't last.

I'm sure you guys will post rebuttals to this, be my guest - I know I'm not going to convince you three (or your friends) of my side, and you sure as hell aren't going to change my mind! I'm not planning to read this thread anymore anyway (I've said my 2 cents). Still, it is nice to have you here... it's created quite a bit of activity for Scott's site, and I am really glad to see that.

-barry

Hey, Stevie - welcome to the board!

I was very involved with the station during that timeframe, and I don't really think there was a "clique" like you think. The reason you weren't hired, more than likely, was because we had so many people applying for DJ positions that it was IMPOSSIBLE to give everyone a slot! Did you apply every single semester? If you were refused every time, someone should have told you why.

I got my start as an undergrad working at WTUL here in New Orleans from 1983-85 when I was an undergrad at Tulane. I started grad school at LSU in the fall of 1985, and immediately applied to be a DJ at KLSU. I figured that with my experience and knowledge from the past two years, I'd get myself a good slot for sure. Well, not the case... they offered me a 3-6 am slot that I had to turn down because there was NO WAY I could do that AND grad school at the same time.

I persevered, and in the fall of '86 I got my chance to sub for Sue Rinker on a Saturday afternoon. I eventually got more opportunities to sub, and then the spring of 1987 I had an afternoon show. In the fall of 1987 I had an evening show and somewhere in there I was the Assistant Chief Announcer (Jenni was the CA, and since I was her boyfriend, when she'd get the call at 3:20 AM that someone didn't show, I'd run over and fill in).

During that time, there were so many people applying for DJ positions - and we couldn't take a show away from one of the veterans who had been doing it for some time already. So, the new slots were few and far between. We did give those new slots to people we didn't know - a few examples I remember were Hing Chieh, Juliet Snowden, Hallie Dozier, Arlen Speights, and so on - these were people who did not hang around the station, and were not part of any "clique". They just happened to apply when we had slots available, and had a very impressive musical knowledge and ultimately, all had an excellent on-air presence.

That sucks that you didn't get a chance to DJ in the mid-late 1980's, otherwise you would have had a much different opinion of the station and staff from that time. It really was a (mostly) great group of people with a phenomenal musical knowledge and on-air personalities that are probably still unmatched to this day.

It's great that you eventually DID get the chance, and that it helped your career. I DJ'ed for four years at KLSU (coincidentally, from 1986-90) and with my two years at WTUL before, and about eight years of regular shows and subs at TUL after we moved back here in 1990, I really enjoyed it but it hasn't helped my career one bit... Just a labor of love.

-barry

The fact that you could tune into KLSU virtually any minute of the day and hear great music that no one else would touch. In 1993-94, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Boys II Men were cutting edge for Baton Rouge. A whole generation of people were being ignored.



We were far broader than the 200 records that most commerical stations played. We never adhered to CMJ, we did our own thing. The station now lives and dies by what's going on in "indie rock" circles. We did our best to find out what our fellow students wanted to hear, its as simple as that.



Untrue. Unlike the previous capo regieme which did not have one journalism major on the air, we simply opened the door and were fair. My major: history (admittedly with a broadcast minor.)



Guilty as charged. I'll be the first to admit it. We were all about taking the tools that were out there and using them to create something new. Not a heavy-rotation CHR station but a broad yet balanced mix. Certainly not the 90 times a week that a station like WFMF would play its top records.

If you wanted amateur, anything can get played radio then we were not for you. Sorry. As I stated in my previous post, we didn't want that 1960's aesthetic because a.) it meant nothing to our generation; and b.) we knew that short attention spans afflict most college students, the primary audience for KLSU. And nobody, and I do mean nobody, wanted to stop "the rock" for a jazz set that would drive folks away faster than you can say "hey, give me my Radiohead CD."



If you think Blur into Tom Waits into the Ramones into Beck is stylistically limited, then I'm sorry, we just aren't broad enough for you.



We trained them in what little we knew. No liner cards, nothing like that. We even brought in WPRG's own Lois Lane to give the females on the staff a role model. If the point of the station was educational, there's nobody better in Baton Rouge to serve as an example of what can be accomplished in a communications career. KLSU was a means to another end, not an end itself. We wanted a career as fun as KLSU but we also wanted to graduate.



That, I must adamantly assert, is a lie. It has been passed along on this board as fact and that is not so. We kept it all. The great purge happened closer to 1999 from what I can gather, and I was gone almost half a decade earlier. We still played CD's and LP's; today's KLSU does not. According to a friend in the production department, they will regularly delete song files deemed "too old."

I hate to admit it, but this accusation really chaps my ass because when I started @ KLSU in 1992, the biggest problem we had was theft of music by people who worked at the station. It was so rampant, at one point there was a large poster on the wall where you could write down titles of missing CD's. In a week's time, no white space was left on the poster. I even managed to make peace with The Compact Disc Store - someone in the early 1990s soured KLSU on them - and we were able to replace a huge chunk of the missing CD library via underwriting mentions on the station.

By the way, after we changed direction the theft stopped completely. I am told that it hasn't been that big of a problem since then.



The only judges we cared about were the 25,000 students who paid for KLSU's service. Knowing that this is your sandbox doesn't surprise me either, but it was my two buddies who actually injected some life into these proceedings.



In 1993, there were only 13 commercial alternative stations in the United States, only one in Lousiana and it had just turned on at the time. If what we were doing wasn't new, there would have been no way for us to hear about it. And even if there were, so what? It's not our job to survey the whole country and say "oh, someone is doing that so we'd better stick to the same old lazy aesthetic its always been." We felt there was a revolution happening in music that finally displaced hair bands and other crass product, one that reflected our generation. We decided to be a part of it. As I said, it was our time.

Just for the record, what would you define as fresh and new? My guess is that's its something akin to KLSU/WPRG. You can't expect me and my peers to continue to do the kind of radio you hold dear, just like you can't expect musicians of today to play stuff that sounds like 1967. I don't expect LSU students born in 1987 - the year in which most incoming freshmen were born - to make a radio station that sounds like WPRG. That's not fair to them and it would make us all hypocrites. They have to do their own thing just like we did our own thing and you guys did your own thing. If we say "ah, those kids they don't know radio" then we begin to sound like our parents. Or Marc Cohn.



Not true. They are as formatted as we were. According to my same source, they are locked into that CMJ chart. But it's their station, not mine and not yours. If they don't engage their fellow students, they will fail.



At least its civil. I am not happy about the things that have been attributed to me on this board but like everything else I don't let it get me down. We saved KLSU from being turned off; I sleep well at night knowing we didn't only survive, we thrived. We may be seen as the Jean Doumanians of KLSU by you guys, but our peers thought otherwise.

Right. Nobody wanted that stuff.

Geez... is anything okay with you?

Sounds like to me like you are just okay with things if they are your way.

Or is it just me.



dud (sic) you take this way to serious. klsu will continue on it whatever fashion it takes in time. If it became 24/7 talk, it would survive. You need to remember that yes, while it is a student media station, but more importantly it is part of teh entire BR+ community. Not an island unto itself.

I bes done again, ya'll

_________________
spawn

"I'm the bad thoughts inside your head"

My Pandora Channels

It must be just you. Life is good.



I never believed or stated the station should be an island to itself. That's why I emphasize connecting with the public. At the same time, it must serve those who make its continued existence possible and not bite the hand that feeds it.