Lawrence.com

For employees of Lawrence's downtown Cheese and Salami Shoppe, two weeks without KJHK was two weeks too many.

"It makes work a lot easier," says sandwich artist Emily Bodson. "NPR tends to speak to a calmer audience than we usually have here. It's a lot easier to work to KJHK because we have such a fast-paced environment during lunch."

The student-run radio station at 90.7FM has been off the air since March 20, when administrators decided to pull down the station's antenna. The tower atop Marvin Hall that supported the antenna was deemed structurally unsound as a result of damages from the March 12 microburst storm.

"If another wind came along it could have blown the thing over," says KJHK General Manager Andy Dierks. "It was 150 feet of iron, so it wouldn't be pretty if the thing fell over."

Fortunately, KJHK administrators had already been planning to move the station's antenna to the 700-foot tower on west campus (just west of the Lied Center). Originally scheduled for this summer, the installation is scheduled for April 4 - weather permitting - and KJHK should be back on the air by that night.

"Everything is ready to go," Dierks says. "The last piece of the puzzle is to rig the West campus tower and mount the antenna at 220 feet."

Eventually, the move should allow KJHK's listening range to expand westward past downtown Topeka. That won't happen, however, until the station obtains a permanent license for the new antenna location - likely to occur within a couple months, Dierks says.

KJHK's eastward reach - to Olathe, Lenexa and Overland Park - is not expected to change.

The station was fortunate to make such a quick recovery, Dierks says.

"If this had happened last year we would have been looking at most likely a matter of months," he says.

KJHK resumed an internet-only broadcast following spring break, allowing DJs to temporarily bypass FCC constraints.

"Some DJs are getting out the frustrations of 30 years of profane-free radio," Dierks jokes. "We were thinking about promoting this as a huge swear-a-thon and only playing stuff that was completely obscene. We decided not to do that, but the DJs have been given the ok."

In Dierks' estimation, KJHK's brief FM hiatus may have actually boosted the station's online listenership.

"We've been able to look at our statistics and they've been growing day by day," he says. "Spring break was also a good opportunity for me to listen to other college radio stations online and compare programming."

Dierks expressed gratitude to the Kansas Public Radio and KUJH staffs for offering technical support during the changeover.

• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• Favorite
• 3 comments