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What A Sound Idea
In Oroville, anyone can be a DJ
Jen Cooper -- Bee Correspondent
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, October 1, 2002
www.sacbee.com
Inside the recording studio, Jesse Louis is always moving.
The 22-year-old radio DJ nods his head to keep the music's beat. His shoulder-length dreadlocks swing underneath black headphones. If his head isn't bouncing, he's tapping his feet or using two fingers to mix bird sounds with a Pink Floyd CD.
Louis is one of about 50 disc jockeys who volunteer their time every week at Oroville's community radio station, KRBS 107-FM. From Celtic music to poetry readings, from show tunes to spoken dramas, it's radio by the community, for the community.
The easy access to the airwaves has made KRBS an outlet for political activists and classical enthusiasts alike. Unlike most mainstream radio stations, KRBS features almost strictly local programming. As one of the nation's few licensed low-power FM stations, its Federal Communications Commission license demands it.
Only about 2 percent of the DJs had any radio experience before starting at KRBS, according to station manager Marianne Knorzer. Most of them haul their records and CDs with them to the tiny studio in downtown Oroville.
The station, which is preparing to celebrate its six-month anniversary on Oct. 14, gives the people of Oroville a choice and a voice, Knorzer said.
"These people were here, but they weren't being heard," Knorzer said.
Any community member is welcome to apply for a radio show by turning in a one-page proposal and a short demo tape, she said. No one has been turned down, but Knorzer said she has had to work with people to massage and focus the type of show being suggested.
The radio station is one of 23 licensed low-power FM radio stations in the country, said an FCC spokeswoman. According to the FCC guidelines, low-power FM stations can only broadcast a maximum of 100 watts, and 80 percent of their programming must be local.
This practice contradicts most mainstream programming, which is tailored to play what is popular and is produced at one time for stations all over the country, said Erv Knorzer, Marianne Knorzer's father and a longtime Oroville resident who helped lobby the FCC for the license.
The low-power movement is a recent push to return the airwaves to the public, Erv Knorzer said. When pirate radio stations began popping up, the FCC decided to create licenses for community stations. After the announcement in 2000, the FCC received hundreds of applications.
Erv Knorzer said KRBS was exactly what the FCC was looking for -- a community radio station run by a nonprofit corporation, located in a rural area that wouldn't interfere with the signals of larger stations.
To meet FCC requirements, 80 percent of KRBS programming must be local for the 36 hours a week its on the air. The station also must be noncommercial and nonprofit.
KRBS, which stands for Radio Bird Street, has a storefront office and studio on Bird Street in downtown Oroville. The walls of the tiny office are plastered with fliers advertising community events, posters of birds and newspaper clippings about low power stations.
Erv Knorzer said it was important to the radio's founders to be downtown in a place where it would be accessible to residents.
It took about $10,000 to buy equipment and get the station ready to broadcast, Knorzer said. The station is funded by community donations, and there have been times when it's been hard to find the $800 a month it takes to keep KRBS on the air. In those times, the programmers spread the word on the air and rely on listeners' donations.
The station doesn't have to hit a certain target group in order to please advertisers.
"The idea of having a show that would satisfy only 10 percent of the audience would no way happen," said Erv Knorzer.
That means the station is free to do programs like a tribute to banned books. On Sept. 23 the station cut its regular programs to read John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" in its entirety over the air.
It also means that DJs like Louis can spend their show playing songs in genres ranging from punk to bluegrass and reggae to rock. "I play everything," he said. "If I was hitting a certain age group, I'd fail."
Instead, Louis sees his show as a way to bridge the generation gap in Oroville -- a community he said is stereotyped as having conservative elderly and angry youth populations.
But, Louis added, in order for his show to be effective, the community has to be involved.
"They need to realize that they can get anything they want of their speakers if they're willing to give the time," he said. "They don't have to settle."
That's a lesson 19-year-old Cory Dickerson learned when he was unhappy with the punk music the station was playing. Fed up with the lack of selection, he dropped by the station one afternoon and sat with a DJ to watch how it was done.
He was soon offered a program of his own. For the past two months, Dickerson, who goes by the on-air name "Spider," has been taking requests and sharing his love of the Sex Pistols with all of Oroville every Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
But sharing music with the community is just one way to make use of the airwaves.
Lee Edwards, whose Tuesday afternoon Bird Street Blues is dedicated to blues and bebop, said community radio has become the 21st-century answer to town taverns where people used to gather and talk politics, economics, social happenings and any other topics that mattered to the residents.
"I love the music, but I've learned that's the fluff, the icing on the cake," Edwards said.
Community radio is especially important in Oroville, a town that has few other source of local media, he said. KRBS gives the community a chance to showcase its own interests and reflect the people that live there.
"What's on the air is the essence of what people have brought to it," he said.
Marianne Knorzer, comfy in an old barber's chair, is station manager of Oroville's KRBS community radio station, where the goal is radio by the community and for the community.
At KRBS in Oroville, any community member is welcome to send in an application, including a one-page proposal and a demo tape, to do their own show.
Donations help keep the low-powered FM station on the air.
Photos courtesy of ?he Sacramento Bee/Dick Schmidt
