KFSR to broadcast special programs

By JACKIE WOMACK / The Collegian

The radio isn’t just for listening to music anymore; now, students can have their say and get informed.

Problems and topics affecting students are getting a new voice in KFSR’s “Campus Issues Weekly” program, now airing at non on Thursdays on the campus’ radio station.

“If it’s something that is important to students and affects students, we’re going to cover it,” Guy Haberman, the show’s host, said.

For example, the program airing this week will cover the Health Center fee increase referendum and the TII project disrupting and digging up the campus.

As with every topic covered on the show, students on campus will be asked their opinion on the subject.
Haberman said the show, which started last semester, originally was just once a month.

“[Station manager Joe Moore and I] were trying to figure out what we wanted it to be,” Haberman said. “We were able to come up with more subject matter and we knew what we were doing.”

The idea for the program started last spring, when the station produced a debate for the Associated Students elections, Moore said.

“[We said] ‘we should do something on issues that matter to students,’ ” Moore said. “The idea was an in-depth program on issues facing students.”

Moore said the half-hour program focuses on two issues per episode and divides them into two segments, each about 12 minutes long, with the rest of the time devoted to “man on the street” interviews.

James Wilson, mass communications and journalism professor and the station’s general manager, said the show is a good outlet for the campus.

“It’s good programming for a non-commercial radio station,” he said. “The FCC likes for stations to be involved in community affairs.”

Haberman said that when the show started, Associated Students helped out by coming on the show and giving show ideas.

“Right now there’s not as much input as there was last semester,” Haberman said. “But the final product, KFSR controls.”

Moore said possible future topics for the show include how the university is run — where student tuition goes—and financial aid.

“We (also) want to do more human interest storieslike Peter Dwight, the student who survived the tsunami,” Moore said.

Dwight’s story aired on the program’s first weekly episode, last week. Episodes are rebroadcast on Saturdays at 6 a.m. and are also archived online at www.kfsr.org. Moore said that, unlike some of the broadcast news reports, the program let Dwight speak in depth about his experience “pretty much unedited.”

Wilson said the show is one of several public affairs programs the station has but that it is the only one to focus exclusively on campus issues.

“There’s always a need for public affairs, but we probably do more than any radio station in the market,” he said.

Some of KFSR’s upcoming programs are a series of special broadcasts for Black History Month. On Feb. 12 at 1 p.m., the station will air “Say It Plain — A Century of African-American Oratory,” and on Feb. 19 at 1 p.m., it will broadcast “Thurgood Marshall Before the Court.”

Both programs are productions of American Radio Works. The series will conclude with the station’s own production of Fresno State African-American Theatre Presents: “Black Damp and The Church Fight,” one act plays of the Harlem Renaissance.”