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Curses: It's Strife Time Again at KCMU

The staff and listeners of KCMU, still nursing a hangover from the C.U.R.S.E. skirmish, now find themselves facing a new dilemma. And if the last crisis is any indication, the drama now unfolding at the station could make the C.U.R.S.E. standoff look like a Sunday picnic in Volunteer Park.
Wayne Roth, who oversees both the UW-owned KCMU and KUOW, says he's thinking about changing KCMU's free-wheeling style to a single-genre format, such as classical. "The station may be playing a different kind of music in the future," Roth told The Free Press, "but there is no specific plan for that right now." Roth, UW'sdirector of broadcast services, more than hinted that he's unhappy with the current direction of the station, which (for those of you who've never tuned in) is unabashedly eclectic.
While hailing the station as a "noble idea," he said "generating revenue when only a relatively few people listen to the music is a delicate balance. It's a more competitive market than it's ever been. We have to figure out a way to keep both stations healthy." KCMU's diverse programming, he added, "isn't how people use radio." Sounds ominous. But in virtually the same breath, Roth said "it's not our intention to throw any curveballs at our listeners. We need to continue to improve the station and its operations."
So what does Roth really have in store for the station? To us, it seems hazy. That's also the assessment of KCMU's long-time news director Sheri Herndon, who met with Roth and KCMU program director Don Yates in mid-January. "It's not clear what [Roth's] long-term goal is," Herndon said. More meetings, she said, may be in the offing.
If Roth radically changes the station, he's surely going to have some explaining to do to the 40,000-some listeners who have been supporting KCMU at near-record levels of late. (Of course, those folks didn't get a chance to break the record last summer, when Roth canceled one of the station's four annual fund drives, ostensibly because of administrative problems). Volunteers around KCMU have been asking themselves: If Roth is worried about money, why did he turn so much of it away?
Several recent changes have already gone down on the third floor of UW's Communications Building. Last year KCMU and KUOW merged financial and managerial operations, and a plan is underway for the two stations to share news-gathering resources. KCMU's veteran day-time deejay Amanda Wilde started earning a salary, and Roth says he'd like to see more paid staffers at the station to make it more "professional." And, Roth and his people began talking with their counterparts at KPLU, which, according to rumors, may drop its NPR programming. Roth acknowledged that talks are ongoing, but wouldn't say what's being talked about.
Programming-wise, KCMU is still its wonderfully unpredictable self. Station faithfuls should tune in while they can and, if they don't want to be stuck listening to stations like 107.7-The End (of Imagination), they should contribute whatever they can come fundraising time.

-Mark Worth
The Free Press



TCI Boots Canadian TV

On December 28, the TCI cable TV division, which services some 200,000 King County residents, cancelled the Vancouver, Canada television station CBUT to make room for a KING-TV Northwest Cable News channel.
TCI says its decision to dump the station was based on a survey of 318 customers in Seattle and Auburn, who were asked about six stations marked for potential cuts. The company says CBUT ranked the lowest in use of the six.
Critics allege that this short list was biased, and that TCI may have a financial interest in getting rid of CBUT anyway. Paul Soelberg of Friends of CBUT points out that TCI, a huge media conglomerate, cannot take a portion from advertising revenue on CBUT as it does from cable stations such as the Discovery channel and A&E. Furthermore, TCI cannot use the CBUT's non-broadcast hours for airing TCI's own revenue-producing infomercials.
Fans of CBUT are mourning the loss of the documentary program "Witness" (the Canadian equivalent of "Frontline"), CBC news with its thorough international coverage, and "The Fifth Estate," the media watchdog program which has aired such programs as an expose of the PR campaign waged by the Kuwaiti royal family prior to the Gulf War, complete with false testimony in front of the US Congress by a girl who was later found to be a Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter.
If you're pissed off about CBUT's cancellation, contact the Friends of CBUT at (206) 789-5591.



Vancouver Review

We no longer have Canadian TV, but a recent trip to Vancouver yielded a copy of the Vancouver Review. This literary and political quarterly is on its 19th issue has a nice balance of culture and politics. It contains measured and careful writing by some of B.C.'s finest writers, but it is not above a little venom and spite, such as a net-gleaning by Vancouver writer "Harbour Seal" which spikes Vancouver's self-promotion as "world-class my ass":
"Any city that has to repeatedly announce itself as a "WORLD CLASS" (acronymed as WC) city most certainly isn't. But thanks to an editor at Vancouver Magazine we now know the truth: Vancouver is a WATER CLOSET city... WC means "toilet" to the rest of the civilized world."
And another thing: "Critical thinking is auto-aborted in most social circles because the city is still too small in terms of the numbers of cliques that run its affairs. Everyone is scared of being left off some mythical gravy train. Couple this with the Canadian tendency to anal retention and resentment storage and you've got one tight-assed burg."
Final analysis: "Shallow shits with too much money run this town." Beginning to sound like a Northwest pathology, brother.
Other articles in the current Fall/Winter edition include an examination of Native artifacts and anthropology in Canada's musuems by editor Bruce Serafin, a slap at Vancouver New Age culture by Mike Miller, and a review of Vancouver novelist Evelyn Lau's latest. Also, nice to find a sensitive and worldly travel piece on the Portuguese enclave of Goa on India's west coast.
Subs: Vancouver Review, 2 - 8763 Ash Grove Cres., Burnaby, BC, V5A 4B8 Canada. $10 (Cdn.) per year.



"A discernibly turgid state"

Meanwhile, back on this side of the border, the "family values" freaks in the state legislature are taking another crack at a censorship bill. Rep. Lois McMahon (R-13th) couldn't pull it off last year, so she has introduced HB 2267, "An Act relating to the well-being of children."
Last year's version -- vetoed by Gov. Lowry -- directly sought to ban depictions common in healthcare materials, such as HIV and contraceptive education. This time, the act declares an "emergency" and contains broad definitions of "sexually explicit conduct," and "sexual excitement."
Within these definitions, it's not hard to imagine an end-run at healthcare materials under the present guise of protecting kids from smut deemed harmful under "contemporary community standards."
As for smut, have a look at these definitions:
"(3) 'Sexually explicit conduct' means physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, perineum, or, if such person be a female, breast.
"(4) 'Sexual excitement' means the condition of human male or female genitals when in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal; or the depiction of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.
"(5) 'Sexually explicit nudity' means the showing of the human male or female genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or perineum with less than a full opaque covering; or the showing of the female breast with less than a full opaque covering of any portion thereof below the top of the nipple.
"(6) 'Matter' means a motion picture film, a publication, a sexual device, or any combination thereof.
Get the picture?
Any person who makes this terrible stuff available to a person under 18 years of age will be guilty of a gross misdemeanor and sent directly to hell. The legislative session in Olympia is short this year, so speak out against this soon.

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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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