It’s all just a matter of turning a knob.

KWUR, Washington University’s second-largest student organization, broadcasts day in and day out from the musty basement of the Women’s Building, and employs more than 120 DJs. Together they work an average of sixteen hours a day, seven days a week throughout the school year, and even into the summer. And yet, they often wonder if anyone’s listening.

The dial on KWUR’s transmitter, stuffed in a back corner of the top floor of Olin Library, is pointed at “9 watts,” just the way it was when the station first crackled onto the airwaves from the basement of Liggett in 1976.

Since 1989, KWUR has tried to increase its wattage in the hopes of expanding its two-mile broadcast radius to a five-mile one-a move which would produce a six-fold increase in the area KWUR services, spreading even wider its decidedly non-mainstream programming.

As Nitin Bhojraj, a junior and the general manager of KWUR, sums up WU’s celebratedly eccentric student-run radio station: “It’s the epicenter of weirdness.”

The FCC has repeatedly approved KWUR’s petition to increase its output from 10 watts to 100, but the final say actually goes to KWMU 90.7, the local branch of National Public Radio. As KWUR’s closest neighbor on the FM frequency, KWMU is afforded ultimate authority by the FCC, since upping KWUR’s wattage effectively means decreasing their own. Through twelve years of KWUR requests and a mountain of paperwork, KWMU’s response has been firmly in the negative.

In the ongoing struggle for The Great KWUR Output Cause, graduate student Ben West has emerged as its latest champion. In addition to being KWUR’s head engineer, the second-year graduate student works with the WU legal counsel, various administrators within the Office of Student Activities, and with Jim Hayes, the newly created media advisor.

He recounts with something like bemusement how KWUR almost had its antenna destroyed during the summer of 1998. At the time, by unanimous aesthetic judgement, Eliot Tower’s twin, Shepley (on top of which lay KWUR’s antenna), was slated for destruction. KWUR only found out a month before the scheduled demolition through a casual comment by a DJ. “The entire room went silent for about fifteen seconds” he laughs.

When talking about his work on the output campaign, he seems to take a certain pride in advocating a cause that has been doomed so broadly. “It’s something of a running joke,” West said. “Even the Riverfront Times will make an occasional crack about us.”

West is optimistic this time around, though, especially about moves like Hayes’ appointment to the new position of media advisor (an administrator dedicated to issues of KWUR and WUTV). “That” he says, “represents progress from the days when [the administration] didn’t even tell us that they were tearing down our antenna.”

Currently, the problem is two-fold. After they learned of Shepley’s planned demolition, KWUR had little choice but to move the transmitter to the roof of Olin Library, which is approximately 85 feet lower than before, is surrounded by tall trees (which interfere with radio waves), and places Graham Chapel smack in between the antenna and the South 40, its main target.

West plans to propose to Chancellor Wrighton that KWUR move the antenna to another location by next semester. He has his eye on the newly constructed, Knight Center or the biotechnology center (near McMillan), which is not yet finished.

The second problem is that of the output. While comparable groups, including most college stations across the country, have upped their wattage, KWUR has been stuck in a class of radio station (known as “Class D”) which the FCC doesn’t even license anymore. West says that the number of Class D stations left in operation “numbers in the tens.”

But they haven’t stopped broadcasting. Despite the weak signal, KWUR still broadcasts at almost any hour when someone could conceivably be listening (and at some hours when probably nobody is). And they continue to remain popular among those in the know-and those with powerful radios-although their signal barely travels to the South 40.

An Enemy Without a Face

Even more frustrating for KWUR than its inability to upgrade is what they see as a lack of motive to KWMU’s opposition. The idea behind the FCC regulation is that if one station begins reaching more listeners, the other might lose some. And yet even KWMU administrators admit that there isn’t an issue of concurrence between the two stations.

As Bob Samples, the director of communications at the University of Missouri in St. Louis-which hosts and has executive control over the station-puts it, “It’s not at all an issue of

competition.” And yet, he maintains, “an expansion on KWUR’s part would involve a reduction on our part.”

His argument is that if KWUR’s signal extends its reach further into Clayton, Webster Groves and Creve Coeur, KWMU could lose listenership, or that the two signals might interfere. But KWUR contends that a nationally syndicated news broadcast station isn’t likely to be

damaged by a station that broadcasts trance techno or emo punk as staple programming. And, as professionally

commissioned studies showed conclusively, KWUR’s proposed increase would not cause an interference with KWMU’s signal.

Patti Wente has been general manager of KWMU since 1989, when KWUR first petitioned to upgrade. She called the station’s refusal, which she denied any part in, “really just a business decision.” KWMU, which depends on listener support for survival, could be adversely affected by a drop in listenership, she said.

And technically, according to FCC regulation, KWMU would have to make some sort of reduction to its output, should KWUR increase. However, KWMU has an output of 100,000 watts, while KWUR is hoping to reach 100 watts. KWMU has some 2.4 million potential listeners in Missouri and Illinois, while KWUR’s signal barely stretches to Clayton. KWMU’s argument, West says, “plays on some of the more arcane rules” of the FCC; it’s a bit like saying that

forming a little league team is going to kill attendance at Cardinal’s games.

When presented with the facts, neither Wente nor anyone at UMSL, could point to how, exactly, this supposed loss of listenership would materialize.

Unified Front

In 1995 KWUR mounted an unprecedented campaign to get the upgrade, forgetting their failed attempt six years prior, and the years of stagnation that followed. DJs gathered thousands of signatures to present to the FCC, and a committee drafted

a 50-page explanation of KWUR’s role in the community and the importance of an upgrade. The station even brought in

consultants from Wisconsin engineering firm, Evans Associates to analyze the potential for interference between KWUR’s and KWMU’s signals.

The FCC green-lighted the plan, which they hadn’t done in 1989. They supported the conclusions by Evans Associates that a 100 watt KWUR signal would not interfere with KWMU. And the 50-page appeal convinced them of KWUR’s need to increase its output. They sent the case along to KWMU with encouragement for the plan. Still, the final answer from UMSL and the KWMU management was no.

After a third failed attempt in 1998, KWUR enlisted WU legal counsel in order to pursue another plan of attack. In 1999, the FCC proposed a new class of limited stations called Low Power FM (LPFM) which would allow stations to have higher output without interfering with main frequency FM stations. KWUR quickly applied for a license, but before the FCC could consider the application, lobbyists acting on behalf of radio conglomerates succeeded in including some limiting

stipulations which resulted in preventing any station within the St. Louis metro area from obtaining an LPFM license. And so it was back to the drawing board.

The Home Base

Bhojraj calls KWUR “the epicenter of weirdness,” and to take a look around the station itself, you’re inclined to believe him.

There’s hardly an inch of blank space on the walls; layers of concert posters, stickers and autographed promo shots (mostly apocryphal) form an odd sort of sediment that provides a history of the station; if you tear through to the first poster, you might find Kurt Cobain. On the surface nowadays, you’ll find Talib Kweli or Stephen Malkmus.

The station’s history extends far beyond grunge, though, or anything else you’re likely to find on the walls of KWUR’s

current home.

KWUR started broadcasting when Led Zeppelin ruled the airwaves. Broadcasting from Liggett Dorm on the South 40, KWUR was a rag tag operation. Lacking enough DJs to

complete a roster, one early DJ single-handedly broadcast for 72 hours non-stop, a record, at the time.

And while things have changed for the better, reception still is a problem. One dependable way to get KWUR, though, now exists: over the internet. KWUR transmits streaming broadcast over its website (kwur.wustl.edu), and listeners have emailed in from as far as Australia and Switzerland.

They say the rule of thumb for counting your listeners is simple. For every call you get during a show, there are a hundred people listening out there. And Bhojraj says proudly that on a regular day, KWUR gets “at least eight or nine calls.”

He realizes that listenership would be bigger, and KWUR’s financial health would be better if programming were different. But he is adamant about KWUR’s identity.

“If we wanted to sell ads, we would have to increase listenership, and that would mean playing the top 40,” he said. “But we’re not going to do that at any cost.”

KWUR’s mission, he added, was “to give exposure to bands that don’t get the exposure, or the popularity, or the audience they deserve.”

Bhojraj is focused on his involvement with KWUR, which he has been doing since entering WU two years ago.

“The one thing I want to do while I’m here,” he said, “is to find the band that’s going to make it huge and who we all know is actually talented, and expose them to as many people as possible.”

This goal, included in “The KWUR Bible” (given to and studied by every new trainee) has served the station well throughout some remarkable encounters with future celebrity. There was the time that members of the Wu-Tang Clan freestyled on the air during a KWUR wine and cheese party in the early 1990s. And there were the KWUR-organized concerts of R.E.M. and Nirvana before either became platinum-selling superstars.

KWUR’s self-professed quirky staff members and devotees are defined as such. The station has its own semi-formal where one year a DJ showed up in ass-less chaps. This year, the theme of the event was “Truckers vs. Viking Warlords.”

Legend has it that one rabid graduate student living across town actually covered the walls of his one-room apartment with tin foil so that his radio could receive the elusive KWUR signal.

KWUR continues to finance and produce fantastic live shows like those of KWUR week, or semester concerts, such as the upcoming hip-hop show at the Gargoyle. And they manage to keep them free to the WU community. Only people without WU ID cards need pay admission.

Their paucity of listeners is not upsetting to KWUR DJs. Indeed it’s something they joke about. When they do receive a request, they’ll often play it right after the current song.

And while the music may not always be what a casual listener chancing in wants to hear, it’s almost invariably something new, and quite often, something fascinating.

Calls often consist of students desperate to know the name of a recently played song, having never heard such a thing before.

The Future

West has established a timeline for this year’s petition. He’s decided to make use of his contacts at KWMU, hoping that they’ll be able to influence the station’s next decision. He plans to finish the proposal by late spring and hopes by that time KWUR will already have maximized its current potential by moving its antenna to higher ground.

Some students, such as Ben West and Niles Baranowski (Class of ’00, now a music writer for the Riverfront Times) have helped KWUR without seeing any results. Former managers and DJs are still interested in KWUR’s continuing struggle for power. They call in, send emails, even drop by the office.

Most have dealt with same problems as West, having struggled for change but never seen it take hold. But like West, even if they’re gone when it happens, they’ll be thrilled if the petition finally goes through.

“Everybody knows that they have to work on it,” Baranowski says. “But they know that at the same time it’s not going to happen while they’re there.”