q & a: Randy Peterson from KXCI

I sat down to talk with Randy Peterson, manager of local radio station 91.3 to ask him some questions about running a community radio station.

Allie: Why don't you start by introducing yourself and talking a little bit about what you do at KXCI?

Randy: OK. My name is Randy Peterson, P E T E R S O N, and I'm the general manager and development director at KXCI. And at the moment, acting program director since the departure of Jason at the end of August. So, essentially, I'm in  charge of the staff and the general direction of the station. I answer to a fifteen member board of directors selected by our members. Basically, I'm responsible for everything that happens behind the scenes. All the fundraising, grant writing, human resources, programming decisions. Everything that it takes to run a radio station other than what actually goes out on the air with our DJ's. But as our acting program director, I'm primarily responsible for that as well.

A: That's a lot of work.
R: That's a lot of work! But it's a lot of fun.

A: Did you just end up at KXCI or did you want to work for a community radio station?
R: I started here in 1999. I was in underwriting sales representative for the station. I had come here from Michigan where I had done management and marketing for a restaurant chain. But even in that job, I had always done a lot of nonprofit work so I was looking to go with a nonprofit. I knew some of the experience I'd had as a volunteer could build a career in fundraising. After about 6 weeks as a salesperson, which I was terrible at, the station's membership director was leaving so they offered me that job instead. That was December of 1999. I worked many years as membership director, also filling in as acting general manager until we hired someone new. After three times, they finally gave me the job.

A: So you have your tentacles in a lot of different aspects of the station.
R: I wasn't a programmer when I started, I learned that on the job. I started cohosting the Home Stretch and at the time it was two people. Then when the cohost left I did it myself for a couple years. But it's a lot to work all day, then do a three hour show at the end of the day, so I gave up the show and have just been behind the scenes.

A: So you prefer that, being behind the scenes?
R: Well, I prefer that but it's fun to fill in. And I get plenty of opportunity when there are vacations, or sudden illnesses, or a car breaks down. There's always time to fill in here. We're on 24 hours a day.

A: When you go on air there's a chunk of music you have to play...
R: That section is what we call the featured rotation and during the daytime it's generally about 50 albums. We expect DJ's during the day to play 5 songs an hour from those 50 albums.
A: Every DJ, every hour?
R: Every DJ during the day. 'Your Morning Brew' from  7 AM through 'The Homestretch' at 6, Monday through Friday. The other DJ's, evening and weekends, they can play it but they don't have to. It just gives us a litle bit of structure during the day, a little bit of repetition. And it also helps us to create our top 40 list which we still do report into the services like billboard and things like that.

A: How do you select that music?
R: It's selected by our music director, Duncan. He looks for a variety of genres. It's typically most rooted in rock and pop, but he always tries to have some local, some blues, some jazz, some world music. Things stay in there 6, 7, 8 weeks at a time. Then they come out. So every week about 8-10 of the 50 have changed. Everything has been reviewed by a DJ. When people review things, they'll say "This was good" or "this was great we ouught to feature it" or if they say they love it, then he listens to it again and ultimately makes the decision. So we know who our core artists are.
So, for example, Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album. Unless it's the worst Bruce Springsteen ever, we're gonna feature it. If we feature it, we're going to play every song on the album. As compared to a commercial station where they're going to play "the hit".  Then later, if there's another hit, they'll play the other hit. But they don't get beyond that first or second song. Whereas we play the whole album.
A: Right. And because the DJ's are community members, or volunteers, they are playing the music that Tucson wants to hear because locals are choosing it.
R: Absolutely.
A: So, that's one of the unique things about the station, is that all of the DJ's are volunteers, right?
R: Except morning show host is paid, that's the five day a week position. and our afternoon host is payed as well. Which right now we're between.
A: And all of you fill in different times on the air?
R: Yep. Every employee here has a volunteer air shift, except me. I'm just a sub.

A: It seems like that's the main difference between this and a commercial station. What else is different?
R: We're also public radio so no commercials, we have underwriting sponsership announcements. Similar to what you would hear on NPR. So we don't take prerecorded "Hey this is Jim Click, I wanna sell you a car". It's more of the promotional announcement: "Support for this station is provided by... " and it's all exclusively small businesses here in Tucson. We don't have any advertising dollars from outside our community. And then we have pretty low rates because we're working to build our business community as well.
A: I just heard an advertisment for the B Line the other day on the air, I was pretty excited because that's where I work.
R: Yeah, we do really well with restuarants and concerts.
A: I wonder how often people respond to that and say "I'm going to go there because I heard it on KXCI"?
R: Our surveys say a lot.
A: Yeah? What kind of surveys do you do?
R: We do surveys with our listeners. Online through our website. Our listeners are very loyal to local businesses, and are of the mindset that they don't wanna shop at wal-mart, because they know that's not good for the community.
A:Would you take a sponsership from Wal-Mart?
R: I would not take a sponsorship from Wal-Mart.
A: Is that your call?
R: Yes. No Wal Mart.

A: So it's public radio, there's no commercials...
R: What we often say is there's no commercials, no playlists, no rules.
A: Nice, real people real radio.
R: We give the shows some structure like with the featured rotation. Or, we have an expectation almost all of our shows are going to play at least one local artist during their show. Some can, and some can't. But the expectation is that everybody's going to play a local artist. Beyond that, we don't tell them who, or what song, or when. So, no playlists.

A: Where did the "real people, real radio" come from?
R: That predates me but barely. They put it into place in 1998. They had come up, somwhere in radio in general, with a branding suggestion. That you have a punchy 3 or 4 or 5 word description of your stuff. I don't know if they tested that with people, or the staff sat around, or asked DJ's, but it's what they came up with, "Real People, Real Radio". Which does serve to distinguish us from unreal people. Which would be paid DJ's and syndicated shows that don't come from our community. And then, the difference with real radio is that it's volunteers that our passionate about what they do. They're not playing music because the program director said "here's the songs you're gonna play." They play music because they know music, and they love music, and they're passionate about their genre, or during the daytime, the mix: all the different songs.

A: The studio seems like this far-off place, but when I came in here, it's really homey!
R: Yeah. It's weird because you're kind of isolated up here almost.You have to broadcast like you're talking to one person but you have to remember you're talking to thousands.
A: How many people are you talking to at any moment?
R: What they refer to as our "cume audience" which is the number of different people that listen at any point during the week is about 30,000.
A: That's a lot!
R: At any given moment, there's probably between 800 and 2,000. Right now, folks are still at work, they might be listening at their desk.

A: That's another thing I wanted to ask you about. I would love to listen to KXCI at work but I work less than a mile from the station, but it doesn't come in!
R: We don't have much wattage. We're 340 watts. They refer to that as penetration. You could probably get us on your car radio outside, but you can't get us in the building, because we just don't have enough to blast through the walls. It affects different people at different places around town.
A: The antennae is up on Mount Lemmon, right?
R: It's on Mount Bigelow, which is behind Mount Lemmon. We usually just tell people Mount Lemmon because they don't know where Mount Bigelow is.

A: So let's talk about your listeners. You have 30,000 unique listeners during the week and you get to connect with those people alot during the volunteer drive, and you're constantly at events, which Amanda mostly does, right, as a community outreach person?
R: She coordinates the volunteers. All of the staff all work at all events.
A: Do you direct which events you sponser?
R: Yes and no. Historically, if we do something and we like it, we just do it every year. And we're constantly adding new things. We just did the bluegrass festival.
We added the Festival of Books, which is only itself a couple years old. We're always game to try something. Sometimes it's not a good fit and we don't keep doing it.
A: How do you know?
R: It's different things. It's how much time we spend being there, setting up, at the event, versus the payoff. If we do the blues fest, they get a couple thousand people, but those people are really into the blues. We're the only station in Tucson that has blues programs. It's a really good fit. Same with bluegrass. They only get a couple thousand people but it's the only station that has bluegrass so it's a good fit. Something like the street fair, in the course of three days you have 250,000 people stop by your booth. Of all different expectations and backgrounds. Being there works for us because enough people that already know us will stop by and grab a tshirt, say hello, or grab a bumper sticker. And then, so many other people that are there just learn about us for the first time. Even if  100 people come by the booth, 95 of them won't be a good fit. We're there for the people that want to buy the t shirt. But if a community group says we're trying something new and expect 100 people, it's hard for me to ask a staff member to give up their evening and find a volunteer to go with them for the chance that 100 people will be at an event. So we're very strategic.
We just did the Tucson Meet Yourself festival for the second year in a row. A lot of these events we've helped promote over the years, but we haven't neccesarily come out and promoted ourself at the event. We're trying to do more of that.

A: So you're constantly trying to turn more people onto KXCI. Do you think that the listeners that you have are getting turned on to new music?
R: Absolutely! We're always playing new music. In two senses, we're playing new artists that folks have never heard of. We're also playing old artists, like Springsteen. If you're a commercial radio station, an oldies station, you're not going to play Springsteen's new stuff. If you're a rock n' roll station he's not exactly top 40. You're not going to play his new stuff. All these commercial stations, that fill these little niches, Bruce doesn't fit any of them anymore. We're the only ones playing his new stuff.

A: I think KXCI makes music accesible. I know that I can turn and on and hear something that interests me.
R: Yes, our DJ's are very passionate about their music and, you know this first hand, you review ten albums and five of them might be crap. We don't play them. So we're already helping to shape that taste. We like to think you can trust us. We play something because we think it's good.
A: Right! It's like having a group of friends with really great taste in music.
R: Yeah! How it is that they break new artists now, how you have to get through and emerge. In the olden days maybe you started a band and you were regional. You met a rep from a label,  they released what you already had nationally,  got behind you, promoted a tour and everything like that. Nowadays, if you want to be a star in top music or something like that, you have to win American Idol. It's the only avenue that's still left. Or, if you're one of these smaller independent groups that we play, you have to work it overtime. Do these small concerts with 100 people showing up at a club, coming in and doing live interviews on the air, and really work at that differently.
The other way that artists really break now - and this is what has really changed in the industry in the past couple years - is that the youth today are getting their exposure to new music through commericals, soundtracks and video games. That's changed the industry. What we would call classic rock is one of the most popular formats for youths 18-25 year olds. They've heard things like Metallica, and Led Zeppelin from video games and commercials. To them, The Who is new. It's changed the way that people get exposed to new music.
A: Interesting. One of my favorite bands I heard on a Saturn commerical. I think there's some hope in that too,
R: Absolutley, it gets you around the old studio system which used to be very limited.

A: How would you describe the music you choose to play here other than good?
R: Great! Very diverse. We try to play artists that aren't getting airplay other places. Usually if something is a hit, somewhere else, we don't touch it. There's rare exceptions. One recent example would be Adele. She's had the best selling album of 2011 by far. But that's not her first album. For most people, that's her first album, but we've been playing Adele for years. So we're not going to stop playing her just because the rest of the world caught on. If her next album comes out and isn't popular, but still good, we're going to keep playing her.  Even if she's not popular anymore. We try to play a range. We touch on everything but classical and opera, because NPR does that and they're doing it well. There's no reason for us to step in.

A: You mentioned NPR, I like KXCI a lot more than I like NPR. It's totally different station and less musically focused, but I find a lot of their programming really closed off from my community. Do you have a relationship  or affiliation with NPR? Are you a part of a community radio network?
R: There's not a community radio network. There is an organization called National Federation for Community Broadcasters. They put on conferences and things like that. There's not a network like there is for NPR. The closest thing that we have to a network for us is Pacifica radio. Which does Democracy Now, which we carry. But that's the only show from that that we carry. We could carry lots of things from them but that's not who we are. We don't want to carry someone else's program. Democracy Now being an exception because that brings together resources, and we could never have that kind of news program just here.

A: Are there any other syndiciated series that you carry?
R: We do carry This Way Out. Which is the GLBTQ program on Sunday afternoons. We would like to do a local version of that. For many years we did. We just don't have someone at the moment who is willing to make that commitment. We're always looking for someone, though.
A: You're looking for someone to host a talk show?
R: More like a public affairs, news program.

A: What direction do you see KXCI going now?
R: A good direction. Our membership is growing. We're more fiscally sound, so we can weather recessions and things like that. We're certainly growing in terms of our awareness in the community. Both in our knowing what is going on in the world around us, and people knowing us which is a great thing.

A: You've been here since '99. Have you noticed a significant change in people's support of local business and radio? Is that really entering people's lives?
R: Absolutely. We're part of the locals first movement here, which really stresses supporting your businesses and keeping money inmanaging your community. We're a big part of that. Tucson's the type of community that if we didn't already have community radio we'd be working to get it started. Because it's people who care about the community, are progressive, arts and culturally minded, and understand the need for many voices and diversity. I think we're going to be strong part of that for a long time. When the station first started it was all about trying to survive the first year, and the first five years. Then trying to make it ten years. But we'll be 28 years in December and we can really start to think about entertaining you, and entertaining your kids.

A: You have a lot of listeners outside of Tucson, even Arizona.
R: We do. They understand our hyper localism that for profit radio can't bring.
A: It probably makes them feel at home, listening to the station again. Do you broadcast breaking news?
R: Very rarely. In the 12 years that I've been here the only time we've ever gotten away from our broadcast to talk about breaking news was on 9/11 and again on the January 8 shootings. Even on January 8, because we don't have a news team, we couldn't go live to the field. We had to rely on other people to relay what was happening. We talked about it a little bit but we also really stuck with the music that day, because we knew that's what we could do. And we knew people would come to us to get away from the tendency of news to to be the first to report something without checking to see if it's right. It wouldn't have served the public interest to add to the confusion. So we reported things slowly, as they were confirmed, while we played the music. Which is what people needed from us. We got a lot of gratitude from the listeners for the types of music we were playing and the sensitivity we were showing. Gabby's always been a supporter of the station so we felt that kinship with her. One of the young men that was killed had been a KXCI member. We wanted to play an appropriate role.
A: That's so great that you know your role well enough that you can provide that to people.

Thank you to Randy for your time and support!