Jan 3, 2007

KZSU goes old school

Stanford station celebrates its 60th birthday by rocking around the clock

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

It was with some trepidation that Clay Glad, program director of Stanford University's KZSU in 1993, met with the radio station's new faculty adviser. Glad was wary that the station's "ahead of the curve" hip-hop program "The Drum" would come under attack.

"I went into that meeting ... ready to defend our hip-hop DJs tooth and nail. This turned out to be unnecessary, since our new adviser was Henry Breitrose, drama professor, and, as he graciously informed me, the elder brother of Guru, one of hip-hop's most revered stars," Glad said.

Started in 1984, "The Drum" is now the longest-running hip-hop show in the world, said Ben Levitt, current program director at 90.1 FM KZSU.

Beginning on Thursday, KZSU celebrates 60 years of being on "the cutting edge of college radio," said law student and disc jockey Matthew Stark Rubin.

The radio station will commemorate its six decades with a 60-hour marathon of historical music played by more than 40 returning DJs. Each hour will be devoted to consecutive years of the station's history, marking its transformation from a 10-watt AM trickle into dorm rooms to a 500-watt FM station that broadcasts around the clock.

Fred Terman, one of the station's founding engineers in 1947, will kick off the marathon at noon on Thursday. The event culminates at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, with music from 2006. Each DJ will play a "Hit of the Year" approximately 9 minutes into each hour, said station spokesman Adrian Bischoff. For his coverage of the year 1963, Bischoff plans to play "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March as his selected hit.

Run by Stanford students and local community members, noncommercial KZSU broadcasts from studios in Memorial Auditorium. On a clear day, the station can be heard from Berkeley to Gilroy, Bischoff said. In addition, KZSU, the first college station to "netcast," can be heard streaming live on the Internet, where an updated playlist is maintained so listeners can follow along, Levitt said.

Glad said the station's Internet broadcasts began in 1995 after Dan Rosenberg, then the program director, brought a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor into the office.

"Being Stanford's radio station, we were way ahead of pretty much any station," he said.

Sports have long been an important part of KZSU's repertoire. General Manager Kathryn Todd said the university's football, baseball, basketball, volleyball and softball games are all webcast live. On Saturday, the women's basketball game will be announced by Walt Brown, who worked for several major sports networks, including the NBA, NFL and MLB, as well as KZSU.

Levitt said that one of his favorite programs is David Levine's "Hearsay Culture," which talks about "technology law issues for non-nerdy non-lawyers." The program director said the station's goal is "to provide a source for people to learn about different music than is heard on the big commercial stations."

"Given any music genre, we probably have a DJ who plays it," he said.

E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.