KZFR: The good, the bad and the ugly

For 14 years Chico’s community radio station KZFR has staggered along, enduring in-house personality clashes, equipment failures, on-air gaffes, hours of dead time and Dead music, all the while living hand-to-mouth. There were times when local benefactors such as political activist and contributor Kelly Meagher and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. owner Ken Grossman were called on at the last minute to bail out the nonprofit station financially and keep it on the air.

Today the station is on firmer financial ground, and last month it hired its first full-time paid general manager and paid office manager and went to a 24-hour format. The station’s February pledge drive netted $32,000, making it the most successful ever. And one-third of those pledges have already come in, which is a record in its own right.

KZFR is growing, and there’s no doubt that its many listeners love it dearly, even if they sometimes cringe at its shortcomings.

Those who run the station—it has as many as 100 volunteers—are divided as to the station’s direction. As it grows and brings in more and more money, some of the old-timers fear that KZFR will lose its soul and become just another slick, over-produced commodity piping in formatted shows that don’t acurately reflect the community the station serves.

KZFR offers two syndicated news programs—Democracy Now each weekday morning and Free Speech Radio each weekday afternoon. It also became a member of the Pacifica Radio Network, allowing it access to programs it would otherwise not be able to afford.

These additions have bumped, shortened or shifted some of the locally produced shows, creating grumbling and complaints from some programmers, both former and current.

Going to a 24-hour broadcast, the station now plays programming from another community station, the Pacifica-affiliated KPFA out of Berkeley, from midnight to 6 a.m.

Still, even with more formatted material, the station remains an alternative to the repetitive gruel dished out by the commercial radio stations that reside to the right of KZFR’s 90.1 location on the dial. All nonprofit stations, including public and religious radio, are located below the 92 frequency.

Thirty-five years ago FM stations offered an alternative to the AM static of top-40, hyperactive disc-jockeys who spun 45s with mind-numbing repetition. The album-oriented stations on the FM band, with their laid-back disc jockeys who weren’t afraid to play the long versions of Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” or Vanilla Fudge’s “Keep Me Hangin’ On,” offered live, unpredictable reality. Who cared if the turntable needle got stuck in the same record groove for five minutes while the DJ was out of the studio getting high? That only made it better somehow.

Today KZFR is the alternative to both FM and AM commercial stations that are no longer locally owned—Clear Channel Communications, Inc. owns one-third of the stations in Butte County—and more and more beholden to corporate interests. That’s why such self-supporting community stations tend to have a left-leaning political bent, while the right-wing talk shows are found on the commercial stations.

Corporate America does not want to sponsor shows with names like Radio Free Chico, Eco Talk or Freedom’s Questions or those that ask listeners to stop eating meat to help end bovine suffering or explain how to develop psychic communication with your pet.

The blemishes—dead-air time, programmers who cough and sneeze and the decidedly non-slick production values—help give KZFR its charm. Witness Randy Larsen, host of Eco Talk—actually a very well-done show—conducting an on-air phone interview with a noted environmentalist, when the operator cuts in with, “Please deposit 50 cents for another three minutes.”

And where else could you hear “Freebird” before 8 a.m., a teen talk nearly non-stop for two hours about stress, a young girl reading a selection from Where the Wild Things Are, bad bootleg recordings of seemingly endless Grateful Dead jams, the sidewalk serenades of a Tom Waits or the folkie ring of a Tom Rush ballad?

The good, the bad and the ugly: This is community radio.

Until recently, the station has been run by a series of unpaid managers and a complex structure made up of a nine-member board of directors, a program council, 11 committees, an underwriting sales person working for commission, a Web master, a pledge drive coordinator and an engineer.

There are about 120 community radio stations in America, and some, like KVMR in Nevada City, are a good 30 years old. KZFR is the result of a lot of hard work by many dedicated people, but the man most responsible is Erik Mathisen, who worked for years to get it up and running and now has moved on to start another such station in Red Bluff.

Turmoil at KZFR is nothing new. Mathisen served as KZFR’s first general manager, running things from the initial day in July 1990, when the station was located at Mulberry and East 20th streets, where the shows were recorded and the tapes hauled to a transmitter on Nimshew Ridge for broadcast.

Just before Thanksgiving 1992, Mathisen was the victim of a coup and forced to step down as GM. The new boss, Michael Holland, kicked Mathisen off the program council and took away his underwriting accounts. (Holland didn’t last long himself, removed because of his alleged dictatorial style.)

At the time Mathisen took his removal well, knowing it came with the territory.

“We did some things right,” he said. “I just didn’t want to be 60, sitting in a bar and thinking, ‘What if I had tried [starting a radio station]. It was kind of a fool’s errand. Cost me everything I had.”

Since then the station has suffered other coups and internal fighting. Many say that is because of a lack of a full-time, paid GM with radio experience.

So last month Jill Paydon, a 20-year radio veteran, became KZFR’s first-ever paid general manager.

Today she is sitting in the purple-walled office she shares with two other KZFR employees in the corner space occupied on the top floor of the four-story, salmon-pink Waterland-Breslauer building in downtown Chico.

Paydon has strawberry-blond hair with graying roots—"I haven’t colored it for a while"—and cobalt-blue eyes. She is smart, short and a sensible dresser in a politically progressive sort of way.

(Although, a few days later, while walking downtown, she spies a woman sporting red-and-black cowboy boots. She’s impressed. “I have a pair of ostrich cowboy boots that I’ve only worn twice,” she says. “Now I feel like I can wear them here in Chico.")

In short, the San Diego-area native who’d lived in Humboldt County since 1977 looks like the person you’d want to sit next to in high-school chemistry class—intelligent and with enough liberal leanings to share her answers with you on the big exam.

She is a radio person, having worked in the medium for most of her life since she left San Diego. She has a degree from Humboldt State University in English lit and does not, she says, watch television.

“I do own one, but it is not plugged in; and it hasn’t been for four or five years. I occasionally watch TV at someone else’s house, so it’s not like I haven’t seen TV in the last four or five years. I am aware of what goes on on FOX and CNN.”

She says she’d never thought about a career in radio until she did a couple of class projects, including a women’s show on the Humboldt State radio station.

“I just became really interested in the non-commercial medium because there was such a great variety,” she says.

Right now she is juggling the duties of a job that has never before existed at the station, where previous life-and-death decisions were made by the board of directors and the program council. In the process toes were stepped on, egos bruised and anger sparked.

Now Paydon is the buffer, the diplomat between the committees and the volunteers who keep the station on the air and provide the content broadcast from that sweet spot on your radio dial, 90.1 FM.

“It’s been kind of a trial by fire here,” she says.

She is trying to get a handle on who has and who should have keys to the office. Disappearing private and station property has been a problem over the years, and many people, it seems, have keys.

“I worked at KHSU, which is the university-licensed station at Humboldt,” she says. “I consider it a community station.”

In the non-commercial band, she explains, there are two types of licensees, not counting the religious broadcasters: institutional, such as KCHO, the local public radio station; and community, like KZFR. Golden Valley Broadcasters holds the license for KZFR. Chico State University has KCHO’s.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting helps fund the public broadcast stations. A community licensee is required to have a community advisory group to be eligible for CPB funds. If the license is held by a university, however, an advisory group is not required.

“Primarily, when you are licensed to an institution, you do have more restrictions on editorial policy and perhaps content,” she says. “And that usually has to the do with the fact you are representing the state of California. With a university licensing, you’re not allowed as part of the state to take editorial stances.

“Now, a community licensed station can have some editorial stances or present them as a station. However, none of us as non-commercial entities are allowed to endorse political candidates.”

Station volunteer and board member John Bilinsky walks into the office carrying a plastic bag holding containers of Castrol motor oil for the back-up generator at the station’s transmission site in the foothills. One of the station’s programmers lives near the transmitter and has volunteered to change the oil in the generator.

“Apparently there was a problem in the past,” Paydon says. “Without oil changes the generator doesn’t work.”

The issue of office key distribution comes up.

“Well, I just thought that there were a lot of keys out, and that there was no real reason for people having those keys, and I just wondered why the policies are so what I consider liberal,” Paydon tells Bilinsky.

“Well, you know who wrote the policy?” Bilinsky answers.

“No.”

He looks at her, aware of a reporter in the room, and says nothing. With that non-verbal cue she seems to understand who wrote the key policy.

“Well, OK,” she says.

“It was a very interesting meeting last night,” Bilinsky continues, referring to the board of directors meeting the night before.

“Well, I’m certainly glad I wasn’t there,” Paydon says.

“We no longer have a secretary,” Bilinsky tells her.

“Oh?”

“He resigned. Not the board. But just as the secretary.”

Paydon takes the news in stride. After Bilinsky leaves, she returns to talking about her role at the station.

“People talk about alternative radio. I like to use the word ‘independent’ because we’re not part of a network or tied to a specific group that has a particular philosophy, and if you listen to KZFR you’ll hear a wide variety of viewpoints on certain topics and then a very narrow variety of viewpoints on other topics.”

The programmers, she said, have been up to this point just people who walked in having decided they wanted to put their time into doing radio.

“You do occasionally get total strangers,” she explains, “but a lot of people know someone who knows someone.”

For the most part, she adds, almost everyone who’s gone through the basic training process has gotten on the air.

“I’m hoping to encourage perhaps a wider spectrum of people to at least consider the idea of contributing programming at KZFR. Over time I would like to make it a more formalized training and orientation process than we currently have.”

She says the station has done remarkably well considering it’s been run primarily by the board of directors and committees.

“It’s impressive that they’ve been as successful financially for this many years. I think that is in large part due to Shelly Mariposa, the underwriting sales person here. She does a very good job.”

Mariposa has worked for the station for the past six years.

“The true definition of underwriting is that the underwriters are making a financial contribution to the station to support particular programs,” Mariposa would later explain. “Most people underwrite because they know about the station and want to support it.”

The nonprofit rules say there must be no calls to action in the underwriters’ statements—"for all your legal needs come on down to Joe Smith’s law offices"—and the wording must be neutral, mentioning the product, the location and the phone number, for the most part.

“The underwriters are just there to support the station,” Mariposa said. “They don’t dominate the programming; they don’t influence the programming in any way.”

The station has not had an underwriter pull out because of program content as long as Mariposa has been on the job. And the station, she said, is financially healthier now than it has ever been. The basic monthly rate for an underwriter is $72 for one program, which garners two mentions during the show or eight to 10 per week.

Paydon likes what she sees and the potential at KZFR, which is why she took the job.

“I have to say that when I was considering taking this position or even applying for it, I looked at a variety of things, and when I understood [Mariposa] had been here six years solid, I felt confident the station was relatively healthy for where it was and that they were ready to take that next step.”

Just before moving to Chico, Paydon worked for another nonprofit called The Mainstream Media Project, which books guests for radio stations across the nation to discuss social, economic, environmental and political issues.

“We’d select a topic, prepare a short news release and fax it or mail it to radio stations, both commercial and non-commercial, that we had had contact with. The idea was to provide a wider variety of spokespeople to the media, both the mainstream and small stations like KZFR. We wanted to allow access to more people than just the one or two being interviewed by every network.”

Non-commercial broadcasting, she says, is strong in the area of information broadcasting because content is not censored by advertisers.

“If someone came and said, ‘I’m not going to underwrite a program on your station if you continue to have that other program or that person on,’ most [non-commercial] stations would say, ‘Well, sorry you feel that way,’ and continue to do the show. That is one of the attractions of community radio.”

And one that has kept her away from working at commercial stations.

“My interest is to always be at a station that has community-oriented programming, even if it also includes some national programming. I think we need some nationally distributed programs like Democracy Now and Free Speech Radio because we don’t have the resources to do the national and international coverage. I think we owe it to our audience to provide information on national and international issues as well as regional and local issues.”

Though there is nothing specific in the works, she is considering hiring a news director to help cover local, regional and statewide issues.

“I’m still just getting to know the station,” she says. “When I have a little bit more time to actually think, I want to look at our budget and see where we are. It’s very time-consuming to do good coverage of local and regional issues. You can get quality on occasion from volunteers, but those people all have regular jobs. You need someone overseeing that effort who is getting paid.

“A lot of times stations will network with others in their region. We’re hoping to do something like that with KMVR in Nevada City. They are interested in working with us.”

She says the pledge drive, which had just concluded the night before, is probably the best way for the station to measure what’s popular with its audience.

“If you have really good response and you meet a goal or come close to a goal, you figure you are at least doing something right,” she explains.

Those who pledge will mention their favorite programs or call while those shows are on the air. In other words, money talks.

“We have such a variety of programs here, and they all have their fans,” Paydon says.

Part of the appeal of community radio is the fact that commercial radio is becoming so distant from its listeners.

“Most radio stations in most markets now are not programmed locally,” Paydon explains. “It’s all homogenized, and there is no creativity. That is the heart and soul of what community radio is about. I really like live radio. It’s unfiltered and uncensored.”

The amounts of funding that come by way of the 110 underwriters—all local businesses, including the News & Review—and via the three pledge drives per year are just about equal.

One of the most popular shows, based on the number of pledges it brings in, is Woody & Friends, hosted by former City Councilmember David Guzzetti, who long enjoyed a strong political base of support.

His folk-oriented program covers a wide range of singer-songwriters, from David Bromberg to Tom Waits, Woody Guthrie to Tom Rush.

On Monday mornings from 9 to 11:30 Guzzetti sits in the smaller of two KZFR sound studios, which is about 8 feet deep and 16 feet wide and has three red-draped windows that look out over Fourth Street and Broadway.

He says he tends to play a certain style of folk and country music, “a bunch of old guys” who have a political air about them.

“I follow Democracy Now with [correspondent] Amy Goodwin,” Guzzetti says. “So that can have some influence over what I play.”

Like most programmers, Guzzetti hauls in his own music, in his case a collection of CDs in a black-leather satchel. He usually brings in 50 percent more than he actually plays.

“When I first started I’d write it all down what I was going to play and how long each song would take,” he says. Now he just kind of wings it.

The studio walls have bulletin boards holding posters for upcoming musical events, phone lists and daily on-air reminders. There are two record players, and a couple of cassette and CD players. Two black microphones hang above the control panel.

An old gray heating radiator stands against one side of the room, and blue coaxial cables run along the outside wall, just below the windows. A tangle of wires and cables hangs beneath the black L-shaped desk that supports all the studio equipment.

As one would expect in an organization governed by committee for so long, there’s a history of infighting and dissension among the ranks at KZFR. Two years ago Freedom or Death, a hip-hop-flavored show, came to a controversial end.

The programmer, DJ Rubbaban (otherwise known as Leon Frazier), said he was hounded out by the program council in part because its members did not care for either the style of music or him personally. Frazier is black, and some other programmers who supported him said his ethnic taste in music played a factor in his eventual departure.

The program council said it was only trying to protect the station’s license and that some of the song lyrics Frazier played bordered on or were obscene. The council wanted to move the show from its afternoon slot to a later time. Frazier objected, saying he would lose listeners.

What really damaged him was when he began including on his program a sex-oriented talk segment that reportedly drew a number of complaints. In one show, while talking with a local woman “sexologist,” according to the station’s public file, he used the analogy, “drinking a cup of cum.” The program council said he had to stop the sex show. Instead, Frazier quit the station altogether.

“The FCC rules are specific and vague at the same time,” Paydon says. “There is a list of words, but there are other criteria involving contemporary community standards. If a station has one word that goes out over the air, a mistake, it is the station’s responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You as the license holder must make sure that everybody who is on air understands the rules and you have a system for dealing with violations of FCC rules.

“It only comes to the FCC’s attention if it gets complaints from the public, which serves as the monitor. Stations lose their licenses in only extreme cases; more often fines are levied.”

Another programmer who was bounced from the station is Pat Brush, who hosted a soccer show. His troubles started when his program was shortened with the arrival of Democracy Now.

He complained that the station was losing its local appeal and was in danger of becoming “just another talk show.”

“The people running the station are using it as a bully pulpit for espousing their political views, and that is leading to a loss of listeners,” Brush said in a letter to the News & Review.

The program council, according to the station’s public file, said Brush and his wife had gone directly to station underwriters, asking them to complain to the station about the addition of the news programs to the morning schedule. The council found Brush had violated two station codes: sabotage and conduct detrimental to the station.

There are other complaints in the files of crude words slipping out, including “piss,” “damn,” “asshole” and “hell,” none of which are among the seven forbidden words made infamous by comedian George Carlin back in the 1970s.

It’s not just former programmers who are unhappy with the direction the station is taking. One, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing his show, says there’s been a lack of diplomacy in how programmers are treated.

“I just go in and do my show now,” says the six-year veteran. “I don’t talk with anybody, I don’t look at anybody. I’m just in and out.”

He says the atmosphere inside the station has been poisoned.

“Programmers are feeling alienated. This is not community radio.”

He contends veteran programmers he talks with say “there has never been a time of greater acrimony at KZFR than now. In fact, more of the programmers who have committed the most years, let alone blood, sweat and tears, have left recently than in any other period.”

He points out how long-time programmer Bill Fiedler was told to move his show to another time slot. Rather than doing so, the host of Fiedler’s Follies quit the station.

The station, he said, has been taken over by lefty elitists. Why, he asks, isn’t there a conservative talk show or a country music program?

“It’s time for a big turnover in the so-called leadership at the Zephyr,” the anonymous programmer insists, referring to the station by its nickname.

Paul O’Rourke-Babb has chaired the station’s board of directors for two years. He is also a programmer, hosting on alternative weeks a talk show called The Point Is.

He downplays the complaints. “There are programmers at the station who do not want this to become a business,” he says. “It’s a radio club ethic. That is we’re all good friends going out on the air. But it is a business.”

He says there are progressives and conservatives involved on both ends of the station.

“I’m real optimistic about our future. Financially as an organization we have to take seriously a stronger financial base.

“We do need to be out in the community more, with tables at events and that sort of thing. We have such a wonderful eclectic mix of music and news programs.”

For the last few years, he says, the board has wrestled with the idea of hiring a paid general manager and an office manager.

“There was a lot of soul searching before it agreed to make that leap of faith. The concern was, what if we can’t pay them and our bills?”

He said the station voices both progressive and conservative attitudes.

“We don’t want censoring points of view; it’s a community radio station.”

Mary Mulcahy (a.k.a. Kelly Nolan) hosts an Irish-music program called Celtic Ray.

“There’s always been a problem with people wanting control,” she says. “We’ve have a program council of seven people doing what a program manager would do and a board of directors with nine people doing what a general manager would do. There has been a lack of continuity, a lack of diplomacy.”

She does see a glimmer of hope with the hiring of the experienced Paydon.

Preston Powers, who hosts Blues Bayou, says he thinks the recent changes are needed.

“It has to be run like a business,” he explains. “There are some who resent anything that looks like a business. And we have to be careful with what gets aired. We are right next to the religious stations. I can just see Mom in her minivan driving the kids and trying to tune in KJOY when she comes across some hardcore rap song.”

The station librarian and four-year member of the program council is Bobbi Tryon, who also has a show, called The Skinny.

Dissent within, she says, is to be expected when change comes.

“You’re dealing with a lot of, uh, strong personalities here,” she explains. “They don’t like the word ‘professional,’ so I hate to use it. I would say the station is more organized or better directed.”

She says the board and council are very diligent about the perception that the station is losing its local personality. And she thinks Paydon is the answer to what’s been ailing the station in recent times.

“For the past four years I’ve been on the council, it’s been all volunteers with no radio experience. She’s got that. Of everything we’ve thrown at her so far, nothing has fazed her.”

Lee Edwards, one of the station’s old-timers, hosts a weekly afternoon show called Blues Everywhere. He says it’s easy to complain. Getting involved is the hard part.

“I begin with a big disclaimer: When they have an opening on the board of directors or the program council, the two groups that control this station, how many of the programmers sign up? It’s always anywhere from zero to one. But still so many are complaining.”

Edwards is a thin, fit man with graying hair and silver-rimmed glasses. He has the dignity of a university English professor. He cares deeply for the station he helped build; asking him to talk about KZFR, he said, is “like asking a Baptist preacher to talk about the Bible.”

“KZFR is the best thing in the world,” he suggested. Everything else is elevator music.

“OK, maybe we have some egos, but they all have a soul. We have more than 100 volunteers, but like everything else 10 percent of the people do 90 percent of the work.”

He echoes O’Rourke-Babb’s call for more community involvement.

“I would like to see us do more for the community, like tithes of 1 to 2 percent of our monthly or yearly gross and holding a big bash or giving it to charity. We need do more of that kind of stuff.”

He quotes another old-timer, Peter Kimmel, who used to say, “This station has a life of its own; it refuses to die.”

“I was on the board of directors early on,” Edwards said, “and I remember the times we would reach into our pockets and see how much we could come up with to keep the station on. Then we’d have to decide, who do we pay first, the man for the rent or the bills?”

Today he too is concerned about the station’s direction.

“The thing that I don’t like is the tremendous change that’s come about. Free Speech Radio comes around and I lose a half-hour of my show.

“At meetings some say people want to hear news. ‘What people?’ we ask. ‘Oh they are out there.’ we’re told. But that is based on what their friends say and their general feelings. That’s no measurement. Who knows? How can you measure what people want?”

He is also suspicious of some of those now in control of the station.

“It is almost kind of scary to see these engineer types, these I-can-take-charge, Power-point guys. Sometimes I wonder if they have a soul. They are really calling the shots. Some of the programmers have given it up. Me too. I have things to do. Now I feel totally removed. But who’s to say they are wrong?

“I do know that in the old days National Public Radio was grass-roots. Now they might as well be run by [U.S. Attorney General John] Ashcroft. After a while, grass-roots people get cement under their feet.”

Edwards, who’s 64, wonders if the station managers have their priorities in order.

“It becomes a quest for more money and more exposure,” he said. “I’d like to see the same enthusiasm for community involvement, more than just more growth. I don’t know how you do it. How do you get the ‘local-yokelness’ of the station to mesh with the growth?”

Paydon is not surprised by the negative feelings and the way they are expressed.

“There is a standard saying in community radio, and that is that it attracts strong personalities,” she says. “There will always be people who don’t like a decision, but that goes with the territory. It’s unfortunate that occasionally people do get upset and things do sometimes get blown out of proportion.

“I believe if there is somebody like me here on a daily basis, who knows the people and is willing to have the interactions necessary to create an understanding or at least willing to make an attempt, the frequency and/or the level of those incidents will be reduced to a calmer level.

“What people have to remember is the reason we are here is to serve an audience. That’s the No. 1 reason for being a radio station.

“I wouldn’t have come here if I thought the station was hugely dysfunctional."