 My name is Mark Ito and I'm your host today for Community Matters. In 1968, there was a plan to make radio frequency for a non-commercial educational radio FM frequency right here at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. 50 years later, it became known as KTUH, an island-wide broadcasting station for alternative radio. And like we say here at KTUH, it's radio for the people and the only station that loves you. Today I'm here with the current general manager and program director here, Mi Wong and Bjorn Barnett. Mi, Bjorn, thank you for coming to the show. Mark, thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you. So KTUH, can you guys give like a general description of what KTUH is and kind of like a little brief history of what it is about? Absolutely, yeah. Well KTUH is our college radio station at UH Manoa. Mi, you want to talk a little bit about what we are? Yeah, we are a student-run radio station and we provide mostly music program. We play alternative rock, electronic music, Hawaiian music, just like non-mainstream music. And recently we launched our podcast talk show, we tried to provide something other than just provide music. Right and awesome. It's kind of like how it first started was kind of be more of like an educational kind of like discussional kind of topic. So going on that tip, you guys are talking about like the different types of music and whatnot and that's what kind of draws you to KTUH. So I kind of wanted to talk about like how you guys started off with like why you guys were just doing KTUHN. Eventually joined and became the GM and the program director there. I'm a music composition student at UH. Music is like the biggest passion for me. And I listened to KTUH and the first time I listened to the KTUH is Leon's show Friday in 1990 noon. I thought this is like something I would never hear elsewhere. It was amazing. So that was something that I feel like there's a group of people really play something very cool. The music very cool and the vibe is just really unique. So that's the first time I think, oh, I should be part of this group too. So that's how I started to contact KTUH and finally I'm really proud that I'm part of this group. My story's a little different. I'm a molecular biologist at the University of Hawaii. What drew me to KTUH was being involved in college radio previously. I was an AV specialist at my undergraduate college, Kittiesburg College. And I had originally contacted KTUH to do a technical job. And that's kind of what generated my original interest in radio. But the way I started at KTUH though was having a radio show. But the technical aspects is what sparked my initial interest actually. Right. So going to the second image we have here, we have the program on it at the moment. We have some of the staff members there just like starting in Hawaii Hall. And if we can kind of go to the next picture and it talks about the more technical aspects. Right here is the example of the frequency. Yeah, that looks like our current contour map for 90.1. And if we go to the next picture kind of tells about how it was previously to what it is as we know it is now. Got it, yeah. So I think we had like three different radio stations before, over at the island. What we had was one radio station. Right. And we had two translator facilities. Okay. Yeah. And at one point I believe they had more than that. Really? But yeah, but we had a translator facility for the windward side. Right. And there is a translator facility for the North Shore that we still have right now which is broadcasting on 91.1. So, and those aren't separate radio stations but they do like relay the primary radio station. And they take it and rebroadcast it on a different frequency. Right. So that you can boost it. Okay. So kind of going back on like how they used to be more like little radio stations. Which kind of start kind of had to fight their way to get to this like island broadcasting. Right. Yeah. Like I believe like they started off just like a little AM frequency. They can only hear like at the university campus. Actually, yeah, they were broadcasting just in the dorms on the AM carrier current. Yeah, before they started. It's kind of like, it's kind of amazing to see that like just so like small like thing as KTH involved to like being on the FM frequency and that can be heard. Island wide. And also online as well. Which is a super cool thing. I think for people that cannot catch it in Oahu but are like are on the neighboring islands or abroad. Yeah. Radio stations are very involved organization. And you can kind of tell that, you know, it's a very demanding organization to run as me and I have both learned in our current roles. And I think the combination of the enthusiasm from the DJs and the community and the ability to overcome these technical challenges has led to the growth of the radio station. Because what you're really talking about is growth, right? Right. Talking about the growth from being just in the dorms to just in Manoa to now on the top of panelists broadcasting Island wide. This is this is growth on the FM frequency. Right. Yeah. And that interest from the community and the interest from the students was really has ultimately led to the sustained ability to keep KTH open and the growth of it. All right. That's awesome. Yeah. I think it's awesome. It's like something that's not really in existence anymore, which is college radio that is run by students for not only the community, only greater good of the university campus, but also expands outside the community. The UH community, which is, I think it's like an amazing thing because, like I said, there's not like a lot of like college radio stations like that anymore in the nation. Or we do this type of programming, right? We do that KTH. So for those of you that don't really know what KTH programming is, how does it work? Like is there like a show every like one hour, like like an hour show or like is it like three, four hours? How do shifts kind of work? Yeah, we recently have every three hours, we have a new show and we run 24 seven. This is our current programming. But we have a lot of new DJs and community members. They would like to have their own show too. So this coming forward, thinking of maybe we can have more shows to more DJs. So currently we have three hours. We have new shows, but this fall we are thinking of maybe we can be more flexible to allow our DJs to host a shorter show or longer show one hour to our show. So would that be kind of like, like would that kind of for example be like one hour talk show followed by maybe like a two hour music show for example, right? Okay, that's super awesome. Has any other college radio station in the nation kind of a similar programming like that? Or is like, as I know you guys visited other colleges recently, like outside of the Koi. So you guys kind of elaborate how that experience was like. I would say yes, most of them actually are most most college radio stations are pretty flexible with the programming. They they're pretty flexible with the structure of their program. That's how I would phrase that. I think our goal to me and my goal for the programming is to is to is to is to give the DJs as many options as possible to create the show they want. Okay. So what we're trying to do is is give people the option to have shorter shows or longer shows, give them the option to have online only shows. We just want, we want, you know, we want the show to fit the person, not the person to fit the show. Okay. You know, so that they can bring their ideas to KTH. We're just talking about like having people having their shows online. Would that be through the website to a website or like a SoundCloud mix up? How would that kind of go about? Yeah, that's a great question. Before we're talking about the growth of our FM frequency, right? Right. Well, one of the next areas that I think we want, we're hoping KTH can grow is online. And so we actually want to promote DJs to be able to publish shows in all of those areas that you just mix cloud, SoundCloud, podcasting. Right. Our podcast is on many different platforms. On TuneIn, Spotify, Google Play, iTunes, of course. Yeah. A lot of different. Stitcher, right? Right. So there's, yeah. So we try to publish one feed on many different platforms. Yeah. That sounds awesome. So kind of like we were saying. So 1969, KTH's first broadcaster then right now the year is 2019 and it's 50 years and they're making right here. If we can go to the image that we have next, I believe it's our library vault of like 50 years worth of music and like throughout the ages. But not so. I mean, I know you talked about like music was the kind of like the reason why you gravitated towards KTH. And like are amazed by like the variety, especially with Leon or Mr. Modular as he's known on the radio station. So like before knowing that they had a vinyl vault like this, what kind of thoughts about the music? I was totally amazed because right now students right now all the people mostly just listen to music from their phone. Nobody really people buy CDs, minos anymore. But we still use the traditional way to to broadcast music. Most of our DJs bring in their own collection of CDs or minos. They use our CD collection or vinyl collections. That's very unique. And that's that's something special about radio radio industry. We use the physical CD or vinyl. You can hear the like a scratch sound sometimes and you can hear the transition. Sometimes it's not perfect like a comparative Spotify, but that's something human about it. It's something something passion. You can hear the DJs passion when they really look for just one track of a song from like a 10 truck CDs. And they have to look for one truck from like 1000 CD from our CD library. I kind of like the way you elaborated on the fact that like it's the human aspect of it. Like the connection of like of the music not being so perfect. And it's just kind of like, like you say you can kind of hear the scratching from the vinyl or the CDs and kind of like. It's kind of like that human element. It's not like automation kind of stuff where people like we're in commercial like a lot of commercial radio just like kind of all automated and very done, very structured and like with other kind of stuff. So the next picture kind of want to bring up is the library exhibit that we just had this past couple months of months and just kind of like help celebrate. So these are some of the images that I'm showcased what we had from like old like vintage like a two inch memorabilia from like DJ like music logs to like old pictures of the staff members working at the station with the equipment. And just go through the next picture as well has like our equipment that they used to use like years ago. That's not and like you kind of give the idea of like what it is to be like a radio disjockey. Yeah, so if we stick on this image you see some really interesting stuff here on the left right is a car tape player. That is a stack of three right it can hold three tapes and those are these large analog tapes that they used to record short productions on. Right. And so the DJ in the booth who was running a show would line up three tapes to play like during their breaks. Right. Right. Yeah. So then it kind of like going succession like they play one tape. And then once that tape ends they play the next tape and they just kind of keep shuffling putting new like new programming tape. Yeah. Yeah. That's an analog version of something that we do today. Right. Yeah. So there's also if we went back to that picture also had like some of like an old downboard and like the old microphone. And we also had a list and like on the right of the soundboard with us as an amplifier. Is that correct? Yeah. So that's an old air board from our station that has a large power supply next to it. Yeah. And then in the background as well you can also see the current part of the current program when we have right now a KTOH and some pictures of our DJs and what not. So right now we got to take a one minute break really quick just to catch our breath and we collect ourselves. We'll be back right after this. Hey hello everyone and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studio. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Pretty Matters Hawaii. We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know issues that can protect your family, take yourself, take our community, protect our companies, the folks we work with. Please join us and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Konnichiwa. Think Tech Hawaii ga nihongo de oguri shite imasu. Konnichiwa Hawaii. Host na kuni seikari desu. Mai shu. Kaku shu getsu youbi. Niji kara desu ne. Nihongo de. Nihongo de katuyaku sarete irassharu. Hawaii no irona kata o maneki shite. Shou. Geto shou o toki shite imasu. Zehi koran ni natte kudasai. Welcome back to Community Matters. My name is Mark Ito. I'm the host for this last minute or so of this programming. Right here in the studio I have with me, Yarm Barlet and Smi Wong who are the current GMN program directors here at KTUH, the college radio station located at the University of Hoyt at Manoa. So we're talking about like our 50th anniversary and like the celebrations we've done. So are there kind of like any more things we're planning to do throughout the year to kind of commemorate 50 years? Because 50 years is like, especially for a radio station, it's very like unheard of in this kind of day and age. So are we celebrating it to the greater masses? Yeah, 50 years is definitely our big milestone. So we celebrate, we already have the alumni take over and this summer and we have the alumni reception. No, we have the exhibit. But we will have alumni reception is October 4th. Before October 4th, there's a series of concerts that you actually managed. So yeah, we are really excited for those. We bring in a lot of local musicians to play. They'll bring back some old memories and what we started, the KTUH is our passion for music. So in September of all four weeks, we'll have four concert series every Friday. And we have a grand finale, a big celebration on October 4th. Richard Thompson is a legendary musician we'll be playing. Oh yes, definitely. So if we can throw up the number 10 picture, I believe. We have our KTUH number if you want to get any contact in regards to the radio station as far as I can. If you have any questions about how you can join the KTUH even if you're not a part of the student body or just talk about how the radio station works and what not. If we can see the next couple of pictures, please. Yes, so we have some, during the exhibit as well, we had some of our staff members that unfortunately passed away. One of the big ones was Rap Linger who was a very famous KTUH alumni. He's a very famous like music comedian throughout the islands as well. More recently in 2014 with Abel who was like, was a really loved DJ at KTUH as well. So just want to give a little moment to them. Give a little shine for those that have contributed to this awesome KTUH college radio station. If we can go to the next slide, I believe. We have some other things that we do at KTUH as our takeovers. And that's pretty cool. I think just like as a way to reach out to the community outside of these like big events. One of these is the picture you're seeing right now. So a little bit older picture with some of the older DJs that wanted to play music for the community. And it's a way for the community to get to know the DJs on a face-to-face personality rather than hearing them through a radio or like some sort of FM frequency perhaps. What do you guys thoughts about like KTUH doing like some kind of like these like community events to kind of like show that we are just like just in UH but outside of UH community as well? Right. So last fall we actually had a major fundraiser. We did two fundraisers last year. We do our annual radio fund every year to pay for our operations. But last year we did a second one in the fall. And that was primarily to fund these community events for the 50th anniversary. And I believe in my mind the purpose of these events is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of like the local college radio station. But it's also to give opportunities to local musicians and artists who want to perform and want to be sort of you know recognized by the community as performers and for you know contributing to the local music scene of which KTUH has been I think a major part for many years. Right. And we have a programming with Monday Night Live which is what every Monday where they have a live act in studio and they do like an interview segment plus they have like an hour of original music. Yes, original music not cover music. So what I think is really cool in the fact that like they're promoting their arts and craft and where it's like the platform to kind of give them their shine to like get that like recognition and that reach that KTUH has with the different community. I believe the next slide is our concert right here. Yes, this is the one we're looking for. So we're talking just talking about this earlier with Richard Thompson electric trio. And Richard Thompson for audience members that don't know who he is. He's a very famous electric guitarist and by some of our own staff members says it's one of the best in the world. So just to have him here to help celebrate 50 years of KTUH is an achievement and it's a great honor to have him here to help us celebrate with it. We're talking about October 4th Friday. That's going to be a Friday at 8 p.m. at Hawaiian brines on the address is less. There are 1680 Kapilani Boulevard on the second floor. And there's a URL link there as well with K2H 50 dot brown paper tickets calm. That's a little bit too long for some people. All you can just do is just go to the web to our website. Yeah, so the ticket information and the prices are on the website and the link. Yes. If you guys time just go to our website. Just click the both all the directions from there and I'll show you everything as far as what we're planning for this big content series. So kind of touched on it briefly about like what we wanted to do to expand our future reference for KTUH and outside of KTUH I kind of wanted to get your guys thoughts about this with radio and just in general because like you were saying earlier a lot of people are just downloading or listening music from like their phones from like their laptops or tablets or whatever. And it's like a lot it's a lot of music curated just for them in that regard. I kind of wanted to hear you guys opinion about like the future of like radio broadcasting as a whole. Whether if it's going to be like what is it going to be like is it going to be kind of like similar what we have right now. Or like in 50 years down the line is it going to be something completely different that you know beyond our imagination right now. Right. Well I can start by saying I think radio is here to stay. It's not growing as fast as it was. This also I don't think it's going anywhere. I think that in this in this day and age in order to be in order to be a cutting edge radio station and reach reach the people who really want to listen to you. I think it's important to be online. But one special thing about one special thing about radio is that those streaming platforms that you listed can't be played on the air like Spotify. Their terms of service specifically states that it can't be played on radio. So when you listen to FM radio you're always going to hear music that is specifically curated by that DJ. And I don't think I don't think that's going to change even with streaming. I think that you know people who DJ on the radio and put the effort in will always want to play you know national music. But I think to grow I think online content is really important. I think people use those platforms so much now. I think we really need to reach outside FM and that's what me and I are working on. Right. Yeah. For you to be able to grow. We really want to bring in some some other thoughts like talk show and other educational content because we are a student run student college radio station. You want we want our students U.H. their voice to be heard their research projects and some campus issues because you know we have talk show. They address LGBT issues address women's issues they address like future sustainability those issues. Those are important but they are not necessarily in like right in the alley that the mainstream media address every day. But we really want to bring those subculture to our to our station and let people learn more about their research. Right. So the general system getting is that we have working radio to exist. It's just you just have to be really current with like what's going on and like listen to the people pretty much is pretty much what we're doing as like our responsibility as radio. Whether that's like playing music that people currently are into or even to like current issues like social issues like political issues. Hopefully not that hopefully not too controversial but this have to be current is the main trend that we have to be focused on. And I know K2 which is a little bit I've even told that's a little bit like on the older demographic side. So like kind of like the like you say like the aunties and uncles side of things. So a lot of things you guys are doing right now is for like the next generation like our generation or what not what the online part. But they're kind of like satisfied the older older crowd per se how would you say you can put them into this kind of this branding of the future. Yeah that's a great question. So FM is not our FM signals not going anywhere. But those who do listen on FM are are still being served by K2H. But what I would say there is that we're we're trying to we're trying to serve as many people as possible. We want to bring as many people as possible into our our listener base. So it's really important the online content is important to serve people who don't live within our FM coverage other islands and mainland. As far as older listeners go I do believe they also that streaming is also popular in order demographics maybe more popular in the younger demographics. Really. Yeah but I think old and young use that streaming streaming and podcasting especially especially the people who don't live within the terrestrial reach of our FM. Right. Yeah. Okay so it's really interesting to hear that kind of stuff. Just to kind of wrap up and just to get people to be more aware about K2H. I know we've mentioned it before so is there any other ways to reach out to you guys specifically as far as like K2H. But if they have any problems, questions, concerns or anything on that matter how can they contact you. I think you can call us at AO8-956-5288. It's our office number and they can also email us DM at K2H.org. Yeah we're always looking for new DJs and we are open for any suggestions. We accept DJs from the community. You don't have to be a student to be a DJ. Anybody can apply. All they need to do is want to be a DJ on K2H. So we encourage anyone who wants to be involved to be involved somehow. Whether it be by donating or DJing or even coming to tour the station. Okay sounds awesome. Unfortunately we run out of time for a discussion. Hopefully we can have you guys back on. We're going to just talk about the concert series and the big Richard Thompson concert. So once again this is Community Matters. My name is Mark Ito. Thank you for tuning in and for anything that's awesome. You're going to need to take a call at K2H.org. Aloha.