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In December, KRCL 90.9 fm celebrated 30 years on the air in Utah. But not without growing pains.
Last year, in spite of protests that evoked the era when KRCL was founded, the station switched formats, firing its amateur DJs and hiring three pros to replace them.
Loyal listeners were outraged. Was this still community radio? Had KRCL “sold out,” to use the parlance of its original times?
KRCL’s founder Stephen Holbrook doesn’t think so.
“Listeners wanted more music and more predictability, a more eclectic format," he says. "Public affairs programming needed a different schedule. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said we wouldn’t get any more funds if we couldn’t raise our listenership numbers.
"I’m happy it’s self-perpetuating. It’s like raising a kid to be self-sufficient. I hope it stays relevant to future generations.”
If Holbrook sounds like a proud parent, it’s because he is.
He grew up in Bountiful, a fifth–generation Mormon.
He could trace his family’s LDS heritage to before the Saints’ expulsion from Nauvoo.
“My family lost everything there,” he says. “I grew up acutely aware of the persecution of the Mormons. And I did not ever want to participate in the exclusion of others.”
Holbrook’s conventional Mormon life changed after he lost his testimony on his mission to Hong Kong. He left the church but remained cause-driven, becoming simultaneously involved in conservative politics and the civil rights struggle, joining the March on Washington in 1963. “I met my first black Utahn while I was in D.C.,” he recalls.
Eventually, Holbrook left Washington to devote himself full-time to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
He went to Mississippi to work for murdered civil rights worker Medgar Evers’ brother, Charlie, and when he returned to Utah, he broadened his activism to anti-war efforts.
“While I was at the U, I became interested in how media works," he says. "At a protest at the Federal Post Office, 12 people showed up—mostly Old Left, Quakers and pacifists. It was clear we needed to get more attention. We needed to get the word out and I knew we could afford to buy ads for marches on rock n’ roll radio stations.”
Alternative politics got Holbrook interested in radio; alternative culture confirmed that interest. Holbrook was into the music scene—he remembers seeing Jimi Hendrix at Lagoon.
“Politics and music were intertwined in the ’60s. I had been in Berkeley when Pacifica broadcast live from peace marches, so I knew how effective it could be.
At the same time, "large numbers of people I loved were leaving Utah because they wanted to be part of something. And all kinds of cultural expressions were not being heard.”
A three-term representative in the Utah State Legislature, Holbrook has always put in plenty of time on behalf of his convictions.
He believed a radio station could be the nucleus of an inclusive community that embraced non-whites, environmentalists, women’s and gay rights, and cultures around the globe.
In the ’70s, most of the alternative stations were not community-based. They were university-based. The huge exception was Pacifica, so Holbrook met with the chairman of the Pacifica Foundation to get some advice.
“There were a lot of requirements,” recalls Holbrook. "The FCC required you to prove you had funding for three years and that you would offer programming otherwise unavailable. Engineers had to find space on the frequency set aside for educational programming. At that time, this was especially difficult because the CB craze was using so much bandwidth. I had to present the proposal twice before they could get around to small fry like me.”
The station came together via Holbrook’s unique combination of stubbornness, savvy and serendipity.
“I was told I could have the equipment at KRON in San Francisco if I could move it out by midnight.”
He did.
Holbrook got a transmitter and three years on KSL’s transmitting tower because of an odd confluence of the Fairness Doctrine and his family’s LDS connections.
Dianne Orr at the Blue Mouse Theater let him have the second floor to house the studios.
He cobbled together little bits of money from grants and foundations, so from the very beginning, KRCL was functioning as a part of the community.
“Robert Redford went fundraising with me in Washington, and we got major grants from the Community Services Administration. KSL gave us a couple of used control boards. We went on the air in December 1979, with a staff of nine paid employees and 105 volunteers,” he says.
Early programming was limited in terms of time — broadcasting from 3 p.m. until 1 a.m. on weekdays, with longer, later hours on weekends.
But it was unlimited in terms of subject — covering low-income and environmental issues, minority issues, community affairs, programs about children, seniors and the handicapped.
Music, aired in the evenings, ranged from reggae to salsa to new wave.
Pledge drives were organized chaos.
“We’d be getting donations for premiums on one phone line and pledges on another,” says Holbrook. “One man called to donate a no-fault divorce for a $50 pledge.”
Holbrook worked as station manager for two or three years, and served on the board for another two decades. He went on to other civic projects, as executive director of the Coalition of Utah’s Future and Envision Utah.
Holbrook retired in 2004 and now spends much of his time in Mexico.
He donated his collection of civil rights and anti-war photography and papers to UVU.
But KRCL lives on, although like all media, it’s facing new challenges, like the ones that forced the change last year.
“The biggest problem facing KRCL right now is the increasing diversity of media,” says Holbrook. “There is so much competition for information. But the solution is the same as when we founded the station. KRCL has to remain locally relevant. It has to be the voice of diversity and variety.”
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