A station apart
KBJZ airs no advertisements and fund drives
Nobody is paid to work at KBJZ. The station doesn't advertise, doesn't solicit donations from listeners and acquires most of its music from what volunteer DJs bring to the studio.
Basically, the station is in a class of its own in Juneau. So when KBJZ, which went on the air Oct. 3, 2002, learned it needed an extra $1,800 to buy an emergency alert signal required by the Federal Communications Commission, the managers of the station decided to get the money in a nontraditional way.
Instead of a fund-raiser, KBJZ is holding a "fun-raiser," said Tom Willis, the station's manager.
"We don't want to burden the listeners with some sort of on-air pledge drive," Willis said. "Our mission is to maintain the highest quality of programming, and we thought that would take away from people listening."
Money earned at the station's First Anniversary Party, 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10, at the Elks Lodge, will supplement money from business underwriters, who sponsor some of KBJZ's shows, to meet the station's operating budget. So far, larger fund-raising efforts have not been necessary, Willis said.
"The operation is pretty streamlined so we don't have much overhead and consequently we're pretty efficient at what we do," Willis said.
Future plans include building a larger studio - the current studio is in the Crimont Business Center on Sixth Street - starting a local news department and increasing the area in which the station can be heard, Willis said.
KBJZ can be heard on 94.1 FM in downtown Juneau, Thane and Douglas. Some parts of Auke Bay and the Mendenhall Valley are outside of the listening area.
But the projects are all dependent on finances, Willis said.
Willis, Steve Tada, Greg Morgan and Dan Dawson founded Gastineau Broadcasting in May 2000.
The group raised about $50,000 in business donations and private donations to get KBJZ on the air last October.
KBJZ is one of 255 stations granted licenses by the FCC in December 2000 under a program aimed at creating more diversity in local radio programming.
"It's just kind of letting people have another option to entertain and educate," said Morgan.
The education portion of the programming comes from Free Speech Radio News, a progressive half-hour independent news show aired on more than 50 community stations around the country. KBJZ plays the show at 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The entertainment portion comes from a small number of volunteer DJs, including Collette Costa, Jenna Dickinson, Tim Inklebarger, a DJ who calls himself "The Genius" and a pair of friends known as DJ High Tide and DJ Low Tide.
The station is in the middle of airing a series of interviews with Artie Shaw, a jazz clarinet player, at 10 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. World Wide Jazz, a syndicated program out of Chicago, soon will be included in the lineup as well, Costa said.