There was excitement in the air. We were about to celebrate the new radio station's first day of broadcasting. The guests were thrilled. The staff was jittery. And the audience was delighted.
The sign-on ceremony for KSKA, Anchorage's first public radio station, was 40 years ago, August 15, 1978, and it happened at Grant Hall on the campus of Alaska Pacific University. As its founding general manager, I had led the team that put the new station on the air.
The voices of Jim, Corky, Barbara and Jeff soon became familiar to Anchorage listeners. But there were well over 100 others working on the air and behind the scenes — all volunteers with lots of energy and enthusiasm. In those heady, early months of broadcasting, we worked hard and had fun.
Six months later, Bede Trantina, ultimately the most familiar voice of all, joined the team. And she stayed longer than any of us, retiring only recently after 39 years of service to listeners across Southcentral Alaska. Bede signed off just a few months ago with her last "Yippee, it's Friday!"
At 103.1 on the FM dial, KSKA was an instant success. Our telephone rang constantly. Listeners were glad to have a public radio station, but some had trouble picking up our signal. We told them how to rig up an antenna to help with reception, but the real problems were our low transmitter power and the height of our transmitting antenna, which sat atop a 70-foot tower on the roof of APU's Grant Hall. I sometimes climbed that tower to adjust the antenna and improve our signal. It was just one of my many duties as general manager.
In those days, power and antenna height meant a lot. We sometimes joked that KSKA was just a "peanut whistle," radio slang for a low-power station.
But the station later moved to 91.1 on the dial, with increased power and a much higher antenna. The coverage area was expanded dramatically, extending to the far reaches of the Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula.
The people of Anchorage welcomed public radio. Yet Anchorage was not the first Alaska community to get a public radio station. In fact, it wasn't even near the head of the line. By 1978, eight public radio stations were already on the air serving communities in Western Alaska and in Southeast, communities previously with little radio service — or none at all.
In 1978, the managers of those other public radio stations and I banded together to form a new statewide radio network. We called it the Alaska Public Radio Network. In our centerpiece program, a Juneau reporter used a pay phone in the capitol building to broadcast a 15-minute report on each day's legislative activities. It was an early, primitive version of today's "Gavel-to-Gavel" coverage. APRN is now a well-known and respected source of Alaska news. Its programs are carried on 27 stations across the state.
Yes, KSKA and APRN are all grown up. And they've merged with KAKM, Anchorage's public television station. The three are housed in the Elmo Sackett Broadcast Center — still on the campus of APU.
Technology has changed the way we use radio. The car radio's KSKA button is often pushed, but we also listen to KSKA live on the Internet, and we can do that from anywhere in the U.S. or the world. If we miss a KSKA or APRN program, a podcast is waiting, available with only a click.
With the internet, it's no longer a question of who has the most powerful transmitter. Now people listen to the station with the best, most appealing, and most relevant programs.
For many of us, that station is KSKA.
Alex Hills, Ph.D., who lives in Palmer, worked through the decade of the 1970s to establish public broadcast stations and telecommunication networks across Alaska. His adventures in rural Alaska are the subject of his latest book, "Finding Alaska's Villages: And Connecting Them."
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