FEATURE
★
aint music seeps 24 hours a day from the Sudler Annex, or as it's more commonly known, "the Shack." The small limestone building is cluttered
In the garage. Home to student-run radio station JKHK, the Sudier Annex, better known as the Shack, originally served as a carriage house, and then a vehicular garage for the Sudier Home, which is now the Max kade Center for German-American Studios.
Photo by Jerry Wang
from floor to ceiling with thousands of CDs and vinyl records, making it feel like a maze of KU radio history. On top of 11th Street, behind the Triangle fraternity house, stands the building that has been the home of campus radio station KJHK since 1975.
But this April, KJHK's DJs will leave their historical home behind.
Because the building is not up to code with the Americans with Disabilities Act and is too expensive to repair, KJHK will no longer use the Shack, which will most likely be used, if anything, for storage.
Construction began in the beginning of November on an entirely new station on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union. The nearly $500,000 construction project will give the 142 students involved in KJHK state-of-the-art equipment to replace the outdated sound boards and recording devices. Months of transferring CDs onto computers means the station can go completely digital with its music library, making it easier to find and play everything the station has to offer. Large windows into the studio will allow students to see what's going on at the station and TV screens outside will show information, such as the name of both the on-air DJ and of the song he or she is playing.
But despite the upgraded equipment the new station will offer, station manager Logan Nickels, Stillwater. Okla., senior, says the move — and loss of the Shack — is bittersweet.
"This building has an ethos that's been here for 34 years and we're moving to a clean, sterile environment that we'll have to make our own," Nickels says.
In 1956, the radio station started as KUOK at AM 630, with the broadcasts reaching campus only. The station eventually outgrew the small transmission and the Federal Communications Commission granted it an FM spot at 90.7 megahertz with the call letters JKHK in 1974.
Steve Doocy, who is now a co-host for the Fox News program "Fox and Friends," was the first DJ to broadcast on KJHK. The broadcast began at 12:25 p.m. on Oct. 15, 1975.
Doocy remembers the first time he entered the Shack out of curiosity before he was a DJ. "Until we saw the 'ON AIR' sign, we had no idea it was the college radio station because it was an absolute dump." Doocy says. "There were cigarette holes in the carpet, piles of vinyl LPs scattered helter skelter with their jackets nowhere to be found and a huge garbage can adjacent to the door held days of decomposing take-out."
Dubbed "The Sound Alternative," KJHK was a showcase of local, progressive and underground music with little Top 40 coverage. The station also featured activist commentary shows about women's rights. African-American rights as well as Native American rights as well.
Doocy was immediately taken with the idea of being on the radio and for the next four years he spent more time at the Shack than at his home.
"THIS BUILDING HAS AN
ETHOS THAT'S BEEN HERE
FOR 34 YEARS AND WE'RE
MOVING TO A CLEAN.
STERILE ENVIRONMENT
THAT WE'LL HAVE TO
MAKE OUR OWN."
Logan Nickels, KJHK station manager
After long hours of work. Doocy often saw DJs go up to the roof to drink beer and smoke cigarettes.
While Doocy was working for the station he saw many desperate musicians come try to promote their music. "For a place that helped launch the careers of so many garage bands, it's appropriate that it was in fact once a garage.
Long live the Shack," Doocy says.
Format change came again in the late 1980s after heavy fines from the FCC.
In 1978, a staff member read a false news report that a nuclear attack on Waterloo, Iowa, had killed 15,000 people. The story was written as a joke by another staff member.
In 1988, a sports announcer repeatedly screamed, "Fuck you, Billy Tubbs," who was the Oklahoma coach, after beating them in a men's basketball title game. Members of the FCC were listening in to this particular broadcast and the station was fined and forced to remove all music with expletives.
In 1994, the station became the first radio station to have a continuous 24-hour live internet broadcast. Around this time, the station moniker was changed to "The Hawk" and began to cater to a Top 40 audience. Six years later, the station went back to its roots as "The Sound Alternative."
After 30 years of oversight by the School of Journalism, funding was cut and the station was almost shut down. But the station was saved and taken over by KU Memorial Unions. Today, the station has more than 140 students working and volunteering to maintain the original progressive and alternative format.
continued on page 10
Photo by Jerry Wang
Sound selection; Miles Whetsel, St. Louis senior and KJHK programming director, DJs an early-morning jazz show at the Shack.
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