STUDENTS: UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES COLLECTION C:22 /8/ 72 (COLORIZED); STUDIO: COURTESY AARON MERMELSTEIN
Over 50 student volunteers took part in KCCS operations. Jobs included program director, station manager, sports director, business manager, chief announcer, electrical engineers and disc jockeys. In the first full year of production, KCCS, found at 580 on the dial, was on air 18.5 hours a day and covered major campus events.
cause they were classics and also because they were cheap or free. Every Halloween we’d air Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds and inevitably get calls from students who were creeped out by the Martian invasion. Certainly, that broadcast is still magnificent, though the “we’re scared” calls always made us suspect some sort of liquid or herbal mood alteration may have been involved. But I ask you, just how likely would that have been for the late 1960s or early ’70s?
Greasers, Daddy-Os and Cool Cats
So there we were, pumping it out 19/7. And people listened. Because radio was king. In those ancient days, dorm rooms didn’t have telephones, and almost nobody had a television. But everybody had a radio. Even students with stereos listened to radio to know which records to buy. We didn’t have ratings or fancy-schmancy data collection, but we had the request/contest line, and it stayed busy. When DJs gave records to the eight-thousandth caller, they got eight-thousand calls (though my memory is blurry on the exact number of calls required to win). One jock offered up some giveaway records to the first woman who showed up at the station wearing a swimsuit. In the dead of winter. More than a few showed up, all wearing winter coats over their bikinis. Admittedly, nobody approves of
that kind of stunt in the 21st century, but in 1970 or thereabouts, it happened. More than once. The station had listeners when it wasn’t even on the air. One night, I was working/loitering/piddling around the station after the 1 a.m. signoff and after the power to the studios was turned off. But another guy needed to work in the production studio and turned the juice back on. For reasons
The Independent Residence Halls Association housed KCCS in two small offices in the basement of Pershing Hall, near a lounge and a laundromat, which staff remember as a constant source of noise. KCCS stood for Kampus Carrier Current Station. When it launched the No. 1 hit was “Can’t Buy Me Love” by the Beatles.
WINTER 2021 35