Showing posts with label 1998. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1998. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

'The station where your friends are'

KJAN
Radio Atlantic

I'M HOPING, from time to time, to post some pictures dealing with . . . whatever.

I was playing with the scanner the other day, and I took the opportunity to scan in some old negatives that never saw the light of . . . being turned into actual prints.

These pics are from a 1998 feature story I wrote about KJAN, 1220 AM, in Atlantic, Iowa. KJAN is one of a dying breed of radio stations -- intensely local, full-service (meaning airing music AND news) and run by humans instead of computers.
 
That a station such as KJAN -- "The station where your friends are" -- exists at all anymore is notable in an age of corporate ownership and "efficiencies." This, after all, represents radio the way it was in 1967 . . . or 1947 . . . or 1937, for that matter.

But KJAN's existence as a fully staffed, "full service" radio station in little Atlantic, Iowa, is amazing. And it's still that way in 2007.

Evening DJ (and music director) John Scheffler, shown here, is still at KJAN. He first got the "radio bug" when his Cub Scout troop toured the station in the late 1950s, and that's where he is today. (Note that he's still, in 1998, playing 45s . . . seven-inch vinyl to those under 35. Cool, eh?)

RADIO IS ABOUT PEOPLE. Radio is about public service. Radio is about community.

Or at least it used to be, in an age long ago and far away -- before the advent of Clear Channel, the "efficiency" of one staff running five stations and "Hold your wee for a Wii" contests.

It's good to know that at least one little 500-watt AM station in the middle of Iowa still is about those things.