KRCU adds more music programming to their schedule by listener demand

As of Sept. 18, Southeast Missouri State University's NPR-affiliate station KRCU made changes to its weekend and overnight schedule to accommodate for more music programming.

KRCU General Manager Dan Woods said listener surveys are conducted every year, and over time, opinions have flip-flopped on subject concentration. Listeners expressed an interest for additional musically-oriented shows as opposed to those with an emphasis on hard news in February's surveys.

Woods said they brought back programs like NPR's "All Songs Considered" that people had been missing, but there are additions like "Alt.Latino" that are completely new, too. A show highlighting Latin American musical styles he said is something relatively different from previous scheduling.

The same goes for the overnight Friday and Saturday "Jazz Network" program that comes out of public radio station WFMT in Chicago.

"When we removed those [previous music programming] from the schedule, we heard from a lot of people who said, 'You know, I really like hearing these new bands and this new music, I really wish you'd bring something like that back,'" Woods said.

Jason Brown, operations director at KRCU as well as former host and producer of "The Elliot Potter Show," said the program went off the air in 2013 because there wasn't an audience for it. However, people quickly seemed to miss getting their dose of new music they should be listening to, and Brown decided to bring that model back again with "Left of the Dial."

The name is after a 1985 song by The Replacements, which Brown said is just the sort of style he'd be playing on his show.

"Left of the Dial" highlights independent artists, formed after a time when college radio was known for debuting alternative and, otherwise, "underground" music.

The title also works as an implication to noncommercial stations commonly being left on the radio dial.

Brown said he was driving into work one day listening to KRCU's membership drive and a guest listener brought up the concept. It was the perfect fit for his show.

"The guest who was on, he was a long-time NPR listener, and he was talking about how when he's driving from region to region and state to state, when you start to lose the NPR station it's right there on the left side, and this is what 'left of the dial' means, it's the left side of the FM band," Brown said. "You dial around there, and you're likely to find the next NPR station."

Brown said he started off by playing "Left of the Dial" for his first airing and stuck around the 1980s and 1990s music eras, featuring R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" and Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus." He threw in some Sonic Youth, Blondie and delved slightly into the late 1970s with Elvis Costello and The Attractions. He kept with a theme as a way to introduce the show's meaning, but Brown said upcoming shows won't necessarily be categorized into subjects. His main focus is finding the latest up-and-coming music across a variety of genres.

"If it's good, I want to play it, I want to explore it," Brown said.

Plus, Brown said he likes being behind a microphone again.

"I've missed having a radio show, for sure," Brown said. "I do a lot of behind-the-scenes, technical stuff here, but it's just a lot of fun to be on the radio. It's enormously fun."

He added this show isn't quite as lengthy, either. "The Elliot Potter Show" was six hours and "Left of the Dial" is two hours on Friday with a rerun on Saturday.

"I hope the audience that we had for '[The] Elliott Potter [Show]' likes what we're doing here, and I hope new people find it, too," Brown said. "I would love for people your age who are into that kind of music to know that here on this campus that kind of radio is being produced."

Drawing in a younger demographic contributed to the reasoning behind some of the new additions. Woods said music productions are shown to help increase those numbers.

"The idea is you tune in for 'Left of the Dial,' you turn it off that night and when you wake up Saturday morning, you turn the radio back on and there's good NPR news on there and you go, 'Wow, I didn't know they did this, too,' and you get hooked," Woods said.

KRCU can be found at 90.9 FM in Cape Girardeau and 88.9 FM in Ste. Genevieve. "All Songs Considered" airs at 8 p.m. on Fridays, trailed by "Alt.Latino" at 8:30 p.m. "Left of the Dial" is from 9 to 11 p.m. Fridays and noon to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.