The following letter is in response to the interview with Kurt Kaniewski (WMRN/WDIF, Marion, Ohio) in the May 2000 issue of RAP.
…there are many markets much smaller than “a town with just three radio stations and 64,000 or so people”! That line comes from the interesting article on Kurt Kaniewski (May 2000).
My partner and I operate a 25KW 24-hour-a-day, self-supporting commercial FM station on 92.1 in Madison, Minnesota. The population of Madison is approximately 1,900. Our signal reaches a total of 39,000 people in about 5 or 6 counties.
We have three full-time people—myself, my partner, and our secretary. Almost all programming is done in-house; we do not use satellite programming other than our news networks. Two of us do all of the in-house production through the audition channel of a Ramko 6-channel stereo board which goes directly into our Smartcaster automation system. The program channel is on the air over the same console while we are doing production work—it is important to punch the right buttons! If we choose to use our production studios, we have access to a Radio Shack mixer, and SM-58, a Pioneer cassette deck, and Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel machine. In addition to production work, two of us do most of the advertising sales, management, and announcing. We also do all of the local news reporting, and I do the engineering. We have been operating this way since we put this station on the air in 1983.
I get a kick out of it when people refer to a community of 64,000 as a “small market.” If anyone wants to see what real small-market radio is about, stop by and pay us a visit. Like Kurt Kaniewski said in the article, “It’s a heck of a lot of work, but it sure beats working!”
Maynard R. Meyer
KLQP-FM, Madison, Minnesota
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