Right now, it’s also extremely important to support KTRU by calling or writing to key Congressional offices, and asking them to put pressure on Rice and U.H. to stop the sale.

Tell them any or all of the following:

• It’s not in the public interest to allow KTRU to go off the air, which would result from FCC approval of the license transfer.
• Houston is better served by KTRU’s unique locally produced programming than by additional nationally syndicated programs under KUHF/KUHC’s plan.
• Radio is important to you, and shouldn’t be viewed as a “declining asset”.
• Rice & U.H. formulated their deal in secret, preventing any input from the students, faculty or alumni of either university, or the station itself, or the Houston community.
• There has been an accelerating trend of NPR stations gobbling up community radio stations across the country, leading to less locally produced programming.

The most important offices to contact are:

• U.S. Representative Pete Olson (Rice graduate)
  (202) 225-5951
  https://forms.house.gov/olson/contact-form.shtml
• U.S. Representative John Culberson (represents the Rice Campus)
  (202) 225-2571
  http://culberson.house.gov/contact/
• U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (represents Texas, and is on a key committee)
  (202) 224-5922
  http://hutchison.senate.gov/contact.cfm
• U.S. Representative Gene Green (is on a key committee)
  Tell him you’re angry that he wrote a letter in support of the KTRU sale.
  (202) 225-1688
  http://www.house.gov/green/contact/

We have written a sample letter to aid you in this endeavor. Feel free to use it (in whole or in part) in your own letter or email, or just as guidance for your own email, letter, or telephone call. Also, for easy copy/paste action, please click here for the sample letter as a RTF file (rich text file), which should open in most text editors, such as WordPad, TextEdit, or Microsoft Word.

Please note: Replace the bracketed text with the appropriate information. If contacting Senator Hutchison, further change the text as appropriate (i.e. “Senate Office Building”, “United States Senate”, “Dear Senator”).

The Honorable [Full name]
[Room #] [Office building name] House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

I am writing to you to express my strong opposition to the University of Houston System’s purchase of KTRU, Rice University’s student radio station. As someone who cares deeply about the Greater Houston community and importance of free speech, I implore you to use your influence to communicate to the University of Houston and Rice University that the license transfer should be stopped.

Rice University students founded the university’s FM radio station, KTRU 91.7 FM, in 1971. Ever since, it has served the greater Houston community with its unique programming. KTRU has also provided students with irreplaceable media training and leadership opportunities. The University of Houston plans to eliminate KTRU’s locally-produced programming and replace it with nationally syndicated programs produced by National Public Radio, the BBC, and other networks with limited connection to the Houston community.

The Rice University administration and the University of Houston reached an agreement to sell KTRU’s license and transfer through a secret process with no student or community input. Rice University President David Leebron justified the sale on the basis that KTRU is a “declining asset”, yet he made no attempt to work with the student management to find ways to increase the station’s value or seek other opportunities to obtain more value from the university’s licensed radio spectrum. Radio is more valuable than ever, and I do not want to lose KTRU’s important voice.

The proposed radio license transfer is currently being considered by the Federal Communications Commission.

Please immediately communicate to the University of Houston and Rice University that the license transfer should be stopped.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[Your Phone Number]
[Your Email Address]

Thanks to everyone who came out to Save KTRU’s Homecoming events this weekend! If you put your eyes to the sky during our pre-game tailgate, you might’ve noticed the Save KTRU banner being flown overhead:

Photo by Marco Torres of the Houston Press. Click here to see more photos.

Also, hope everyone enjoyed the M.O.B.’s wonderful halftime show!

Come support saving KTRU this Homecoming weekend. Find us all over campus this weekend spreading the word about how to help us save KTRU!

Save KTRU Homecoming weekend schedule:

Friday
12:00pm – 5:00pm: Join us in the Grand Hall Lobby in the RMC Friday afternoon
5:00pm – 2:00am: We will be hanging out at Valhalla all night decked out in our Save KTRU t-shirts to spread the word to alumni about what is happening to our station and how they can help. Come join us for a beer and enlightening conversation!

Saturday
11:00am – 2:00pm: TAILGATE! KTRU will have a dedicated section in the parking lot by the stadium for our tailgate, complete with music, a hot dog truck, and FREE SHIRTS! Be sure to come by and grab a shirt to wear into the football game to show your support for KTRU! We want a sea of people in that game with their Save KTRU shirts on!

ALSO, Invite EVERYONE YOU KNOW to this fun time!

Please join our new Save KTRU mailing list, to be kept informed about what you can do to help stop the sale. Messages will be sent infrequently, containing only the most important information. Go to savektru.org, find the “Sign up for the Save KTRU List!” box in the right-hand column, enter your email address, first name, last name, and click “Sign Up!”. You can unsubscribe at any time, and we will of course fully maintain the privacy of your information. Your KTRU thanks you!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Joey Yang, KTRU Station Manager
j.yang@rice.edu
(614) 423-9264

Friends of KTRU retains law firm to battle proposed sale of KTRU 91.7 FM
Law firm of Paul Hastings pursuing next steps

HOUSTON, October 13, 2010– Friends of KTRU, a group of concerned students, alumni, and community members dedicated to stopping the sale of KTRU’s FM frequency, license and tower, has retained law firm Paul Hastings.

Rice University announced today that it has completed the sale of the station to the University of Houston and that the FM frequency will be shut down by the end of calendar year 2010 at the latest.

“It is shameful that the Rice University administration has not heeded the thousands of voices asking to stop the sale of KTRU,” said KTRU station manager Joey Yang. “Instead, Rice has chosen to throw away more than 40 years of student-run tradition in favor of a new cafeteria for the campus. For this reason, we must pursue legal avenues for stopping the sale. The fight has only just begun.”

To learn more about KTRU and how to help stop the sale, please visit www.savektru.org.

September 20, 2010

Dear Member of the Rice University Board of Trustees,

We write on behalf of numerous fellow Rice University students and alumni regarding the damage that the proposed sale of KTRU’s transmitter and FCC license to the University of Houston is doing to our school’s reputation, both within the Rice community and throughout greater Houston. Prior to news of the sale, Rice enjoyed a strong degree of trust from current students and alumni, and a positive reputation in the community. But Rice students and alumni have been troubled by the lack of openness surrounding the sale, the secretiveness of which violates the spirit of engagement that Rice is known for. Community members as well as those affiliated with Rice are concerned about the cultural loss that the sale of KTRU 91.7 FM would represent for the city. We entreat you to use your considerable influence as a trustee to act to halt the impending sale.

The economic justification for the sale is confounding, as the cost to Rice University for KTRU’s existence on the FM dial is minimal. Since the station’s founding by students in 1967, it has operated through the efforts of student, alumni, and community volunteers. Rice has always provided studio space, and more recently a staff general manager and chief engineer. But KTRU’s 50,000 watt transmitter, along with an endowment for its maintenance, was donated in 1991 by KRTS 92.1 FM, a commercial radio station which wanted to increase its power without causing signal interference. At the time, KTRU’s student management was promised by President George Rupp that the power upgrade would not lead to a loss of student control. General station operations are paid for by Rice students through a $6.00 blanket tax.

While the administration has claimed that “the students aren’t losing anything” in the proposed sale, that could hardly be further from the truth. If KTRU loses its transmitter and FCC license, it loses most of its audience, its significance as a broadcast entity, and its geographic tie to the city of Houston. The audience for the terrestrial broadcast of KTRU dwarfs its Internet listenership, despite the fact that it has been streaming over the Internet for a decade. In cars and on mobile devices, Internet radio is a poor substitute for the real thing, as listeners must contend with frequent dropped connections and areas of inadequate coverage. Furthermore, Internet access requires either a home broadband connection or a cell phone with monthly data fees, excluding listeners of limited financial means.

KTRU’s place as one of a limited number of stations on the FM dial gives it a much higher profile than it would have as an Internet-only entity, where it would merely be one among thousands of webcasts. Record labels that currently serve KTRU with free music would be unlikely to do so for a webcast, causing the station’s music collection to stagnate. The economics of music licensing requirements are highly disadvantageous to Internet-only webcasts, as compared with FM broadcast stations, being based on the number of simultaneous listeners, and thus penalizing stations for growing their audiences. And of the utmost concern, student interest and participation in the organization would plummet, as has been observed at other universities that moved from FM transmission to Internet-only.

As an FCC-regulated radio station, KTRU provides significant leadership opportunities for Rice students. Running a 50,000 watt FM station in the nation’s fourth largest city is a big responsibility, and Rice students have always proved themselves up to the task. The leadership experiences that they have gained as DJs and student managers have complemented their academic pursuits and led to future success in professions such as law, politics, corporate management, and academic administration.

Over the past weeks, President Leebron has offered a few rationales for the proposed sale. If these issues were of such great concern, why did he not convene the KFC (KTRU Friendly Committee), a committee made up of students, faculty, staff, and alumni, which is charged with working with the station management to determine operational programming? The fact that none of these concerns were ever addressed through the channel that was instituted to discuss KTRU-related issues severely undermines the administration’s credibility.

Rice University holds KTRU’s FCC license in trust for the students. Selling that license without the consent of the students would be a betrayal of that trust. It would be a betrayal of the students who founded the station, those who applied for the FCC license, those who were assured of the administration’s benevolence in 1991, those who agreed to implement the KFC in 2000, and all of the many student, alumni, and community volunteers who have endeavored on KTRU’s behalf over the past four decades.

And frankly, that proposed action is making Rice University look very bad in many quarters. News of the sale has been greeted by negative editorials in the Houston Chronicle and the Rice Thresher, and over 5,000 people have signed petitions protesting the sale, which have been printed in both the Rice Thresher and the Daily Cougar. Even those who are not devoted KTRU listeners have expressed concerns about the proposed disappearance of KTRU from the FM dial, particularly the loss of the station’s ethnic and cultural programming, as well as the uncharacteristic secrecy surrounding this proposal.

While confidentiality during a negotiating process is one thing, it’s quite another to secretly decide to put that process in motion without any stakeholder input. The administration’s attempts to conflate the two have convinced no one of the latter’s merit. Instead, this obfuscation betrays a lack of respect to the Rice community, is incompatible with the values we thought Rice embodied, and has undermined the trust many in Houston and across the country previously had in Rice.

Finally, we believe that $9.5 million is not worth the permanent destruction of student and alumni trust and community goodwill. That money may be quickly spent, but the negative repercussions will endure for decades. It is not too late to change course, for the good of Rice. As a trustee, you hold in your hands the power to salvage Rice University’s reputation as a fair and open institution that values its students. Please do whatever is necessary to stop the proposed sale of KTRU’s transmitter and FCC license.

On behalf of over 5,000 concerned students, alumni and community members,



Joey Yang
KTRU Station Manager
Class of 2012

Denise Wilson
Class of 1989

Steven J. Cox
Master of Brown College
Professor of Computational & Applied Mathematics


cc: Rice University Board of Trustees
President David Leebron
Cynthia L. Wilson, J.D

NAP writer dismantles the logic behind UH’s claim that acquiring a second radio station will improve its chances of attaining “Tier One” status:

In other words, despite claims to the contrary, acquiring another radio station is unlikely to affect UH’s Tier status.

Note that she doesn’t say that acquiring another radio station will affect UH’s status; she says that some other Tier One universities have two radio stations. Subtle. We all know about the relationship between correlation and causation, so if you stop to think about what she’s saying, you realize she’s saying nothing. And even if others say that there is a causal relationship between having two radio stations and becoming Tier One, you can’t pin any of that flawed logic on Dr. Khator, because she doesn’t directly say a new radio station will make any difference.

Don’t be fooled. They’ve given you their criteria for being Tier One. A new radio station has nothing to do with those criteria.

Read the full article here.

… I realized that there was a specific, if unstated, reasoning behind the KTRU aesthetic. And that is, that all types of music are of equal value and deserve representation on the radio, and that KTRU exists to provide that representation.

… the DJ recognizes that there are many different types of music in the world, and an innumerable number of musical works, most of which are completely unrepresented on the FM radio dial, or even on satellite radio or Internet radio. KTRU is one of only a handful of stations in the entire United States that make any attempt at all to even approximate the diversity of recorded music that exists.

… part of the reason that KTRU supporters … are so passionate about the station is its explicit and uncompromising valuation of art for its own sake. As consumers, as citizens, as workers, nearly everything we do in modern America to interact with the world is governed by the logic of the marketplace, which, even in the age of the “long tail,” necessarily favors the bland, the moderate, and the generalistic. By contrast, KTRU operates according to the logic of aesthetic experience, which favors the idiosyncratic and the radical, and acknowledges the multiplicity of feeling and opinion. To shelter and insulate this type of thinking, which rarely survives exposure to the marketplace, should be among the highest missions of an institute of education. Nobody else can take it up on any kind of scale. For an institute like Rice to abdicate that responsibility so nakedly- quite frankly, it just tears me apart.

Read the full article here.

… a Tier One broadcasting operation exists today and should remain so. UH does not need to get into the expensive news and information business, as many commercial news stations have failed in recent years.

As for Rice University, the Houston public needs to hear more, not less, from those bright future leaders by preserving their opportunity to be on air. Students need to have access to freedom of speech — in broadcasting and in print. Students need to learn how to make use of media by having responsibility for it.

Read the full article here.

Come out and show your support for KTRU at these upcoming FREE shows in Houston!

Friday, September 24th, 8:30pm (doors) @ Fitzgerald’s, 2706 White Oak Drive
Golden Axe, The Roller, Venemous Maximus, 2 Star Symphony, The Energy, Omatai, Free Radicals, DJ Meshak

Sunday, September 26th, 8-10pm: Free Radicals @ Notsuoh, 314 Main Street

Monday, September 27th, 10pm-1am: KTRU Funk & Soul DJ Jaekim will be spinning at Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer