Trinity University celebrated the 40th birthday of its campus radio station, KRTU-FM 91.7 with an announcement that plans are in the works to boost the signal later this year to allow for a wider broadcast range.
The party, complete with cake and music, was held Jan. 23, exactly 40 years to the day that the station went live. The birth of the station – a technology marvel – ironically began with a telegram dated Jan. 23, 1976, from the Federal Communications Commission authorizing the station’s broadcast license. A student went to the downtown Western Union office to retrieve the telegram, returned to campus, and the switch was flipped.
KRTU has never looked back.
In fact, the station is negotiating for property on the northwest side of San Antonio to erect a new tower that will broadcast a stronger signal. By the end of 2017, the signal will jump from 8,900 watts to 32,000 watts, making it possible to reach as many as 1.8 million listeners.
The tower upgrade project has required some fund-raising, and KRTU General Manager JJ Lopez expressed thanks to Trinity President Danny Anderson and the local business community for supporting the effort. A Dallas donor has underwritten a live music performance to celebrate the community launch of the station improvements on Oct. 7 as part of Trinity’s Alumni Weekend.
“This is a tremendous feat,” Lopez said of the enhancements that will increase the service population by 46 percent and the service area by 55 percent.
The January 40th birthday party was a way to say “thank you” to the Trinity community, he added. In the audience at the event was Jim Blakemore ’77, an alumnus who is considered one of the five student founders of the listener-supported station. The others are Ron Zimmerman, Anne Conger, David King, and Don White.
“Don was the brains behind the station,” Lopez said. “If there was an issue, he’d dive in with a soldering iron or whatever it took to fix it. He paved the way for the station we have today.”
Lopez also credited Ryan Webber ’08, for his contributions as a student and later as operations manager of KRTU. “He was fearless,” Lopez said. Webber played a key role, along with communication professor and former KRTU general manager William “Bill” Christ, to initiate Growing Jazz in San Antonio as a way for the station to embrace the local jazz community with lectures, performances, and outreach to school-aged musicians. That led to an expanded celebration known as the Year of Jazz from 2011-2012, led in large part by former general manager Ron Nirenberg ’99, who was at the station before he became a full-time San Antonio City Councilman, and jazz musician and composer Aaron Prado.
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