Category: 
1975 logo by John Pritchett
Excerpt from an article originally published May 2006 in Malamalama magazine.
For the first 15 years, University of Hawaii college radio KTUH ran at 100 watts at best—about the strength of a light bulb—producing a signal that barely reached the student dorms, playing albums and audio tape spliced with a razor.
“We went from sitting in a studio in Hawai’i Hall with a psychedelic clock on the wall and a window that looked over the grounds to the windowless room in Hemenway Hall, where it still is today,” recalls Bob “da Budman” Wiorek, who worked for the station from 1976 to 1984, just before their first big power increase.
Because their early reach was relatively insignificant, the Federal Communications Commission paid little attention, and the culture that grew around KTUH was even more freewheeling than it is today. Privately, early alumni reminisce over the wildness of their youthful radio experience. Few care to see such reflections in print, so readers will have to imagine life at the less regulated, hippie-run station.
An increase to 3,000-watt signal strength and a new frequency reaching the Windward side in the last five years required a rise in the level of professionalism to meet the expectations of a new audience.
Still, like its listeners, KTUH hasn’t abandoned its roots. “The station is an oasis of individualism in a desert of homogenization,” says U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie. “I enjoy it every time I listen, and it’s heartening just to know it exists.”
KTUH is having a pledge drive — SUPPORT LOCAL COLLEGE RADIO!
Or how about a party in support of local college radio? Scarub of Living Legends this Thursday at Next Door maybe? Or you could check in as genuineHI and KTUH take over Pipeline Saturday night?
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