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Music

50 years of KDUR

From left, Fort Lewis College Dean of Students Michael Nyikos, Station Manager Jim Vlasich and Patrick Keating, member of the campus radio club, are seen after the station (which was initially named KFLC) officially submitted an application for a license from the Federal Communications Commission in November 1974. (Courtesy)
Fort Lewis College radio station celebrates a half-century on the air

Fifty years ago, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California; President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announced his resignation; Swedish pop band ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 with “Waterloo,” launching their international career; and punk rock pioneers The Ramones played their first show in a local New York club named CBGB. (Facts courtesy of eventshistory.com).

And KDUR, the Fort Lewis College radio station, was born.

To celebrate the milestone, there are events planned throughout the year, said Station Manager Bryant Liggett (who also writes this paper’s Downtown Lowdown weekly music column). The party kicked off with a performance by Calexico on Oct. 24 at the Community Concert Hall at FLC. Next up will be a performance by Waco Brothers and Genuine Cowhide on Nov. 9 at Animas City Theatre. And Ska is even raising one to the station by brewing up a special beer.

Jim Vlasich is the man credited with getting the station at 91.9 and 93.9 FM started – filing the paperwork with the FCC in fall 1974, getting people interested in becoming DJs and any number of other things it takes to get a radio station rolling.

“It’s a funny thing about when that got started. I had no idea it was going to last 50 years. But then again, I didn’t have any idea I was gonna last 50 years. I’m 80 years old now,” he said. “I was an older student that probably helped get it going. But I have a radio background that goes back to my teenage years.”

Vlasich moved to Durango with a handful of friends from Denver in the early 1970s. Not having a job, he decided to go to FLC. Without a solid plan, he started with Native American studies.

KDUR’s control room in 1985. (Courtesy)

But there was one thing he was sure of: The need for a new radio station.

“I thought, this is a great place, but all you’ve got here is cowboy AM and cowboy FM. This was Durango in 1973, this a long time ago,” he said. “And that was the inspiration behind KDUR: I told my friends, ‘we need a radio station down here.’”

Once the station got going, albeit at only 10 watts, other stations soon followed around the Four Corners.

“We didn’t know how powerful the station was, 10 watts. Who can hear us, you know?” Vlasich said. “So we had somebody get into a car and drive toward Silverton and they and they went until they couldn’t hear the station anymore. And that’s how we determined how strong the signal was, about 10 miles. I think because it was a straight, narrow canyon, and it was shooting up there. But we had some people who lived at the bottom of the mesa below the college; they could not get the station because it couldn’t make a curve. The sound couldn’t curve down over the plateau. That was kind of the beginning of things.”

From that initial 10 watts to today’s 6,000, Liggett said the station has come a long way in the last 50 years.

“We went from being upstairs in the College Union Building to the college making an actual media center, so facility wise, it’s grown and just got much nicer,” he said. “And then when we jumped up to 6,000 watts, it just made the signal that much stronger for people listening in town and even listening out of town. So it was a pretty significant leap.”

And it’s not only students who provide DJ duty. In fact, Liggett said, there are more students and residents applying for shows than there are available spaces.

“During the school year, we remain student heavy, and we have spots for about 60 different shows of people just wanting to be DJs in the traditional sense,” he said. “So, during the school year, of those 60 slots, I’d say about 40 of those slots go to students and the remaining go to community members. We had probably 100 people applied to do radio shows back in the fall. There’s more people wanting to do shows than we have hours in the day.”

Looking ahead to the next 50 years, Liggett, who has been running the station since 2009, sees KDUR still bringing news and music to the community – and beyond.

In this Durango Herald file photo by Mike McRae, Fort Lewis College sophomore Lynn Erickson works on her radio program on KDUR in 1976. (Courtesy)

“I see us as continuing to do exactly what we do: broadcast independent news and music that is not heard on commercial radio. And continuing to be that voice for people in Durango,” he said. “I’ve always thought that the cool thing about KDUR, if I walk into Durango Cyclery, or some restaurant or something, and people are listening to KDUR in the kitchen, I would think we were providing the soundtrack for these people’s lives. So I see it’s continuing to do the same thing. But then also, the beautiful thing about modern radio these days is you can listen online. So we get people listening from all over the country, if not all over the world. I see that growing, because now there’s even with us, turning 50, we’ve reached out to a lot of past DJs. And, you know, there’s people chiming in, ‘I did a show in 1982 or I did a show in 1978,’ so I see us continuing to connect those people.”

katie@durangoherald.com



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