KDIC’s Listen Hear show cancelled

By Avery Rowlison

Listen Hear, KDIC’s official news broadcast show, was recently cancelled by its director, Matthew Zmudka ’11, largely due to lack of interest and student workers for the broadcast.

“The reporter core wasn’t enough to keep it going,” Zmudka said.

Much of the burden fell on the shoulders of Hannah Kapp-Klote ’13, Zmudka and a few regular reporters, who were the only people actively creating the half-hour weekly show. In a typical Grinnell fashion, Zmudka and Kapp-Klote had other commitments that also demand their time.

“We were running out of time in our lives,” Zmudka said.

In 2007 Sarah Mirk ’08, Julia Bottles ’08 and Lynn Davis ’08 founded Listen Hear, a radio show modeled after NPR’s “This American Life” segment. The directors aimed to tell stories that were unique to the campus and Grinnell life—something that listeners could only hear on KDIC. Zmudka hopes other KDIC deejays will fill this role.

“As long as we [continue to] make Grinnell-unique content … and things that people can’t get elsewhere—that’s what makes KDIC unique,” Zmudka said.

For a broadcast like Listen Hear, reporters had to arrange interviews, record them and then edit them for the air—a time suck, according to Kapp-Klote.

“For every five minutes of recording, you are probably putting in four to five hours of work,” Kapp-Klote said. “People don’t feel like they have the time to devote to that, which is one of the reasons that radio broadcasting has never really taken off at Grinnell.”

SPARC’s drastic KDIC budget-slashing from last year did not lead to the program’s cancellation. Listen Hear received all of the money they requested in their budget , according to SPARC Co-Chair Johnny Buse ’11 and KDIC Station Manager Kelly Musselman ’11.

KDIC continues to air student-produced radio shows daily and is in the process of selecting new djs for spring semester. Musselman said that KDIC is now focusing on redirecting its resources, like recording and editing equipment, to be more available to students.

KDIC supports djs by providing them with equipment, but does not pay them like they funded the reporters of Listen Hear.

“We want to make sure that any deejay has the opportunity to use the equipment that they want use,” Zmudka said. “Listen Hear was KDIC’s only funded program … but deejays are basically doing the same thing we did but for free.”

There is already a lot of buzz around the creation of more broadcast radio shows.

“A lot of djs have expressed interest in the recording studio, and we’re working with Freesound now,” Musselman said.