KSJS-FM FOUNDER CLARENCE FLICK KSJS went on the air in February 1963. Below is the story of how it came to be, as told by Dr. Flick on the occasion of the 40th year of broadcasting celebration in 2003 KSJS Wagner Scholarship

The Late Professor Clarence Flick Founded KSJS. We went on the air February 11, 1963, This is his story:

On February 11th, 1963, KSJS-FM began broadcasting with an inaugural program featuring a welcoming address by the new First Chancellor of the California State Colleges and the Universities. The Board of Regents was meeting in the building housing the KSJS studios and Chancellor Dumke took time out to visit and offer, on the air, his approval of the advent of one of the first radio stations in the CSU system. KSJS became a part of the recently approved degree program in Radio-Television at San Jose State College.

Forty years and eleven days ago! This may seem like a long time to most of you here tonight, but to those of us who were participants in the licensing and programming of KSJS in its earliest years --- it was yesterday. Of the five members of the College Radio-Television Committee which approved a 50 watt transmitter or KSJS, Professor Gordon Greb of the Journalism Department and I of the Department of Speech and Drama are here tonight.

I'm pleased to report that two San Jose State students were key figures in the founding of KSJS. Mervin Graham, a senior student in Electrical Engineering became interested and volunteered to complete the detailed and documented technical part of the FCC application for an educational license. The President of the Associated Student Body of SJS was also a key person. He became interested in the possibility of a San Jose State student radio service as a student in my beginning course in Radio-TV. He took the proposal for KSJS to the Student Council. The council voted its approval of the station and offered limited yearly financial support for station programming.

The application was approved by the FCC. KSJS-FM was licensed to the State of California at San Jose State College. I recall filing the ownership declaration for the license which listed all the elected officers of the State of California, all the Board of Regents of the State Colleges and Universities and, last but not least, Dr. John T. Wahlquist, President of San Jose State College. To my knowledge this ownership provision is still true to this day... KSJS is one of several FCC licenses granted the State of California.

With all the College elements in agreement, the radio studio in the "Speech and Drama Building" (later to become Hugh Gillis Hall) became the home of KSJS. The transmitter antenna was mounted atop the John T. Wahlquist six story library with the transmitter located below it in the penthouse utility room of the library roof.

KSJS was on the air primarily to provide training for students in the Radio-Television curriculum and in Radio News and secondarily to provide a program service to the San Jose State Students and to the community. The broadcast signal pattern reached 10 to 15 miles except where it was blocked by the Bank of America Building at First and Santa Clara Streets... Of course now the Wahlquist library is replaced by the new San Jose State - City of San Jose Library which looms above the KSJS studios. In the early days several students from Industrial Technology served as engineers for KSJS.

Mr. Leo Bleier became the first Program Manager of KSJS as he earned his M.A. in Radio-Television. Leo later became Program Director of the new county television station, KTEH and helped establish its place with the County Office of Education... Soon after going on the air we began receiving calls from a listener named Denny. Denny and Leo Bleier would discuss the day's programming and Denny's daily call became a faithful listener response to KSJS. Later, Denny enrolled at San Jose State and became a staff member of KSJS and continues today as a staff announcer.

Professor Gordon Greb, head of the News program in the Journalism Department supervised his students in the production of daily news programs featur4eing campus, community, and world News on KSJS.

One of the distinguishing features of KSJS programming is the sports coverage... Early in the broadcast program a sports staff was organized, telephone lines were leased and broadcast of San Jose State's football, basketball, and baseball games, with play-by-play coverage giving student announcers preparation for covering big time sports events... There are many distinguished graduates of the sports broadcast program--- Hal Ramey of KCBS, San Francisco, Pat Hughes, who covers Big League Baseball out of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and a member of the staff of ABC's Monday Night Football and many others who got their initial practice on KSJS.

In these forty years there have been many KSJS voices heard on local radio and television stations, and I don't intend to slight many who are here tonight, but I must name one who is very close to me because he is our son, Stephen Hunter Flick, and has gained recognition from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences which has awarded him five Oscar nominations for his work on sound effects on major films and awarded him one Oscar each for his work on ROBOCOP and SPEED. His sound experience began on KSJS.

This is not to say that problems in funding, programming conflicts, and student dissent has not occurred in the years of KSJS, nor does it fail to recognize that the major programming time is comprised of pop tunes and music bands, groups, singers, and artists. But I must make a confession... As General Faculty Supervisor in the first years of KSJS I insisted on a standard of tunes and classical programs--that is, until I found that the students I knew best and my own college students did not find KSJS listenable...And so... KSJS became one of the first FM stations in the Bay Area to program the latest Rock & Roll hits... KSJS soon was flooded with the latest R&R releases... there was even a bit of payola trying to exert influence and one night I discovered a publishers representative coming into the studio with three fresh copies for the DJ on duty...

But those days are all past, and today new challenges face KSJS. Today KSJS must meet the challenge of a new audience, a world-wide audience through the internet... San Jose State, with all the richness and reservoir of information, education, culture, and resources of a major university, now finds it possible to extend its influence worldwide. When you turn on that microphone you're programming to listeners and students around the world. A computer based audience. What are you offering them?... It must be the best you have representing a great California University.

Marshal MacLuhan, a guru of the broadcasting and advertising fields, when referring to television, wrote, "The old is the content of the new"! At the same time he cautioned that the new medium is more than the old, requiring adaptation and change in content. KSJS must meet the challenge of the new, the Internet, and with Silicon Valley as its home, become a new voice.