25 years ago: Students worried about format changes at KJHK

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for July 28, 1988:

  • “Don’t mess with our music” was the clear message received from the more than 100 people who had showed up at a meeting this week to discuss format changes at KJHK. Fans of the student radio station at Kansas University had expressed their concern that programming decisions were being made by the station’s board members rather than the students and that KJHK was in danger of becoming another mainstream FM rock station. Max Utsler, professor of radio and television at KU and KJHK’s acting faculty general manager, said that the mission of the station was remaining the same — to serve KU students and to provide a lab environ for broadcast student. The station was not there to help students “foster an appreciation of new music,” Utsler said. Speaking, he said, on behalf of most broadcast faculty, he added that he wanted KJHK staffers to meet professional standards, just as the staff at the University Daily Kansan worked to meet the professional standards of print journalism.
  • Some longtime or former residents of Lawrence, who may have remembered Liberty Hall’s days as the Red Dog Inn, had returned to the venue this week for a “Superrock of the 60s” concert featuring leaders of the bands Gary Lewis and the Playboys, The Classics IV with Dennis Yost, The Outsiders with Sonny Geraci, and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. The performers had played four sets of 60s music and the dance floor was filled most of the evening, with the average age of the crowd around 40 — people who would have been in college when the original groups were at their peak. Although attendance at the event, which was to benefit Cottonwood Inc., wasn’t quite as high as had been hoped, the 450 advance ticket sales had been enough to top the break-even point, according to local organizer John Tacha.