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Michael Hibblen hits the airwaves on KABF
Louisa Rook // Michael hibblen is an old friend of mine from nlr. Here’s a link to his website that includes an article that he wrote about unpantesen anne jansen, a band that included (at various times) me, steve schmidt, bircho, jim thompson, rett peek, and of course, sam caplan.
http://hibblenradio.com/LRfreepress.html www.hibblenradio.com // KABF was the first radio station I would ever broadcast on. Owned by the community activist group ACORN, the 100,000-watt public station covered most of Arkansas and featured more than 100 volunteer program hosts like myself, offering a wide range of programming not heard on other stations. It quite honestly was an incredible place.
The goal of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is to help low to moderate income families get affordable housing, better wages and to get businesses and corporations to invest in the inner city. It has hundreds of chapters throughout the county and runs two radio stations, KABF in Little Rock and KNON in Dallas. Through these stations, it strives to provide a broadcast voice for its causes and to offer programming to the people it serves.
KABF's broadcast schedule was an eclectic mix. In the early mornings it aired black gospel, mid-mornings jazz, mid-days usually had some kind of news or public affairs, early afternoons were soul and reggae shows, mid-afternoons had the incredibly popular blues programs, early evenings were country or bluegrass, with various forms of rock and alternative airing most nights until the early morning. It also offered Native American, Spanish and other ... (More)KABF was the first radio station I would ever broadcast on. Owned by the community activist group ACORN, the 100,000-watt public station covered most of Arkansas and featured more than 100 volunteer program hosts like myself, offering a wide range of programming not heard on other stations. It quite honestly was an incredible place.
The goal of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is to help low to moderate income families get affordable housing, better wages and to get businesses and corporations to invest in the inner city. It has hundreds of chapters throughout the county and runs two radio stations, KABF in Little Rock and KNON in Dallas. Through these stations, it strives to provide a broadcast voice for its causes and to offer programming to the people it serves.
KABF's broadcast schedule was an eclectic mix. In the early mornings it aired black gospel, mid-mornings jazz, mid-days usually had some kind of news or public affairs, early afternoons were soul and reggae shows, mid-afternoons had the incredibly popular blues programs, early evenings were country or bluegrass, with various forms of rock and alternative airing most nights until the early morning. It also offered Native American, Spanish and other diverse shows on weekends.
The only salaried employees at KABF were a handful of staff members who worked in the office and hosted some of the shows, and they weren't paid much. The rest of the people responsible for these programs were a broad mix of volunteers. We had everyone from lawyers and newspaper reporters to waitresses, plumbers and janitors.
What made KABF so incredibly unique for me was the freedom to play and do whatever I wanted on the air. Every commercial station I've worked for has had a tight format in which I was specifically told what music to play and to a degree what to say. KABF quite honestly spoiled me with the amount of freedom I'd never find again. Sometimes my show was great while other times embarrassingly bad. But that's what made it such an incredible creative charge.
I was 17 when I finally got the nerve to contact the station and try to get my own show. KABF had been on the air four years by then and I had been listening for the last two. I particularly liked a show called "Radios In Motion" hosted by a guy named Chris Berry. My then girlfriend Louisa Rook told me about his show, which played the same kind of alternative music we were in to. The only problem was that it aired Wednesday mornings, 1 to 3 am. I usually would set my alarm clock and wake up at 1, start a tape recording and then listen to the show later. Chris had apparently gotten tired of doing the overnight show while maintaining a regular job and eventually called it quits.
I had been taking a high school radio class a few months by that point and wanted to pick up where Chris left off. I called Program Director Doug Clifford, who told me he might have an open slot soon and to call back in about a month. I did, and he invited me up to the station to meet with him.
When I got to 1501 Arch Street in downtown Little Rock, I was stunned to find not a modern radio studio, but an old, rather dilapidated house. On the bottom floor were offices for ACORN and other community groups, with the station upstairs. KABF was made up of a control room, production room and two large office rooms.
I talked with Doug a bit and I guess convinced him I was serious and responsible enough to host a program, so he offered to let me try out doing one for a few weeks. Being such a fan of the XTC song "Radios In Motion," which Chris used as his theme, I called him at home and asked if he minded me using the same name for my show. He didn't, and in fact was very encouraging. I even invited up to join me one week at my show the following summer.
Initially I played alternative music from groups like Camper Van Beethoven, the Smiths, R.E.M and the Replacements. I would often invite friends up to the studio with me, which developed into an ever-evolving mix of people that would serve as co-hosts. I always enjoyed having others with me because it was easier to talk and have discussions on the air when I had other people to interact with. Louisa joined me most weeks during the first year.
KABF got full servicing from record labels, which meant the station received most new record releases. The only problem was most of these albums, especially if they were popular, would disappear from the studio. Some program hosts were stealing the records. It was frustrating as hell because there were times I would be looking forward to playing something only to come up for my show and find it gone.
It was obviously just as frustrating for Doug, the PD. Sometimes jocks would make comments like, "I hope the album will be here next week." Noting that this didn't sound good for the station, Doug instructed us not to talk about stolen records on the air. In a memo to the staff he wrote, "for those of you who are still taking records, ROT IN HELL! Most of you have good yuppie jobs and can afford to buy these records. You are denying listeners in Arkansas (and other states we sometimes reach) and the recording artists this music." For the most part I, like other hosts, would have to rely on my own music collection and if there just happened to be something I'd like to play at the station then great. I spent a lot of money and effort in building my own collection.
I continued broadcasting on KABF even after I started working at commercial stations. Sometimes I would come over to do my show after finishing an air shift elsewhere. KABF had a rule against volunteers working at other stations, and I brought this up when I started working elsewhere, but management told me it wasn't a problem since the stations I was working for were actually outside of Little Rock.
KABF, like most non-commercial stations, got most of its funding from donations by listeners. Several times a year the station would hold pledge drives, or what many of us called beg-a-thons, in which we would ask for listeners to call in and make donations. My first pledge drive came a month or two after starting, in which I pulled in about $200 dollars. I wasn't especially pleased, but when I dropped by the station a day or two later, everyone was congratulating me for doing pretty well. Apparently that was quite good for that time slot. Sensing that there was an audience for my show, by the spring of 1989 the station moved the show to Sunday mornings, 1 am to 4 am, which was heard by people coming in from their Saturday nights.
It was in this new slot that I really began to develop a core group of regular listeners, many of which would call in most weeks. I enjoyed talking with these people so much that I started a listener call in segment for each show at 2 am, in which I would take random calls on the air and talk about whatever was going on. Sometimes this was incredibly entertaining, while other times painfully dull, uncomfortable or strange.
What really surprised me was that I seemed to develop a very loyal group of listeners in the nearby town of Cabot. At least half my callers each week were students from Cabot High School. Three of these people even got together and made a $100 donation to KABF during a pledge drive so that they could get one of the pledge drive premiums, which was to join the show of your choice for one hour.
Thad Gilbert, Jimmy Russell and Jody Tygert ended up staying for the entire show, and it went so well that I invited them to come up to my show any time they wanted. Most weeks they would be there or at least would call in. Thad went on to become one of my closest friends and would continue to join me off and on until the end of the show in 1995. In fact, he brought his now-wife Lakeetra up to the show on their first date.
I tried to be as creative as I could with the show. One week, when I was going to air a concert in the final hour from the Indigo Girls live in Athens, Georgia, I decided we would spend the two hours before the concert driving at Athens. So we had the sound of the interior of a car in the background every time we would talk and also played a lot of songs about being on the road. We even had a couple of segments I had taped with co-workers from KLRA, pretending to be convenience store workers. It worked out pretty well, especially because Thad, Jimmy and Jody played along so well. Then at the third hour we arrived in Athens and went to the concert. It was one of my few attempts at theater of the mind radio, using sound effects like an old radio drama.
I also met another listener, Sean Corrigan, when he came to a fundraising concert KABF put on in a downtown parking garage in August 1990. Because of his incredible wit I also invited him up to the show anytime he wanted. He too would eventually become a regular co-host.
When I started college in the fall of 1990 at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, I was only able to do the show once or twice a month. For the next couple of years Louisa would do the show when I couldn't.
When I transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1993, I resumed the show with a new zeal. I had just finished an internship at C-SPAN in Washington, and while there became a big listener of legendary alternative station WHFS, which was the first such commercial station I had heard. Hearing the style and attitude of this station gave me new ideas for how I could do my own show.
There were a few changes at this point. First off, because I started working as a news anchor and reporter for Little Rock news station KARN, I adopted an alias to avoid any potential conflicts. On KABF I started calling myself "Fudd." I got the nickname when I was in Washington because I wore a wristwatch that featured Elmer Fudd. Also, I got a better time slot, Friday nights, 10 pm to 1 am. I felt a little uncomfortable taking this because it came when the station got rid of a hip-hop show hosted by Matt Dishongh, a buddy of mine who also worked at KARN. Matt was a little pissed off at the station, but told me not to feel funny taking his old slot.
It indeed was a great slot because it was on a weekend night and was on as people were heading home from whatever they did that night. Initially Thad and I hosted the show, but soon Sean began joining us every week. It was around this time that Sean became known as Shecky. One week when I was stumbling to say who was in the studio with me, Sean as a joke called himself Shecky. To me that sounded kind of goofy, like Fudd, so it stuck. Although I think he got kind of tired of it after a while. Sometimes we would be hanging out a Vino's, a great brew pub kind of bar in Little Rock, when someone would come in, see Sean and call out, "Hey Shecky." That's when the name started getting on his nerves.
In the spring of '94 I also started hosting a short-lived second show, Thursday mornings, Midnight to 3 am. That show was almost entirely spoken word, poetry and experimental jazz. I had always played some spoken word stuff mixed with alternative music, but thought it would be interesting to have several hours in the middle of the night to devote exclusively to that.
I played lots of Laurie Anderson, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. I also interviewed poets or spoken word artists like Allen Ginsberg, Ken Nordine, Meryn Cadell and Maggie Estep. I even started attending and taping local poetry readings to give me more stuff to choose from. But doing two shows, along with my regular job at KARN and going to school quickly became too much. By the time the fall semester began I had to drop the show.
Toward the end of '94, Radios In Motion's time slot would again be moved, this time up two hours from 8 to 10 pm. Even though it was earlier, we actually had fewer listeners at this time. I think 10 pm to 1 am was the perfect slot. In the earlier position on a Friday night people were still out doing things. It really wasn't a good time for many people to listen to the radio. As a result the number of callers slowed and the show just seemed to lose excitement.
In early '95 I would end the show because it just didn't seem to be happening anymore. Alternative rock had grown so much by this time that Little Rock got its first commercial alternative station. KDRE-FM 101.1 hit the air in August 1994. It was only local during morning drive, the rest of the time it simulcasted WDRE from New York. In fact the automation system was so poor that often, instead of hearing local breaks, KDRE would air the New York traffic and weather reports. It was weird to be driving around Little Rock hearing about how the New Jersey Turnpike was doing.
But the key thing was that there was a 24-hour source for alternative music in Little Rock. And I, like lots of other people I knew, started listening to it a lot. People no longer had to put up with the peculiarities of community radio just to hear their favorite music, and it took a toll on KABF's alternative programming. But I guess that's evolution. It amazes me how much alternative has evolved into a mainstream format. In fact, in some cities alternative stations now top the ratings. But it was inevitable because the music is so much better than other things coming out.
As for KABF, I was sad to leave because it had been so good to me. I miss it sometimes because it allowed me the incredible freedom to air whatever I wanted. I've done some interviews in the years since where I've thought it would be great to play this in its entirety somewhere, but I don't have any such outlet. As for the station itself, it's doing well.
KABF moved to another house on Main Street a few years after I left and I'm pleased to find whenever I'm in Little Rock and tune in that many of the people I knew, like Flap, John Cain and others, continue to host shows. Typically community radio stations like KABF don't last more than a few years. But it's lasted more than two decades and hopefully will continue filling a void in Little Rock radio. (Less)
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Bircho
KABF
Unpantesen Anne Jansen
