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Related Articles 10/04/02: KPFT launches Fall fund drive Related Links Houston Press The Daily Texan Pacifica Radio Foundation

LEAD IN BY HOST RICHARD HANNA: We begin the first broadcast in eight years of the locally-produced KPFT News with a look at the history of news at KPFT since its inception in 1970. Renee Feltz reports: STORY: In 1968, Larry Lee and Don Garner decided to pursue a license for a Pacifica radio station in Houston. The following year they were joined by Debra Danburg, now a state representative, and Ray Hill, who later became a station manager. Lee had won several awards as the editor of the Daily Texan during his junior and senior years in college. When he successfully established KPFT as a radio station broadcasting from the former Oddfellas Hall on Prairie in downtown Houston, he brought with him a dedication to serious local news coverage. Ray Hill remembers: "Larry was very commited to the news, personally managing it as general manager when he finally got a transmitter in the 1970s, and there was a lot of news." Soon, the station began filling a void in Houston's local news landscape. Tim Fleck, now a writer for the weekly Houston Press, recalls the news environment he entered into when he left the Houston Chronicle and began reporting for KPFT: "Houston media at that point was very controlled. You had two newsapers - the Chronicle and the Houston Post - that were owned by two very wealthy powerful families or interest groups. Very committed to the local structure, very reluctant to cast a probing eye on officials and what was going on. So, at that point what Pacifica brought was a strong, independent, questioning look at local institutions." The name of the local news on KPFT was Life on Earth. Rafael Renteria, a late-seventies news director then known as Richard King, recalls how its uniqueness immediately established it alongside more mainstream news as a unique source of information: "Life on Earth was an hour long newscast that was really very highly regarded, especially in its early days in Houston. It was listened to by a lot of the journalists throughout town. The hour long news show was a half and half mix of locally produced news, and stories from the Associated Press, Liberation News Service, BBC and programming from National Public Radio. Renteria remembers his contributions as news director and programming director from roughly 1975 to 1981. What we tried to do was to really create an impression about developing trends - geo-politically and nationally - from a left perspective. KPFT News first began having problems staying on the air when fundraising efforts like the annual Cosmic Cowboy Concert began bringing in less money in 1979. Since the station had always been the weakest link in the five-part Pacifica network, its format was often rearranged in experiments designed to increase listenership, and for a time, KPFT News was not included in the new format. Conditions improved again for Life on Earth, then headed by Steve McVicker as news director, when Ray Hill became general manager of KPFT in 1980: I just made a deal with Steve that what little resources I could accumulate, I wanted him to have in the news department. The limited resources were used by volunteers who reported on city governance by attending city council sessions and then providing listeners with recorded summaries of the public commentary portion of the meetings. As the 1980s wore down, new programming trends encouraged by the National Federation of Community Broadcasters were implemented at Pacifica. Change was supposed to make the stations reach broader audiences and raise more money. When Gary Forbes came to KPFT from the NFCB, his changes were disasterous for all news coverage at the station. Forbes was a fundraising consultant for NFCB and so he came down here and took over KPFT - first station he'd ever managed - took the community broadcaster's broadcast programs off the air and told them they could work through a daily news program, and then promptly gave it fifteen minutes. By the early 1990s there was only one KPFT news program left, called World Radio Morning News - a two-hour show hosted by Kyle Hukins. Hukins was news director from 1993 to 1995. He produced the show along with seven volunteers until the implemenation of the 5-year plan to mainstream programming under the station's general managers Gene Palmquist and Garland Ganter in the name of increasing KPFT's listener audience. "The volunteers were taken out of the news department, essentially, and many other places, and they were replaced with national programming, syndicated programming, or staff programming. It is now July 2002, and volunteers are back at the station, working to fulfill the original Pacifca mission by creating local news programming within a global context. Renee Feltz, KPFT News, Houston. E-mail Renee Feltz at chickpea_@ziplip.com This story was broadcast on July 11, 2002.