By Kali Nelson, KUOI Station Manager
KUOI has gone through a few changes since it started in 1945 and is continuing to change and do new and exciting things.
Recently KUOI has completed our crowdfunding campaign and raised over our goal of $7,500. With this money we hope to get a new master control board and continue to serve the Moscow community with new and different music.
We have also added syndication with KUGR in Pullman to the list of opportunities for our DJs. Now after a semester of experience our DJs can have their shows play for WSU students.
Our news team has grown from one person to three now and is still committed to providing community news at 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. everyday. We still have 4th and Downtown, which airs at 6 p.m. on Thursdays.
We started Free CD Friday to give out the CDs we can’t keep in our library. Feel free to stop by anytime, though! We always love to meet our listeners.
Our program director and I attended the College Broadcasting Inc. conference in Seattle in October and learned quite a bit about what other college radio stations are doing along with meeting the students in charge.
We at KUOI look forward to continuing to serve Moscow and the University of Idaho by playing new and different music for many more years to come.
Thank you for listening and don’t forget to find us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
-Kali
We asked our alumni to tell us about their time at KUOI:
I was a DJ from 1977 to 1982 and just found an envelope in my attic this past weekend. It has everyone of my playlists from those shows along with a few other copies of other DJ playlists. It also includes 3 decent B&W photos of the studio.– Kevin Spence
I was Reendog n’ the Metal Muff show from 89 – 92, and the KUOI Metal Director for a couple of those… I think I was the only chica Metal DJ for years! -Reen Lee
I still have a lot of old playlists too. My first show was 1985, I think: Pineapple’s All-American Avant-Wavo-Core Radio Show. Though I think I was best known when I returned to Moscow in the early 90s and spun the Lunatic Lunchbox as St Bacchus DooRag with my effervescent yet lugubrious co-host Greasy Mindwrench (John Griswold, somehow not on this group). In the 1980s the Palouse Punklore Society was going strong and got some huge names into the SUB. I remember particularly a seriously outrageous party with DOA at Leonard Skinhead and Voltron’s place. -Tim Waterman
First show: September 11, 1988. Most recent show: September 11, 2018. Many in between (though not many the last 5 years). I’ve DJ’d in three iterations of master control, engineered music or produced spots in several iterations of Prod A from slicing tape to ProTools, and helped with several remodels, additions, transmitter changes, tower climbs, website rebuilds, webcams, and remote broadcasts. Long live KUOI! – Mitch Parks
I wish I had tapes. 1992-1994 or 1995. Co-Hosted Ab & Aud’s Feminist Slumber Party, Featuring the Pussy Power Hour with Audra Manion. Was on a couple covers of the station guide. Boycotted by local churches and almost kicked off the air for Pussy Power Hour. – Abby Bandurraga
I was the Production Director around 95-96 or thereabouts. Prior to that I had my first show Spring semester 1994. Some of my favorite memories were getting bizarre Album Preview discs from Collin Forbes. He introduced me to Hans Reichel, master of the Daxophone. I got to ride in his VW van for a Homecoming parade and toss candy out to the folks as we went by. You can still hear Collin’s voice on the “Squishy Buttons” cart that used to be up there. The backstory on that was KUOI had just gotten new DJing CD players and they had excellent rubberized buttons to start and stop the disc. Down the hall, our good friends at the Argonaut had a misprinted metal sign which we borrowed one late night to record the weird wobbly sounds at the start of the cart. Collin provided the vocals of, “It’s got squishy buttons!”. I was there for the jump from 50 to 400 Watts of transmit power and got to help record an interview with Phil Proctor of Firesign Theater that was included on the 50th Anniversary tape. We even got to play Hallway Cassette Hockey. Thanks for all the adventures, KUOI and Student Media! – David Camden-Britton
Tom Bohannon
Thank you for memories. I remember Pineapple's shows and the Chameleon and all that in Moscow in the mid 1980s.