KNTU 88.1 fm. “
The one for jazz.”
KNTU is the college radio station for Denton, TX located at The University of North Texas. It is run in conjunction with the school’s Radio, Television, and Film department and can be listened to at 88.1 fm in the DFW area. The station has an effective broadcast radius of 100,000 watts, which, thanks to the flatness of the area, allows it to be heard from as far away as the southern reaches of Oklahoma. The broadcast tower is located atop the RTFP building on the UNT campus.
The station broadcast everyday from 6am to 12am (midnight). During the weekdays KNTU primarily plays jazz and news, though it will also broadcast UNT sporting events and Denton High School football games. On the weekends, the station breaks its jazz format somewhat with tejano on Saturday mornings, and classical on Sunday mornings. Also on the weekends there are student hosted political and sports talk shows, along with the new all request all genre “North Texas Jukebox” on Sundays from 8 to 10 pm. After that show ends from 10 until midnight is “Frequency Down” which plays “the best in indie and alternative music overlooked by commercial radio.”
The station’s DJs and news team are all volunteer students, most of which are trying to receive credit towards their degree in RTVF. The quality of the djs varies, you can easily tell who has been working there for a while and who’s new. It’s not uncommon to hear mispronounced names, and long periods of dead air, which is only intensified by the tendency of some of the board’s buttons to stick. As most of the workers at the station know very little about jazz, anyone who is interested in what is being played should expect little more than what is printed in the cd’s liner notes when calling for information.
Most of the stations listeners are Jazz nerds living in the Golden Triangle area; the others are Jazz nerds listening on the Internet at kntu.fm. A number of the listeners are former students of the UNT jazz program. Some of the more stingy listeners can become very uptight about name pronunciation or music selection and will not hesitate to call the dj on shift and yell at them about whatever they did incorrectly. I have once received a call from a very unhappy listener concerning me playing a Francisco Mondragon Rio tune. I believe he called it “satanic verses to a jazz fan” that was after he blamed him for the death of Jaco Pastorius. Not all of the listeners are this confrontational and some are actually very friendly.
As for the music played at KNTU it mostly falls between jazz standards and modern jazz, some fusion is played but it remains close to its jazz roots. The station will not under any circumstances play smooth jazz, the station directors feel it is beneath them and their real jazz, besides DFW already has a smooth jazz station. KNTU also doesn’t like to play much avant garde or free jazz, as the station director claims that is what people think of when they say they don’t like jazz.
KNTU’s
hot clock is as follows.
- :00 AP news
- :02 Weather
- Big Band song
- SWEEPER
- Heavy rotation song
- (Gold song)
- :14 Break
- Medium rotation song
- SWEEPER
- Light rotation song
- (Gold song)
- :29 Break, Live PSA, Weather
- Heavy rotation song
- SWEEPER
- Medium rotation song
- (Gold song)
- :44 Break
- Heavy rotation song
- SWEEPER
- UNT song
- (Gold song)
- :57 Break, Feature, Promo, Legal ID