Before most people even brew their morning coffee, announcer-operator Dave Freeman has already settled into his office—assorted with soundboards, transmitters, and a precisely-graduated clock synchronized to Washington D.C.—and completed the necessary procedures in preparation for his radio segment at 5 A.M. when he will be providing programming information, introducing news and traffic reports, and monitoring the radio programs all morning long. Alongside him, fundraising campaigner Greg Sherwood will enter into the adjacent room and prepare for his pledge drive pitches that are to take place between the news and information segments.
Meanwhile, across the foyer separating the radio and television departments, the collection of eight video lens including six automated news cameras inside Studio A is being set up by floor director Randy Brase for the recording of Leslie Sbrocco’s television series, “Check, Please!” And just around the corner, in the editing room, the lighting and sound engineers are making adjustments on their color wheels and mixing boards in order to ensure that continuity is maintained both visually and audibly in the eyes of the director at the helm. Upon completion, the pre-recorded episodes will be passed onto the completely computer-controlled master control room where they will be placed onto the schedule to be aired.
Students from Aragon’s Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program explored these procedures and engaged with members of both the television and radio stations on their field trip to San Francisco’s KQED office on Jan. 30. In a guided tour around the uniquely designed building—which features a ship’s hull protruding through the foyer and President John Boland’s office in place of the captain’s window—docent and twelve-year volunteer Gerhart Kneissl began the tour by detailing the organization’s history involving two broadcast journalists, James Day and Jonathan Rice, who pushed for the advancement of education through the broadcasted medium. With its first transmission on Apr. 5, 1964, the station became just the sixth broadcasting station in the nation and henceforth operated under the call sign, quod erat demonstrandum, which was also the Latin expression for “which had to be proven.” Later, the radio component was added in 1961, when Day purchased an already existing station under the callsign, KXKX-FM. Since then, the organization has grown to include five different channels, including PBS, KQEH, and KQED World, as well as formed affiliations with such networks as the National Public Radio (NPR) and BBC World Service.
After the brief historical background, Kneissl led the group of twelve students into the green room, where he described the preparations that take place prior to a segment and explained why the room, with scarcely any traces of green around, is still called so by professionals. “In Shakespearian time, there was a theater, but there were no buildings around,” said Kneissl. “So the actors were in the green – the grass – with their costume on getting ready. So what used to be in the ‘green’ is now called the ‘green room.’”
Then, a couple steps down the hall and a turn around the corner brought the students to Studio B, where thirty-two computers and telephones sat upon six rows of black-clothed tables in front of full-length mirrors that encompassed the room and gave the illusion that the room had a bigger volume when on-camera joked Kneissl.
“[The room] is used exclusively for fundraising. Since we are a public radio, public television station, we don’t live off of advertisements. Around fifty-five to sixty percent of our funds comes from individual donors,” said Kneissl. A smaller percentage, as Kneissl would later explain, is provided either by the government or by select commercials that are aired during the NPR and Associated Press segments. During these fundraising sessions, individuals from the pool of over two-hundred volunteers will fill the room and take pledges from the public donations. In fact, on top of the approximate two-hundred ninety permanent employees, there is an accompanying two-hundred volunteers that the company operates on as well.
Later, a visit to Studio A, where students were allowed to interact with the news desk and observe the procedures as to how sets are organized, and the editing room, where the roles of each member of the post-production crew were explained, led the group to the master control room. There, a massive monitor depicting a number of smaller screens labeled “HD,” “World,” “Kids” and more could be seen – each broadcasting a different program. “Back in 2006, KQED San Francisco merged with KQEH in San Jose and KQET in Monterey and Salinas, so right now, we’re transmitting for those three stations here,” said Kneissl.
The tour would also extend to the radio station, where students were able to look into the five recording studios surrounding the master control room, where one of the four announcer-operators was working one of the two human shifts. “The computer takes over from 11 P.M. to 5 A.M,” said Kneissl. “But I was just told that we will be hiring a third person for the third shift so that we will have a person controlling the program for twenty-four hours.”
Inside the radio arm, students met with Sherwood, who on top of revealing that only one of nine listeners actually donate money in support of the station, admitted that the challenge both himself and other public broadcasting stations are commonly faced with is how to adapt in conjunction to the rapidly evolving technological sphere. “The big problem is we give the product away for free. So the challenge for us is we’ve got a good product, we’ve got a good service, we’ve got tons of people who listen and take advantage of this service, but we’ve got to figure out how to convince them to pay for something that is free,” said Sherwood. “And we can’t change that motto because with broadcasting, you’re obliged by the government charter to give it away for free. So we have to play on people’s good nature and charity to say this is an important service that deserves your support.”
When asked about the increasingly apparent movement towards a digital presence on the internet, Sherwood acknowledged the trend and added, “In the last few years, we’ve totally been trying to build up the website and move as much of our television content and radio content, expanding on that and putting it on the web. We know that people are moving to podcasts. They’re not listening to the radio station right when we want them to. So that’s become a huge strategy for us because ten years from now, that might be where the most people are who listen to us and care about us and most importantly who want to give us some money to support what we do here. So it’s really a life or death situation for us to figure out how you guys are going to view our content.”
“Now you guys write all the rules. And it breaks down our relationship with you if you are just tuning in whenever you want and just going through the part when I’m begging for money. If you don’t listen to that, we’re in big trouble. So the web is becoming, just as it is for other companies, a huge talent and commodity for us – just to figure out how to use it and how to use it effectively,” said Sherwood.
Subsequently, Sherwood went on to ask, “How many of you actually listen the radio?” And in response to the silent, sideways glances that the students shared among each other, Sherwood said, “We used to own a franchise that was a very precious thing and now with the web, that’s less important. So now we got to figure out how to make you like us enough to support us.”
From there, student were able to the match the voice of KQED-FM’s 5 A.M. to 2 P.M. segments to a face upon meeting Freeman. Students learned of the subscription to NPR and BBC as well as the correspondence that Freeman is responsible for maintaining with his reporters.
A walk through the hallway upon which portraits of KQED and NPR’s figureheads hung on the wall led the students back into the lobby and to the conclusion of the tour.
After a forty-five minute lunch break, the group would reconvene at the Z-Square, a rustic-looking theater, to watch the one-man play by artist Dahlak Brathwaite with music accompaniment by Dion Decibels, entitled “Spirituals,” a Youth Speaks and Ictus performance which made its debut performance the night before. Through an assortment of nine characters, Brathwaite conveyed the emotions and struggles that are commonly associated with African-Americans – particularly criminalization and stigmatization. His efforts to vindicate and absolve himself took the crowd on a ninety minute performance including a considerable measure of explicit vulgarism and a cover of Kanye West’s “Homecoming,” before ending with a question-and-answer session when he revealed the motivation for this five-year long project.
“The characters are extensions of myself,” revealed Brathwaite. “These are the characters I experience and I just added to them stories that I knew of, stories that people have told me, and made a character out of them. The whole story is about the process of myself trying to get over the shame of messing up that one time and feeling that shame would haunt me the rest of my life.”
“I worried about some of the content that was graphic, that was sexual, the drug use, but I feel that it’s for a bigger purpose and I don’t like censoring myself because I feel like we all have experienced so much already and that too often, folks won’t give you credit for what you already know. And I just want to show that this a real experience and people have gone through this and anyway I can help, then I think it’s worth it. At the end of the day, I want to make sure that you guys know that I’ve seen these things and I’m reflecting on them and on what happens in society so that [people] are better prepared when they are adults,” said Brathwaite on his use of uncensored material and language.
