Recent History

Since the winter of 2008, KSLU has made vast improvements to its infrastructure. The spring marked the passing of a strong leadership by key seniors, who played a crucial role in KSLU's revitalization. This coming fall will usher in a new set of leadership, which is made up of mainly underclassmen. These new leaders are dedicated to seeing KSLU rise to great heights in the coming months and years.

As part of the agenda for this year, KSLU will focus on becoming a more prominent figure in student life. A great deal of time and effort has been put into forming a core group of DJs and. However, what was found was that without outside support, many members began to lose interest. To continue gaining strength, KSLU needs to shift its focus towards reaching out to our community, being both the University at which we attend and the town in which we live. Already KSLU has been in discussions with Student Life about being involved with the FYP cup event to attract new incoming students. KSLU members have also proposed to have live events in the student center on selected days to promote student interaction with the DJs. With a more prominent role in student life, KSLU will gain momentum and support from student, faculty and administrators, which will ultimately lead to sustainability.

KSLU is not only focusing on becoming involved in student life, but also in both academic and athletic ventures. This past spring, KSLU was involved in an academic endeavor to present an entire hour of broadcasting in Spanish. This show was a huge success and was only the beginning to what KSLU can provide. This year KSLU hopes to broadcast lectures and events given by guest speakers. This is a great avenue in which professors can expand their curriculum and allow students, faculty, and community members who could not easily attend these events to hear them at a more convenient time. In retrospect KSLU has also taken positive steps into sports broadcasting. Men's Hockey is currently broadcasting via the B2 network over the Internet and in the coming year the Athletics Department would like to expand this to encompass most of the athletic events. The actuality of working in conjunction with the current sports casters or separately has yet to be determined but is a key issue for the coming year.

These multiple avenues of expansion are currently limited due to current broadcasting equipment and programs. At the beginning of the spring 2008 semester, KSLU purchased a Mac based program called Nicecast, which allowed basic broadcasting over the Internet. However, there were serious drawbacks: Nicecast relied solely on the operator to run correctly and did not allow for server broadcasting, mainly prevented constant broadcast. Our biggest problem was that it was impossible for the community to connect to KSLU when no DJ was present. Thus there were large and inconsistent gaps in KSLU broadcast, which turned away many of our listeners. To compensate for this, Brian von Glahn and Ben Burdet started looking for new systems that would better suit the needs of KSLU. A system called Backbone was discovered and with further research was found to provide just what KSLU needed. A subscription to Backbone will provide KSLU with the ability to broadcast 24/7 and even from remote locations. As part of the Backbone subscription the fees needed to legally broadcast over the Internet would be taken care of as well. This means that KSLU can now expand its coverage to the entire Internet rather than just the SLU network. This now means that KSLU will also abide by a strict set of radio broadcasting regulations. The payoff of this is that KSLU will be able to provide alumni, students studying abroad, and friends and family members to listen to KSLU from wherever they are.