About Us
In the past, Gustavus had a fully functioning radio station broadcasting on both AM and FM bands. It alternated between the names KGAC and KGSM during this time. During the 1980s KGSM’s FCC license expired and was not renewed. The station underwent a period of somewhat intermittent activity until the early twenty-first century when a new student movement restarted the station as a webcast. In the last six years KGSM has been working on building up consistent programming and a large music library for the student DJ to play from. Our partnership with The College Music Journal (CMJ) allows us to be charted with other college stations and earns us credibility in the college radio world. In the 2005-2006 academic year, KGSM began its first podcast, allowing KGSM to expand its role in the new-media experiments. The Kaleb and Stephen Show hosted by Kaleb Rumicho and Stephen Titcombe was an hour-long show discussing current affairs and issues, and it pioneered a new variation on the radio medium that allowed their listeners to tune in whenever they wanted, not just live. Several other shows have since joined Kaleb and Stephen in podcasting their shows. KGSM worked with Gustavus Web Services in the winter of 2006 to set up a WordPress Content Management System on their organization’s homepage. This service allowed any show to podcast their content. On 21 February 2007, KGSM’s computer crashed and KGSM’s only method of live broadcast went down with it. Some of the shows continued to produce their shows in the form of a podcast, but all live content went off-line.
KGSM Today
Since the crash, KGSM has been attempting to rebuild itself from the bottom up. It has been actively hosting numerous events on campus including Earth Jam to increase publicity and interest, as well as become involved with the Gustavus community. In 2011, KGSM was also generously granted a new studio inside the new academic building, Beck Hall. Unfortunately, the first semester with the completed new studio was a semester off-air. This was due to waiting for the stream to be set up, training on the new equipment, on certain pieces of faulty equipment, and an overall lack of budget.
Looking to the Future
As KGSM looks to the near future we realize the growing campus media movement at Gustavus. The broadcast media organizations are both struggling to meet the demands of time and resources to put together high quality work with journalistic integrity an creative initiative. We have several goals for the future. Our first and foremost goal is to begin providing consistently first-rate live programs for our audience and to grow not only the number of shows but the size of our shows’ audience. Our second goal is to become more involved on campus and to live up to our motto – “KGSM: The Voice of Gustavus.” We look forward to collaborating with such student organizations as the Musical B.A.R. in order to fuse talents and media. We look forward to becoming a staple of the Gustavus community and a strong participant on campus. KGSM also strives to serve as a community radio station, covering current events on and around the Gustavus campus. We want KGSM to be a resource that the campus can use to catch up on current events and learn about things happening on campus they may not otherwise hear about, in a way that the Weekly or GAC TV or the other campus media may not present it.