Adult Eclectic Radio: WKZE
by Rob Schumer

Dick Hermans, on-air program host with radio station WKZE for most of 20 years, tells the story of a man from Greenville who phoned in and said, "'Well, up in our town'--which is on the edge of the listening area, really on the top of the Catskills--'when people change apartments in town, they take a radio, to be sure they can get KZE. If they can't get good reception, they don't take the apartment.'"

With that kind of devotion, it could not have been a complete surprise that, when ownership of the station changed hands in April of 2005, at least some listeners feared the worst. The vast majority probably didn't even notice a change in the "feel" of the station, yet according to new owner Will Stanley, "the small market listener is so passionately involved, they have a feeling of ownership of the station that you'd never find in a major market."

Thus, for a few, any change was unwelcome, and for several months after the sale there was actually a wave of harassing e-mails and phone calls to the station and to numerous on-air hosts, with some listeners registering disappointment and even anger. The level of resentment expressed by these few was quite upsetting to Will and to his wife and co-owner, Barb Stanley. "I think the biggest, hardest disappointment for me," Barb explained, "was this human outcry that we had come in to ruin the station. We were putting our hearts and souls and hopes into this; we didn't expect it, at such a degree. It was pretty intense."

In reality, under the new owners there have been only a few organizational changes. All the specialty shows -- those that concentrate on the blues, or on strictly acoustic music, for example -- have been moved to the weekend. And the daily programming on Monday through Friday now has a consistent structure, featuring general music programming all day long. And three of the on-air hosts left the station, but none of them were fired by the Stanleys: one left before the new owners took over, another for a different job in another state, and one soon after the sale for personal reasons. But despite these few changes, the commitment to progressive, adult, eclectic music remains the same.

And so does the music itself. "There are all these independent artists that don't get airplay anywhere else, making music that's good enough for the air, but other stations just won't play them," according to Tim Schaefer, assistant Program Manager and on-air DJ, "We don't want to be better than anyone else, we just want to be totally different from everyone else - we want to go to work everyday and play all this great music, music that no one else pays any attention to."

"KZE," as its friends call it, broadcasts at 98.1 FM and 1020 AM. The FM station can be heard in a broad zone extending throughout the mid-Hudson Valley and northwestern Connecticut, extending south to Pawling, west to Newburgh and Middletown, and northwest past Great Barrington, Massachusetts and as far as Albany. As of quite recently, it can also be heard anywhere in the world, over the Internet. The station has its offices and broadcast center just over the New York border, off the town green in Sharon, Connecticut. Those in the listening area can, at any time of the day or night, hear a mix of musical styles and even specific songs that one just won't hear on almost any other station anywhere in the country.

"We don't want to play the common, ordinary stuff," says Schaefer. KZE has "always played a little bluegrass, a little folk, a little rock, a little classic rock, a little reggae, a little jazz," points out Hermans, and this diversity has made it special. Maybe it has something to do with the cultural depth of the disc jockeys the station employs. When Hermans isn't doing radio, for example, he's running Oblong Books in Millerton and Rhinebeck. Raissa St. Pierre, one of the newest DJs at the station, is also Associate Director of the Bard Music Festival. St. Pierre says she is "liable to play music from Hawaii followed by music from Africa, followed by jazz, followed by rockabilly." Adds station Program Manager Dave Doud: "a lot of what you hear on KZE is sheer experimentation and gut feel."

Most of this music is far outside the scope of the formulaic radio programming generally heard on mainstream American radio today. KZE plays music from an exceedingly broad set of genres, reflecting both the broad tastes and knowledge of the station staff, as well as a concerted effort to be independent: of standard radio formats, and of the major record labels. In an age when there are about a dozen or more recognized radio "formats" that define the "sound" of a station -- classic rock, oldies and rock alternative are examples -- KZE's mix of songs does not adhere to any of the recognized formats. Will Stanley calls the format the station plays "adult eclectic. There's really no such term in radio jargon," he elaborated. The closest format, Adult Album Alternative, known as triple-A, targets an adult listening demographic, plays tracks from albums, and steers far away from the teen-oriented hit music of the day. But everyone at KZE agrees that while the station's programming is similar to triple-A, it is much more far-ranging and much less rock-oriented. Will said the music is primarily "roots-based," and adds that the target audience is considerably older than that of the typical format-oriented stations. Listeners are presumed to have more mature tastes and a broader knowledge of and interest in popular music in general.

Catering to such tastes, KZE programs world music, cajun and zydeco, blues, bluegrass, singer-songwriter, latin, jazz, and alt-country. And that's only a partial list of genres. With all these different styles, and more, in the mix, "the audience has to work a little harder to listen to us," says Schaefer. "But for people who don't want to hear the same old stuff, they're just amazed, to no end, at what they hear."

One problem for the station, given the great diversity of styles, is striking a balance between repetition and novelty. A little familiarity can be a good thing, everyone I spoke with at the station agreed, and KZE tries to achieve this by initially giving certain new songs heavier air play, thereby providing a sense of the familiar, with a strong dose of the new and undiscovered.

WKZE's play lists are constantly being revised and updated, and some of the songs are slated for heavy rotation and others for a lighter rotation. But most of the music aired is in no rotation at all. "We don't want to be playing the same songs that other radio stations are playing too much," Doud explained, "but people do need to have a certain familiarity when they're listening to the radio, and certain reference points."

Hermans pointed out that having a play list is, in part, a way to gain attention for the station among independent artists and labels. "You don't want to be a station that is so low key that nobody knows you're there. An independent artist can float around the internet and say, oh here's a station that's playing A, B, and C, and my music is like B, maybe I can send them my album, and maybe they'll play it. If you look through the 80 albums on the current rotation list, half of them are either independent artists or real small label artists."

The station has been around for about 20 years, and for most of those years has programmed a similarly progressive mix. This orientation was appealing to the Stanleys, because they love the same mix of music, and have worked successfully elsewhere with other small, local stations having a similar approach to programming. The Stanleys now live in Rhinebeck, but they moved here in the spring of 2005 from their former home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Will and Barb have, separately and together, been involved in the ownership and management of independent radio stations in New England for over 25 years. Each of them has a strong background in sales, meaning pursuing and nurturing relationships with sponsors, and taking responsibility for bringing revenue to the station. The last station they operated was WRSI, in Northampton. WRSI, says Will, had an extremely similar format to KZE, and became "wildly successful" under their management. RSI programmed the same 'adult eclectic' mix of music that KZE features, and so the transition was a natural one for them.

Barb added that, apart from the music format programmed by the station, their approach to advertising was another of the ways in which they were successful at RSI. "We put the client's interests first instead of the almighty dollar," she said, "so that if you became my client, I really took time to figure out what's going to work, to make sure that I place your ad correctly." She says they try to come up "with a really unique and friendly ad, that people are actually going to listen to instead of switching the channel." They are taking the same approach with KZE. Will said that in their old station, in Massachusetts, people would often come up and say to him "'Hey, I like the ads!' Not that they didn't mind them. They actually enjoyed them!"

Another change for the station that is in the works, probably for the near future, is a move of its headquarters and broadcast center to Rhinebeck or Red Hook. All at the station agreed that although based in Sharon, KZE's main audience is in the mid-Hudson Valley. "Our transmitter is in Millerton," Doud explained, "and the signal is directed west, toward the mid-Hudson Valley, so that we won't interfere with another station at our same frequency that is down south in Danbury, or with another that is east of us in Connecticut. So we're basically a mid-Hudson Valley radio station, always have been, always will be." Barb added, "We'd love to be in Red Hook or Rhinebeck. These are two such incredibly cool towns, and they both represent so much of what the station is."

And meanwhile the music goes on. KZE is still independently owned and operated, and independent radio, at its best, is community-based and can have a real impact on the community it serves. St. Pierre pointed out, "I think there are a lot of people who are starving for an eclectic mix of music. Something where there's going to be a surprise. You hear something unique on the radio, and it makes your day. People value that." Says Hermans, "the station is really performing a service for people's mental health. That there's a station that's not beholden to the powers that be, that you're not hearing the same four songs every hour, you're hearing a breath of culture, it makes us all a little more culturally enriched."

Rob Schumer resides locally and practices ophthalmology, as a glaucoma specialist, in Kingston, Red Hook and New York City. With his wife Ruth, he recently produced and directed the documentary film Bluegrass Journey. A music aficionado and player, he enjoys baroque, be-bop, Broadway, bluegrass and rock more or less equally.