On Saturday, Jan. 23 Trinity University’s radio station, KRTU, celebrated its 40th anniversary. The celebration was held at the KRTU station in Laurie Auditorium and featured an array of activities for guests.
“We’ll have music and food and beverages. We’ll be giving station tours and we just confirmed that we’ll have a recording station upstairs where members, volunteers, and anyone who is involved with the station can go and tell their story, little testimonial recordings to get that history down and preserve it. And then we’ll have a little bit of a program where we’ll have some really special guest speakers,” said Jaime Lopez, general manager of KRTU.
Some of the guest speakers included Jim Blakemore and Ryan Webber, Trinity alumni who were involved with the radio station.
“One of our original founders and a long-time supporter, Jim Blakemore, Trinity class of ’77, is coming in to speak. And Ryan Webber, who is still involved with the radio as a committed volunteer on air, is coming in. He was also a student at Trinity and one-time station manager and operations manager,” Lopez said.
KRTU also used the celebration to announce big changes with the station’s broadcasting tower.
“We’ve got some great news to make. The big announcement is we are moving our tower. We have been working very hard to solidify a good portion of the funds to do so. We feel confident that by September or October of this year we will make the move,” Lopez said.
The tower move should correspond with the second anniversary celebration that KRTU will host this October.
“We will have a big community celebration on October 7, alumni weekend. So it’ll act as a big reunion. We anticipate that a lot of the original founding members from ’76 and ’77 will be present. Then we’ll make a huge community announcement and hopefully switch over to the new wattage,” Lopez said.
The anniversary marks a huge milestone for KRTU and shows the stations emphasis on keeping up with trends in technology.
“When I speak to some of the original founders, all of them have the common thread that technology is what will advance us. That’s been a running theme since the “˜70s. It’s in the department of communication, which is a department of technology. It’s staying on top of technology and advancement and growth. That’s something that KRTU, as an extension of the communication department, has never lost sight of. So with every decade, [the questions are] what’s the new technology and how do we keep up with it,” said Lopez.
Members of the Trinity administration also remarked on the milestone of the radio station.
“It’s a tremendous milestone for the radio station,” said David Tuttle, associate vice president and dean of students. “In the time that I’ve been here, to see the visibility of KRTU on campus and in the community and to see the momentum that it has, I just think its become more and more prominent and professional, it’s a great way to break out of the Trinity bubble.”
