Former KRTU Station Manager, TU alumnus, and current KRTU Member and on-air host Ryan Weber.
Dear KRTU Family,
Trinity University students spent the past week on spring break, while I spent mine driving home to Oklahoma to visit family with my two young sons ...because they were on spring break. Road trips are good for thinking, and I thought a lot about the opportunities I had as a KRTU student, as well as the responsibilities I shouldered as one-time KRTU Operations Manager and then Station Manager. The combination of those was a feeling that I wanted to – needed to – do something more for KRTU than just my annual membership commitment.
That’s why I’m pledging $4,000 to the KRTU Tower Initiative - and I’d like you to join me!
KRTU has an incredible, once-in-a-generation opportunity to upgrade its broadcast signal, jumping from the 8,900 watts we installed in 2000, to a full 30,000 watt signal, on par with other major stations in town. Not only will this dramatically improve the signal quality within the current footprint, better serving over 1.3 million San Antonians, it extends our reach deep into the Hill Country. This will add 500,000 potential listeners in Boerne, New Braunfels, Seguin, and even some as far away as San Marcos and Kerrville!
Simply put - this is a game changer. But, it’s about more than just wattage and range:
KRTU traces a proud 41 year history of innovative programming serving the San Antonio community, while enhancing the educational opportunities of our students. For more than 15 years, that history has included a strong commitment to jazz as an important American art form, but also a positive force for community-building and personal enjoyment.
The KRTU Tower Initiative propels the station forward in 3 ways:
- Community Engagement – KRTU is the leader in San Antonio nonprofit collaboration, linking mission-oriented organizations together for a common cause. The KRTU Tower Initiative includes new efforts to build up the arts across the city, reaching out to bind these distant communities to the heart of San Antonio, and giving San Antonians greater access to the cultural vitality of our neighbors.
- Experiential Learning – Since the 2008 studio renovations, KRTU has been committed to providing students with access to cutting-edge radio equipment, software, and best practices. They've also taken seriously the need for students to understand that while KRTU is a learning lab, it is not ‘just’ a college radio station. KRTU students are expected to be intelligent, analytic, and professional in providing a curated listening experience for our entire audience. This expansion will push the walls of that laboratory well beyond Highway 1604, making it the largest public-access student activity in the city.
- Legacy – Broadcast upgrades don’t come around very often. The FCC closely monitors FM bandwidth, and in a tight market like San Antonio, this opportunity may never come again. But that also means there’s a significant permanence to this effort - the contributions we make today will continue to serve San Antonio and Trinity University students not for the next 5-10 years, but for the next 30+ years. And they will begin the moment we turn on the power.
The new FCC license is already approved, with construction on the tower and transmitter underway. The full KRTU Tower Initiative aims to raise $310,000 to fund the construction as well as the first 10 years of tower rental and maintenance costs. I’m setting my sights on the more immediate $210,500 construction budget, of which $188,000 is already raised - that leaves a $22,500 gap, and I’m asking you to help me close as much of it as we can.
Some of you already donate regularly to KRTU as members, which is excellent - your annual support makes KRTU possible on a daily basis. Others have grown more distant, as life tends to do, and that’s understandable.
Even going back to our esteemed founders, KRTU has always been built on the support and generosity of others – we never did it alone. You’ve all put in your time, your passion, long hours and innumerable mic breaks. But we need everyone for this. We need the KRTU Alumni to step up, do what you can, and pay-it-forward for generations of Trinity University students to come.
To achieve our goal, I’m asking you to make a major gift. I made my 2% commitment because I felt this was such an important opportunity, and that my time as both a student and staff demanded it. I could not ask you to support this if I did not both, feel the importance of the need, or be deeply invested in the effort myself.
I hope you’ll consider your time at KRTU, the long-lasting impact your gift will have, and what you can afford to give at this time. And then I hope you’ll double it - as a 2-year gift, paid out in installments.
Please join me in this effort, and in recruiting others to the cause. We will never do it alone, but as our remarkable past demonstrates, we can do anything together.
Thank you,
Ryan Weber
You might be interested in
