That’s so depressing. I worked there in 2002-2003, and for a short time (summer 02) had my own punk show called the Tuesday Night Riot. Until I got fired for not showing up for meetings.

I went out to Lubbock for the Baylor game, and after the game I walked over to the Student Media Building and stood outside and dialed 806-742-KTXT and hoped a DJ would answer, and let me in to take a last look around. I saw the phone light flashing through the window but apparently, the station was on autopilot.

Keep it Locked to the Left!

I just joined the facebook group. Shutting down KTXT 88.1 is a complete travesty! This station I can say changed my taste in music entering college. I was a top 40 kid coming out of high school and this station certainly contributed in opening up my horizon. It’s a darn shame it shut down with no warning and no reason. I will help with whatever to keep this great station open!! Maybe Leach will accept the contract and give a kickback to the station..

This was my last semester at Tech, and i have been dj’ing Getting Harder, the metal show, for the past three years. The way they went about this was pretty sneaky and underhanded in my opinion. Yesterday, at 2:30 they called the station manager and told him what was happening ten minutes before they pulled the plug. One of our other exec staffers was on the air at that point. By the time I got there, they had painted over the KTXT logo on the wall in our lobby and were shooing everybody out. They had threatened to change the locks and the entry codes before anybody even had a chance to get their cd’s out of there.

They are shutting down a Texas Tech institution that is 50+ years old. They can say that we weren’t holding up our end but I would be doing my show until midnight and see our exec staff up there working their asses off to get new shows or listening to cd’s to put on the air. And I would seriously like to see a college radio station that generates a lot of revenue. To me the excuse of maintenance of equipment is laughable. Most of the maintenance was carried out by people on our staff, and most of the hardware in the broadcasting booth hasn’t been upgraded since around 1999 when we were the first station in Lubbock to broadcast on the internet.

They need to look long and hard at the cultural implications this has for the surrounding area. There are now no local fm stations that are not owned by Clear Channel, effectively homogenizing what the people of this city listen to. Why couldn’t they have a sit-down with our staff and let them know how bad it was? I had talked with our Program Director the week before and he said everything was going great. The College Music Journal has ranked KTXT in their top 10 consistently.

KTXT was a place for the outsiders of Texas Tech to gather and have our own little influence on the University and Lubbock. For lots of us, we were moving 6+ hours away from home and found a great group of people to hang out with. Through KTXT, we brought in hundreds of bands to a city most of them had never heard of.

It just upsets me that something that has been a Tech tradition for so long is being swept under the rug like this. But I know the exec staff is trying to get some stuff together.

In the meantime check out the facebook group and the myspace http://www.myspace.com/ktxt for updates on the situation.

What the fuck.

KTXT has been the only radio station I’ve actually liked or cared about, ever. I’ve been listening to them off and on since the first time I lived here, in 1988.

I can see where the maintenance costs of a broadcast station might get serious whenever some kind of major equipment problem came up. Even though it’s a low-power station, it’s not hard to imagine a $10K repair item popping up now and then (electronics, antenna, wiring, etc). And of course the bean counters always attribute a portion of total costs to something like this, making the radio station technically responsible for a share of everything from insurance premiums to lawn maintenance. If you went pure internet, you could avoid the costs of maintaining the broadcast equipment (maybe even sell that part) but you’d still have the ‘paper’ costs the accountants gave you.

But even if they were on solid ground about the cost issues, it’s still pretty cheesy when they play the surprise shutdown game right at semester’s end. It’s just their way of saying we don’t care what you think about it.

I was just sent this by a member of the Save KTXT facebook group. The Board of Regents is meeting tomorrow, and we need anybody who is able to show up.

It looks like the the Board of Regents meets beginning at 11 a.m., goes into closed session, and then opens again to the public at 2 p.m. There’s some variation in their meeting times. Until I can find out more tomorrow, 11 a.m. seems like the safest bet.

Their minutes are here:
http://www.irim.ttu.edu/Reports/StateReports/SYSTEM/Minutes.php

Here’s the where:
Board Room 201
Second Floor
202 Administration Building
Lubbock, TX 79409

Here’s the contact:
806-742-2161
806-742-4345 fax
Christina Martinez, Executive Secretary to the Board can be reached by phone, fax
or e-mail at christina.martinez@ttu.edu.