
affiliate and the oldest university owned FM
station in the nation having celebrated it's 60th anniversary a few years back. Plus, it's Kentucky's first public radio station. This 100,000 watt station serves the Bluegrass and
Eastern mountain region with national and local programming such as A Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk,
Joe's Blues, Fresh Air,
Crossroads
Radio, and more. WUKY gets big bonus points for offering great Triple A music a.k.a. Adult Rock; just right for music affectionados who love a well written
song without the drippy pop BS and constant rotation. Perhaps what's most impressive - the air staff is live! You get the local weather, time, and traffic as they happen -
not the usual canned crap from someone in Florida that was recorded a week ago, which, of course, runs counter to current
industry practice. Don't believe me? Take a listen to Bruce Springsteen's Grammy winning Radio Nowhere or Tom Petty's The Last DJ (yea, WUKY!...the opinons expressed here are strictly my own and not endorsed
by WUKY or the University of Kentucky).Friends and family have tried to get me into radio for as long as I can remember. I was a mass comm
major at one time, even earning my third class FCC license, but I never really wanted to be on the radio (I loathe
the sound of my voice); it was the techie stuff I liked. Lo and behold, all these many years later,
I'm finally on - it was a happy accident!
The story goes like this:
Program Director, "Gosh, I wish WUKY had an arts show for our younger audience but there's no place to put it in the schedule."
Kopana, "You've got streaming capabilities now, why not do podcasts?"
Program Director and GM (in unison), "OMG, that's brilliant. You start it!"
Kopana, "S%#*, what have I done?"
It was about that simple! I do much more than inteviews, though: I manage tonic's webpages, including the layout and
the graphics (I do some for WUKY, too). It's a pretty sweet project, I must say.
But I'm not in it alone by any means - Josh James very quickly came aboard (he's the station 'webmaster') followed closely by Dr. Greg Davis MD. and
Tiffany Reisz. They, along with Stacy Yelton, round out the tonic wait staff with occassional bar flies Joe Conkwright
and Mike Graves.