Student radio is important free speech

In 1950, when KUHF went on the air, it was housed in a $400,000 studio on the fifth floor of the Ezekiel Cullen Building. The studios were built to the same high standards Hugh Roy Cullen insisted on for the entire building. KUHF was a replica of the NBC radio studios in Rockefeller center.

In 1953, KUHT squeezed KUHF into one control room only. Next, even worse, it was relocated at the end of a classroom in a residential looking building near the College of Engineering, which was scheduled for demolition in 1967 but still stands today. Even so, student and faculty exuberance, which put KUHT on the air and broadcasting, kept KUHF on the air from 1965 to 1970, giving experience to many graduates — Bill Worrell, Rob McCain, Jim Dalby, Pam Ivey, Pat Fant, Ricky Reeves, and others who have worked in commercial radio over the decades. From 1970 onward, Arvil Cochran managed and gradually converted KUHF into National Public Radio. Cochran, previously a Channel 8 engineer, moved the station into a suite in the School of Communication Building after it opened in 1978.

With the total demise of commercial classical music radio in the mid-1980s, KUHF took on the dual-music genres of classical and jazz music. With avid classical music listeners outweighing and willing to pay for classical music broadcasting, KUHF transferred its jazz library to Texas Southern University, and it now occupies the third floor of the Melcher Public Broadcasting center.

Though not quite as perfect as its Ezekiel Cullen Studios 50 years earlier, a Tier One broadcasting operation exists today and should remain so. UH does not need to get into the expensive news and information business, as many commercial news stations have failed in recent years.

As for Rice University, the Houston public needs to hear more, not less, from those bright future leaders by preserving their opportunity to be on air. Students need to have access to freedom of speech — in broadcasting and in print. Students need to learn how to make use of media by having responsibility for it.

William Hawes, a professor at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, was general manager of KUHF from 1965-1969. He is also the author of “Public Television: America’s First Station.”