Both established in the early 1950s, KUHF and KUHT have since featured news on public events and family-oriented programs. After years of serving Houston in their separate media, the two stations are on track to become one.
“The pooling of resources is expected to make it possible to create additional local programming that will focus on the university’s educational mission, particularly priority initiatives such as health, energy, the arts and education,” Richard Bonnin, executive director of media relations, said.
Concurrent with the University’s continuing journey toward higher quality learning for its students, the merger is projected to expand the stations’ ability to deliver the same quality programs with additional features centered on the public.
“There will also be a renewed focus on developing ways to better serve the community, such as by strengthening partnerships with the Texas Medical Center,” Bonnin said.
No news has been released on how the merger will affect the programs run by the two stations.
There is an ongoing search for a media executive to help develop and implement the eventual merger of its television and radio stations, Bonnin said in a press release.
Outside the news community, little about the merger has surfaced to students.
“I didn’t know about the merger,” engineer sophomore Alyson Gussios said.
Even considering the small stream of information about the change, the stations have been a part of many people’s lives for a long time.
“PBS has had a good effect on my life. I think, as kids, we all have watched cartoons on PBS like ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog.’
And as adults, we’ve watched programs with interesting information like ‘Nova,’” construction management junior Jose Valle said.
“I really don’t think the public will even take notice of the merger, but for UH it will probably be good,” Valle said. “Nowadays, with 200 plus channels at my fingertips, I barely have time to watch PBS.”
Looks like you are about to become Houston's first choice for exciting, entertaining and enlightening programming by including members of the community – especially UH graduates and friends – in the program planning process.
Hopefully UH students can become part of that planning process along side UH graduates and develop competencies as students before they graduate.
That would look really good on a resume.
Perhaps many different boards will be created that will give students the opportunity to spend one semester working 'hand-and-glove' with members of the wider community of Greater Houston on programming ideas and evaluation of what works and what doesn't work.
Now you need to figure out a way to include The Daily Cougar in that process.
::
GP
The subtext to this story is that UH is stretching the numbers with the 2 stations it already has, and the acquisition of KTRU from Rice has been projected to cost an extra $1mm per year in operational over-head, as uncovered by Texas Watchdog, further generating negative cash flow. In any case, UH stations are not run by or for students anymore. For the last 25 years at least they have been hijacked by the NPR syndicate who won't allow students to do anything except work as interns and read the school lunch mean over the air. Just check KUHF's website for the staff directory and draw your conclusions — UH students were thrown under the bus long ago.
For alternative insight on this news story, check out this link from Texas Watchdog:
http://www.texaswatchdog.org/2011/01/ktru-broker-cost-un...