The Story of KMFA

by Katherine Tanney

Funding, Then and Now

What happened next depends on who you talk to, but one thing everyone can agree upon is that two very attractive young women, housewives named Jane and Jackie, took it upon themselves to go out and raise the initial money.

Jacquelyn Small Jackie is author and therapist Jacquelyn Small. In 1966 she was Jackie Gee, wife of United States 5th Circuit Court Judge, Thomas Gee. Her best friend, Jane Leonard, was married to the executive director of the Texas Republican Party. Both women missed classical KHFI and approached their friend Rod Kennedy about the matter. (Kennedy had owned and operated KHFI before its purchase by Kingsberry’s group; after that, he stayed on as Vice President.

Kennedy recalled, “[Jane and Jackie] said, ‘We want to keep Leonard with a salary so he doesn’t go away and we want to build a station for him.’ And I said, ‘Well let me call Nockey.’” When it was understood that the new station would be noncommercial and would require a chunk of capital to become a reality, the ladies went into action.

“The original idea was that we were just going to send out a large mailing and attempt to get a whole lot of listeners who would be willing to pay us ten dollars apiece to get the station going,” Jackie explained. “Well, I’m a realist and I knew from the very beginning just how difficult that was going to be. And so I got my friend Jane to go with me to visit businessmen and women around the city to see if any of them would be willing to be founders for $1000 apiece.”

“Jane was blonde and Jackie was brunette,” remembers Custis Wright, widow of legendary UT professor and eventual longtime KMFA Board chairman, Charles Alan Wright (1967-1990). “They were beautiful fundraisers. They would go and they would just stalk people and they were so good looking they got lots of money that way.” (The Wrights were friends of Jackie and Tom Gee; Charlie, as he liked to be called, held informal business meetings with the two women at his home during the many months they worked on finding money for KMFA.)

Jackie added, laughing, “I believe it was the man at Superior Dairies who said, ‘Are you aware you’ve just come in here and asked me for a thousand dollars?’ But he gave it to me.”

“[They] were not to be refused,” said Kennedy. “Very eager, very aggressive young women who got a hold of the businessmen of this town and got the station paid for and on the air.”

Mayo King, manager of Rauscher- Pierce Securities, began accompanying the two women on their calls after pledging his $1000 to the station. His standing as a community leader boosted their credibility and led to more and more businesses—25 in all by the time they were through—signing on as cash donors to KMFA.

Jackie continued, “We made the promise that these founders would be mentioned three times a day over the air for the lifetime of the station. We tried to pick just one business in each category so they wouldn’t feel that they were competing with each other. Like, if we got a bank we didn’t try to find another bank.”

(As a side note, Jackie should be credited with coming up with the call letters K-M-F-A with her friends Kennedy and UT’s Radio-TV President, Bob Schenkkan. When the trio received the disappointing news that their first choice, K-M-O-A, was taken, Classical Music Of Austin became Classical Music For Austin.)

Donations also came in the form of equipment, office space, advertising, and more. For example, KHFI-AM-FM-TV turned its classical record library over to KMFA, as well as giving the new station space on its tower for an antenna and space in its building for a transmitter. According to Willet, they even offered to provide the power to operate the transmitter.

Dale Jones And that’s how the station got on the air. It was truly a community effort. Nockey and his wife stayed up nights putting together the application for an FCC license; Dale Jones formed a nonprofit corporation under the name Capitol Broadcasting, Incorporated; and a Board of Trustees was named, its members comprising all those who had given and would go on giving their knowledge, time, and expertise to the station without compensation. Additional big donors, so-called “Charter Members” at $500 each, were rounded up and a first year budget was set. But once it was up and operating, from 1 p.m. until midnight seven days a week, fledgling KMFA needed members more than anything else.

Actually, the word “member” was rarely if ever used in the beginning. KMFA was “listener supported,” a “community radio station” that solicited donations and offered, as thanks, subscriptions to its monthly program guide, which was called “Music for Austin.” A one-year subscription required a donation of at least $10. The program guide included paid advertisements, another important form of income for the station. The problem was selling enough subscriptions to ensure KMFA’s second year of existence.

Jeff Kodosky, cofounder of National Instruments, whose family foundation underwrites KMFA’s nationally syndicated program, “Classical Guitar Alive,” began listening to the station in 1970 when he and his wife moved to Austin so he could study physics. “I was a poor graduate student and so I couldn’t even afford membership for the first couple of years.” (In 1971 the station saw the need for a student rate and cut its subscription price accordingly to five dollars.)

Rod KennedyCreative ways of raising money were tried. During the handful of years, beginning in 1967, that Kennedy was its official development consultant, KMFA experimented with large benefits such as the self-explanatory “Rock for Bach” and the station’s fifth anniversary concert fundraiser, which was notable for showcasing, on one bill: band leader Les Elgart, banjo picker Earl Scruggs, hornist Bobby Hackett, and the “KMFA Stage Orchestra,” led by a Hollywood conductor/composer. Though the reviews were positive, the cost of producing these events at the Municipal Auditorium put little extra in the bank for KMFA.

Kenneth ByrdIn 1970, operations manager and future general manager, Kenneth Byrd (1971-1973 as GM) made headlines with his 17-hour telephone request marathon fundraiser. It was the first time KMFA broadcast through the night and it was meant to entice listeners with such a possibility. About $1000 in pledges came in. (Keep in mind that a pledge didn’t mean money in those days. Credit card numbers were not taken over the phone as they are today. Callers left their names and addresses and were later solicited by mail for their checks.)

Countless events benefiting KMFA have been held throughout its forty-year history, including performances by Jean-Pierre Rampal and James Dick, Austin Ballet Theater, and the Gilbert & Sullivan Society. But perhaps the most popular fundraiser was the annual “Musical Garage Sale,” dreamed up in 1982 by the Friends of KMFA, a group of devoted volunteers.

“We would put out an open invitation to our listeners to bring in any unwanted music related items,” explained former program director, Scott Dawes (1990-1996), “from LPs or CDs to harmonicas, music stands, and sheet music. You name it, people brought it in. They were enormously successful, financially, for the station.”
But the question of funding remained a critical one throughout KMFA’s first decade and never more so than during the summer of 1974 when, due to “neglect and mistakes of omission,” according to the American-Statesman, the station came perilously close to going out of business.

“Leonard [Masters] came on the air abruptly and said that they had just learned they had a financial crisis and didn’t even have enough money to meet the payroll at the end of the week,” Bob Thurmond recalled. “Well, the response was phenomenal. People would walk in, drop a twenty-dollar bill on the desk and walk out--frequently.”

In just 10 days, the station managed to raise $16,000 and avert the worst once more. (The American-Statesman article noted that daily announcements of KMFA’s poor financial condition, followed by appeals for help, had been a staple of the station, occurring about every six months since its debut.) Such was, and still is, the pact between KMFA’s listeners and their source for high quality, commercial-free classical music.

Charles Alan Wright Luckily for the station, it had another early weapon against failure. His name was Charles Alan Wright. A brilliant lawyer and legal scholar who argued several important cases before the United States Supreme Court and advised Richard Nixon’s defense team during the Watergate scandal, Wright was, according to KMFA Board member Nancy Scanlan (1978-present), “majordomo” at each and every Board meeting.

“He was always a bit formidable, a bit formal,” Scanlan said. “He was a fascinating man who apparently didn’t sleep very much and got so much done. If we were short on money he called a few people or made a donation himself.”

Wright’s other enduring legacy at KMFA was his practice of holding Board meetings at Tarry House, a private club, where they are still held today. Scanlan remarked, “I’ve never been on a Board before or since where the meeting is in the late afternoon and it includes cocktails. And Charles Alan Wright paid for our cocktails.” (It is not known precisely when this practice began, only that it was in place by the time Scanlan joined the Board in 1978.)

Many who knew him noted Wright’s love of letter writing, a form of communication he much preferred to wasting time on the telephone. In a letter to his children dated April 30, 1973 (provided by his widow), Wright explained how he managed to raise two-thirds of the money needed to purchase a microwave relay unit for KMFA.

I have tried unsuccessfully to get money from federally financed programs and from foundations, he wrote. The members of the Board feel it so important we get this equipment that they have been proposing that we borrow the money and pay it off over some long term. I have been against this. KMFA has never been in debt and I think it would be dangerous for us to go into debt.

Wright’s solution? He wrote to a wealthy person here in town that has been generous to us in the past, but he didn’t mention any specific amount.

I was unhappy when I saw in today’s mail a letter from her. Such a quick response seemed likely to be no, he continued. But to Wright’s delight, the woman and her husband offered to donate $4000 if the station could raise the other two. He concluded the paragraph, That ought to be child’s play.

Frank Bash Part of KMFA’s money problems were connected to its on-air fundraising drives, which were poorly coordinated. Longtime Board member and former director of UT’s McDonald Observatory, Frank Bash, explained, “It used to be, in the ’70s, membership drives would go on for two months and there was just a little mention every once in a while that the membership drive was on. It was painful.”

With the hiring of general manager Jeff Krys (1996-2005), Bash said the drives became shorter and more focused, looking much as they do today. The station currently conducts two eight-day membership drives per year, in fall and spring, with a targeted three-day birthday drive at the end of January. Under the leadership of Jeff Krys and Program Director Randy Harriman other milestones were reached as well, such as the production of award-winning programs, transmitter power increased, and the broadcast day expanded to 24 hours.

Asked how he feels about “pitching” on the air, early morning announcer Jeffrey Blair said, “At first and for a very long time I really despised it, because I felt like we were going out with a sign and a tin cup and panhandling on a corner. After a while I got to realize that this is the way we do business. We don’t sell advertising. This is what we do, and we either do it successfully or we don’t.”

Better management, greater attention to market research, and Austin’s phenomenal population growth eventually led KMFA to more effective membership drives and firm financial footing, which today derives primarily from the support of its more than 6000 members. And there’s a brand new source of funding on the way.

Jack Allen In 2006, general manager Jack Allen (2005-present) was the impetus for the station’s first ever award of a Community Service Grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“There had been a spirit of independence with this station for so long,” Allen said, referring to the station’s nonrelationship to federal or state funding. “And that’s cool, but President Lyndon Johnson, back in the middle ’60s as part of his vision for a “Great Society” signed into law the CPB and set aside taxpayer monies to support and strengthen the public service of stations just like KMFA, and to not go after those monies I felt was poor stewardship on our part.”

(No records exist, but statements to the media by previous stakeholders and by Charles Alan Wright indicate that in its early days KMFA tried for but did not qualify to receive CPB money due to its small size and non-minority status. The station also appealed to the City Council for assistance in 1972 and, in what turned out to be a flawed and controversial decision; the Council denied the station’s request.)

After staff members spent months putting together the application and working with a Washington D.C. lawyer, auspiciously named Melody Virtue, KMFA was one of 11 stations to receive CPB funding.

“In perpetuity, as long as we remain in compliance, KMFA will receive a minimum of $117,000 a year, which represents over 10% of our budget,” Allen continued. “It’s an organization-changing gift.”