Palm Desert Airwaves Get a Little Busier as KCOD Goes Live

Amid the confines of the Diesel Mechanics Building on The College of the Desert campus, students and faculty welcomed a new addition Friday afternoon on Palm Desert’s newest radio station: KCOD 1620AM.

“I have not seen so much excitement from my students before,” said journalism professor Laurilie Jackson, whose radio & TV announcing course curriculum serves as an educational framework for the project. “We’re all thrilled to be able to take classroom know-how to work in a real environment like KCOD.”

Jackson explained that the station -- which will be broadcasting at a modest 10 watts from campus -- will reflect a wide range of student interests, with programming to match.

“From now on, we’ll be on the air Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. with a lot of different music, news, talk shows … a lot of different views and attitudes,” she said. “We’ll also have a get-to-know-your-faculty show with profiles of different professors and other campus personalities.”

Student station manager Jayel Aheram – who, as something of a media Swiss Army knife, also serves as editor of The Chaparral, COD’s campus newspaper and president of  the school’s journalism club – noted that the highly diverse members of his new airstaff seem to be taking the ball and running with it.

“We’re trying to provide training and encouragement … empowering students to produce their own shows,” he said. “And we’re already seeing producers creating Facebook pages and Web sites to promote their shows.”

For student radio personality Erica Barajas – whose program ‘Nini’s Traffic Mix’ is scheduled to run Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 5 p.m. – the opportunity to work at KCOD represents a chance to try something new.

“I’m a mass communications major,” she said. “I’ve been working with the (campus) newspaper, but I saw the station as a chance to help me learn all aspects of the media.”

According to Jackson, the genesis of the KCOD initiate came from Robert Pellenbarg, a math and science professor who teaches an oceanography course.

Upon arriving at the campus in 2006, Pellenbarg recognized a vacuum and kicked the idea upstairs.

Given a green light, he said he set events in motion, working with other faculty to secure modest funding for equipment from an alumni group and ferreting out space for the small air studio and production space in the aforementioned – and somewhat incongruous – facility.

Now, after almost a year since some of those issues were resolved, Pellenbarg is proud of his role in the project and the opportunities it affords.

“The students did all this,” he said, showing off the tiny engineer’s booth and broadcast studio. “From now on, all broadcasting courses will use this facility – it’s a great opportunity for students.”