Reporter Turns Radio Passion to Public Service (First Person)

Rick Stockdale

general manger, KUAF-FM

Fayetteville

I was into journalism pretty early. As a kid I would play make-believe baseball games with another kid in the neighborhood. Part of our game was to also call the play-by-play like you’d hear on the radio.

When I went to college, I enrolled in broadcast courses and was on the air from my first semester. Midway through the 1970s, I decided I wanted to work with National Public Radio, so I also went and got my master’s degree.

After college I did freelance reporting in Washington D.C. for a Canadian radio network and a New Zealand radio network. It was hard to find stories that those audiences wanted to hear – and that the networks wanted to pay for – but it was a lot of fun.

Then the opportunity to come to the University of Arkansas opened up in 1980. At the time, the station was a 10-watt student station. I saw opportunity.

Fortunately, there were people in this area who knew what NPR could be and that you could listen to opera on the radio. They helped a lot, and in 1985 we affiliated with NPR and began broadcasting at 100 watts. In 1989 we raised the power to 60,000 watts and with that we could really cover Fayetteville, Springdale and up into Benton County. That helped build our budget up enough to qualify for grants.

Today our budget is about $1 million per year. In 2007, funding broke down like this: 14 percent from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, 19 percent from the University of Arkansas and 67 percent generated by listeners and underwriters.

It’s pretty easy to get out of bed; there’s just always something. Right now, it’s the new station we’re raising money for.

I’ve got say, the one thing that stands out as my favorite moment was that one day in mid-January 1985. I drove home and at 4 o’clock there was “All Things Considered” airing in Fayetteville for the first time.

– Interviewed by Worth Sparkman