I am writing in response to Jason Hough’s letter to the editor that appeared in the Wednesday, Feb. 13 Daily. The letter, which ran under the headline “KURE not living up to potential” infuriated me, to say the very least.

In his letter, Hough claims that “there are not a lot of KURE listeners.” He says that “the music they play does not represent what the majority of average trendy college students listen to.” And, best of all, he says “KURE needs to play more of what you might hear on a corporate radio station, only a wider variety of that kind of music.”

Perhaps if Hough didn’t rely on MTV, Lazer 103.3 and Rolling Stone to spoon-feed him fake, corporate pop culture he’d feel differently. It’s a sad fact that mainstream music today is rarely an art form. Rather, it’s corporate product, carefully engineered to garner the most listeners and record buyers.

As far as the allegation that “there are not a lot of KURE listeners,” I beg to differ. Did Hough simply go around asking, “Do you listen to KURE?” How many people did he ask? Did he just ask his friends, who are likely to have similar tastes in music? Or did he randomly survey the Iowa State student body to find an actual estimate? I’m guessing that it’s not the latter. I’ll admit that I have no idea how many people were listening the last time I did my show, but I will offer as evidence that there was a half-hour period in which the request line rang so often that I had trouble cueing up songs.

In addition, I’d like to point out that musical diversity is horribly absent in today’s broadcast market.

Turn on your radio. Chances are, if you’re not listening to KURE or WOI, the broadcast you’re listening to is coming from a radio station owned by Clear Channel Communications. If you want to listen to a corporate radio station, then turn one on, by all means.

Just don’t defecate on the efforts of a dedicated group of student DJs simply because you have different tastes in music. It doesn’t bother me if you don’t listen, as I don’t get paid for what I do at KURE, anyway. I volunteer three hours every Sunday night just to ensure that the Ames radio market remains open and diverse, and I will never let anyone tell me what I should or shouldn’t play.

Joseph M. Arling

Junior

Journalism and mass communication