A unique station in Eskimo Country

by Peter Twitchell

When I began working at KYUK Radio May 21, 1971 I never thought that I ever would get into radio broadcasting as a line of work and making a living. I put in 24 years of my life as radio operations manager training young men and women the art of radio broadcasting.

I trained with Mike Gravel’s “Columbia School of Broadcasting” at the age of 22 and learned very quickly what made radio sound good. Number 1 Rule was to never clear your throat when I was on the air. Rule number 2 when reading the weather report, never say, “Partly Cloudy.”

The Art of radio broadcasting was to make the listener feel good and upbeat.

And the proper thing to say was “Partly Sunny.”

My 3 months of training at the “Columbia School of Broadcasting” paid off in dividends. Young disc jockeys and announcers would inadvertently forget and clear their throats to get rid of the “frog” in their throats. Eventually, radio began to sound professional, but unique in that we were a bilingual radio station.

We were a professional Yupiaq Radio Station in Eskimo Country. I traveled to Gallup, New Mexico to study the aspects of a bilingual station and brought that home to KYUK in 1975. Then I drove up to Silver Springs, Colorado and learned the ingredients of mixing and blending Morning drive music with Pop, Country and Light Rock music, and the art of dialogue.

It was all new to me, but beneficial to good sounding radio.

What I learned in the process really helped our radio announcers at KYUK, but some announcers were gifted with open mic.

I learned that having many voices on KYUK Radio was a good avenue, making it interesting and radio all the more listenable.

Making radio sound good was like, adding ingredients to a fine dish. A dash of this and that, but always being yourself.

My 24 years of dialoging with our audience was a blessing and necessary for our existence as a broadcasting radio station in southwest Alaska. Our audience made us who we are today in 2022. And who we will be in 50 years. Merry Christmas everyone!