In a room no larger than a kitchen, Katie Stone is cooking up another world. Surrounded by children, adults and a jumble of electronic equipment, she's mixing together this week's one of a kind, kids-centered, live radio program.
Today's serving: dinosaurs and the changing weather. Outside, last night's snow and ice cover the streets. Welcome to the Control Room. It's where Katie Stone and her special crew concoct the KUNM Children's Hour every Saturday.
"OK, we're about to go on," Katie announces. A taut wire of instructions and action, she directs and produces the weekly show. Today's crew: six kid announcers, two kid guests, two adult co-hosts and one special guest.
"I want you on microphone 1, Eli, and Emma, at mike 3. Guests at mike 3."
The children sweep to their seats and put on their headsets. There's Eli, Emma, Jena, Daisy, Avery, Luna, Noah and Mary. Microphones are numbered 1 through 4 and everyone shares. Beside microphone 4 sits Avery, 8, who co-wrote today's script on New Mexico's dinosaurs. He watches Katie with intense focus.
The jumble and rattle of voices bounce around the studio, wane, and disappear. The program is about to go on the air. In the ensuing hush, the children sit and wait.
"Pull it down," Katie tells co-host Jonathan Wolfe, as he works the volume control panel. "Usually we have a kid engineer," Katie intones toward me, headphones on. "But because of the weather, he couldn't make it." Somewhere out there, Evan, 15, the show's engineer for the past three years, is listening.
In the background a small pre-recorded voice announces the station's byline and call number. "This is 89.9, Albuquerque and Santa Fe." It's an on the air voice-over. The children listen, and watch Katie much like an orchestra watches its conductor, and wait for cues.
Eli, 7, introduces today's segment to invisible listeners. "Welcome," he says brightly, "to the Children's Hour." While Eli speaks on air, Katie directs daughter Emma, 5. "Ready Emma, you're going to do the Knock Knock snow joke you wrote." And, confident of her abilities, Emma does, right into the microphone.
For the past 20 years, KUNM has brought the Children's Radio Hour to listeners throughout New Mexico. Reaching into transmitters across the state, it goes wherever KUNM goes, sometimes with the 89.9 call number, sometimes with others. KUNM General Manager Richard Towne estimates Children's Hour has 6,000 to 8,000 listeners any given week.
As a producer, Stone doesn't limit the number of kids who help with the program, and so far, she's been able to accommodate all who ask. Children help with writing, assist with calendar announcements and if they choose, work in engineering.
"Maybe these co-hosts will work in radio, TV or print media when they grow up, or maybe they will be activists working to preserve public access to our media. In the meantime, we try to have fun and make the show entertaining and thoughtful for all our listeners," she says.
Stone doesn't believe the studio's walls end at KUNM. She's had classrooms create content for shows and then come in to the studio on Saturdays to read their work and share it with the community. She's always on the lookout for more contributors.
The Children's Radio Hour broadcasts live from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. between the Saturday morning news program, Weekend Edition, and Folk Routes. Even among KUNM's eclectic lineup of shows, it's a bit offbeat. The Children's Radio Hour is New Mexico's only radio show where the focus is on younger kids. But that doesn't mean adults don't listen too. Half the listeners are over 55. "We know that adults are tuning in, and we try to include music and information that will be new and interesting for everyone listening," Katie says.
Nationwide there are radio programs created by young people, such as Youth Radio, which airs on National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI). KUNM runs its own Youth Radio on Sunday nights from 7 to 8 p.m., providing a glimpse into the world of young teens. But Children's Hour fills a much needed niche, bringing programming to younger children and their families, with a local focus.
On the table by Jonathan, the 'To Play' CD pile has grown smaller and the 'Played' pile larger. As the current song plays, Katie does a little dance. Eleven-year-old Luna laughs, "Katie, I didn't know you could do Irish dance!" Jonathan asks, "Is there anything Katie CAN'T do?"
It would seem not, for at 9:17 a.m., she announces that while the kids read the dinosaur script on air, she'll write the end-of-show script. "Now go ahead and cue CD 1," she tells Jonathan as the kids pull out their scripts on dinosaurs. They've practiced them before the show, but now they prepare to go live.
"Millions of years ago, before people lived on the earth, creatures that we call dinosaurs inhabited the planet. Most dinosaurs ate plants, but some ate meat," begins Luna, who has been on the show a year now. When asked what she likes most about being part of the Children's Hour, she pauses thoughtfully and decides, "I love basically the people and the community."
Kids help behind the scenes, too. Stone's son Eli, 7, does the at-home engineering, putting each show's one long track onto a CD in smaller, more useable pieces. And each week prior to show time, Jena Ritchey, 14, along with Jonathan Wolfe, meet Katie for several hours to select the program's music and polish up program content. Jonathan co-hosts the show. Jena is both co-host and co-producer, and has worked with Katie for the past year and a half. She helps Jonathan and Katie with the music selection every week.
Everyone is a volunteer.
Katie motions to guest speaker Dave Gutzler, Ph.D., meteorologist and climatologist. He shares microphone 4 with Avery. A seasoned expert, Avery mimes to Dr. Gutzler just how he should speak into the equipment's fuzzy exterior.
"Standby!" says Katie. "Have you kids all been SHOVELING?" she booms to listeners.
What follows next is part orchestration, part unrehearsed conversation. Dr. Gutzler discusses reasons for the changing weather, El Niño, hurricanes, climate change and global warming. Questions fly nonstop; crew kids indicate they want to talk by raising their hands. Dr. Gutzler emphasizes the importance of good science coming from compiled data. "I don't ‘BELIEVE’ in global warming," he tells listeners. "As a scientist, I look at the DATA and go from there."
After several minutes of intense focus on weather, the show starts to wind down. Katie notes she's going to announce local birthday kids on air. Jonathan gathers the day's materials and CDs. Katie waves her arms to indicate the weather Q&A is done and gathers up small slips of paper that served as makeshift scripts. Meanwhile, David Dunaway, host of Folk Routes, enters the studio carrying stacks of CDs and record albums. Next hour, coming right up.
On air, Katie chirps "Happy Birthday Natalia!" The kids slowly leave their chairs and trickle from the studio, reluctant to exit the Children's Hour world.
Tune in over the next few months, because Children's Hour is cooking up some special menus. You'll hear about bicycles, local kid poets, two Albuquerque Public Schools classes running their own shows, and Pi Day. Guest appearances include musicians from the Albuquerque Folk Festival, clown Wavy Gravy and Weird Al Yankovich.
But for all the different programs, local kids are the show's mainstay. "It's inspiring to hear what kids are doing, what they enjoy, and how they want to spend their time," says Stone. She welcomes kids who do interesting things to contact her.
Are you a kid who wants to share your experiences on the Children's Radio Hour? A teacher whose classroom would enjoy helping with programming or learning about radio? Contact Katie Stone at kunmkids@kunm.org. KUNM can be found online at http://kunm.org.
The Children's Radio Hour airs live on Saturdays at 9 a.m. at 89.9 FM in Albuquerque, Santa Fe; 91.1 FM in Arroyo Seco, Cuba, Cimarron/Eagle Nest; 91.9 FM in Taos, Las Vegas, Socorro and Nageezi, and everywhere else in the world online at kunm.org.
Tune in.