KCSM jazz station cuts programming

Starting this week, the voices of some notable Bay Area music programmers will be missing or heard less often on jazz radio KCSM (91.1 FM) due to budget cuts.

Veteran San Francisco music producer and radio host Harry Duncan will no longer do his Sunday evening KCSM show, “In the Soul Kitchen,” a gumbo of soul, funk, jazz, roots reggae and other music genres that aired on KUSF for 28 years and has been on KCSM since 2014.

Ron Pelletier, one of many KCSM announcers who honed their craft at Alameda’s famed KJAZ before its demise in 1994, lost his two late-night slots, when he could stretch out musically, but will be heard instead on the mellow-toned “Jazz Oasis” on Saturday evening.

Other employees could be in jeopardy as well as the College of San Mateo station resolves a long-ignored union and education-code issue regarding the fate of “temporary” employees — some of whom have worked at KCSM for years — that could further diminish one of the last 24-hour jazz stations in America.

The changes, according to people who attended a recent staff meeting, were made in response to the college’s concern about a budget shortfall at KCSM, a largely self-sustaining operation whose triannual public fundraising drives bring in about $800,000.

“Like all public broadcast stations that continue to struggle with the same issues, we want to decrease expenditures and increase revenue, and meet the needs of the listening audience,” said Bailey, who declined to comment on the specifics of the budget, the staff cuts or other pending personnel issues.

With the pending sale of the college’s KCSM-TV license — the district stands to make about $10 million from the Federal Communications Commission’s recent auction of broadcast spectrum space to wireless companies — some worry the radio station might eventually be sold.

Sonoma County public television station KRCB announced two weeks ago that it will receive a whopping $72 million from the auction by agreeing to move its signal from an ultrahigh-frequency band to a less powerful VHF transmission.