Livin' in the KCIT...Talkin' hard times in Kansas City...

Now for something a little more lighthearted...

I majored in radio/TV, so I reserve the right to lapse into an uncontrollably animated state whenever I see a website dedicated to a failed TV station. Over 40 years ago, there was a station in Kansas City bearing the unmistakable call letters KCIT. Evidently, TV in Kansas City at the time was just as laden with questionable preemptions as Cincinnati was later. KCIT's selling point was that they picked up the shows that the main network affiliates preempted. (Even The Brady Bunch was preempted! What is this world coming to?!)

Now there's a bloke out there who has an entire website lamenting the loss of this short-lived station. And it's hilarious! Like where he talks about how KCIT once spliced out a climactic scene from a movie to use in a promo, then spliced it back in upside-down and backwards before they aired the film.

The best part of this guy's website is his lengthy diatribe about his heroic efforts to pick up this station. He goes on and on and on about how his parents wouldn't buy him a TV set that was capable of picking up KCIT clearly. This cranky narrative takes up most of a page. It sounds like his inability to watch KCIT ruined his whole life.

I can sympathize to some extent. I recently learned that the real reason Cincinnati radio stations banned songs over lyrics that were tolerated in other cities is that right-wing groups threatened to picket the stations' advertisers. When these songs were first banned, it led to the internalization of the notion that a song was somehow "tainted" unless it was "safe" enough not to be banned from local airwaves. Thus, anyone who listened to the few stations you could pick up locally that played these songs was made to feel like some sort of pariah. Long story short: right-wing extremism kills.

America's seemingly wide smorgasbord of TV and radio stations doesn't always foster diversity of voices. Rather, it often creates media congestion. This congestion has turned the airwaves into a specialty medium where right-wing talking points are amplified and songs are repeated too often. Dissenting voices usually can't afford to compete.

Without further ado, here's that uproarious ode to KCIT that I've been talking about...

http://www.wtv-zone.com/dpjohnson/kcit50