Headline       RADIOFREETALKEETNA LOCAL TALENT AND FIERCE COMMUNITY LOYALTY GIVE THIS LITTLE STATION AN AIR OF INDEPENDENCE 

Run Date        10/26/1995     

Day     Thursday       

Page    F1     

Section         Lifestyles     

Edition         Final  

Length  Long   

Dateline       TALKEETNA --   

Illustrator     PHOTO BY BOB HALLINEN  

Story Byline    By SANDI McDANIEL Daily News reporter  

Type    Staff  

Body Text       Ed, fresh moose hide for you. Please pick it up, ASAP. Bill and Lori, no caribou yet. Can you check on the house? To the person who found the busted drive shaft on the spur road, please drop it off at my farm, and thanks. TX: Listeners in this town of 300 never know what they're gonna hear next on KTNA, 88.5 FM --RadioFreeTalkeetna. Tonight, on a street left unplowed in winter, at a window of warmth in the black, Robert Ambrose, 40, is lulling the town with the drums and baliphones of Mali. Same time next week, Jamaica. Later on, Portuguese Africa. Too exotic for you? Then tune in Monday afternoons for ''Granny'sRadio Recipes.'' Emmila Spires presides. Her long, gray hair swept up in a bun, she spins swing music and reads the life stories of Palmer pioneers. Between recipes for beluga snacks and whale soup, she might toss in a rendition of ''Goodbye, Sue'' or ''In the Mood.'' Built on the backs of community-minded do-gooders, KTNA first went on the air in January 1993, broadcasting from a one-room cabin on Second Street. (The sign says First, but it's really Second.) The cabin has since been divided into an entry and a ''pretty much'' soundproof studio. The business office is next door. Outhouse, out back. With its transmitter strategically placed near Trapper Creek, KTNA can be heard as far north as Denali National Park and as far south as that little rise just north of Eagle River, although not usually in Palmer and Wasilla. On a clear day, if they set their teeth right and hold one elbow in the air, a few Anchorage hilltoppers can listen in. Cabin radio is not new to Alaska, but while many small stations are buoyed by corporate underwriting, KTNA is not. It relies on a broad and local financial base, operating on $115,000 a year, one of the most meager public radio budgets in the state. Some money comes from grants. About 100 members annually pledge from $10 to $500 each. Local underwriting nets $8,000. The station has a paid staff of five part-time workers. Its entire music collection is either loaned or donated. ''We've always been forced to be lean,'' says station manager Julianne McGuinness, 35. Lean means longevity, she reckons. And independence. At a time when public radio is budgeting down by consolidating, KTNA is broadcasting a resistance, calling on its own community to keep the station alive. While KTNA is developing a cooperative with five Interior partners and serves as a repeater station for network programming like the BBC, ''Morning Edition'' and ''All Things Considered,'' its strength is local talent. Volunteers produce eight to 10 hours of original programming a day on subjects as diverse as sourdough cooking and large animal veterinary science. About 60 names appear on the station's volunteer roster. Some type, some file. Some take a cosmic look at the universe, like Kathleen Fleming, host of ''Star Date Susitna,'' who keeps the town up on what's currently visible in the night sky. Sarah Stearns, 22, stops by once a week, dumps her boots by the door and reads children's books. Michael Vaughan is an engineer whose real job is with Alascom. As a volunteer, he holds KTNA together, too, seemingly with gum and duct tape. Since the beginning,Talkeetna has wanted its radio station to reflect its rural, slightly quirky and independent lifestyle. The idea was born sometime in 1987. No one seems to remember who first suggested it, but one day a notice appeared around town: Anyone interested in radio? There were bake sales and spaghetti feeds. For a time, a few visionaries carried the sum total of the station -- a bundle of files -- all over town in a worn, blue backpack. ''It's been the most amazing learning experience for the community,'' says McGuinness, whose job as station manager was a crash course for this former Hell's Kitchen social worker. It was on-the-job training for Kathleen Sullivan, too. Once a secretary for the National Park Service, she now holds one of the toughest jobs in journalism: small-town news editor. She soothes ruffled feathers for stories she's reported and relies on stringers -- mostly area high school students she must train. The most the station has ever paid a reporter for a story: $25. Live radio may be what KTNA does best. On an afternoon when a dog named Cody warms a bench on the station's porch, three Irish musicians and their agent pull up in a mud-spattered minivan. They're on their way to play in Fairbanks, but have stopped inTalkeetna to pick up a gig at the local roadhouse. No luck, but someone pointed them to the radio station. So, with fiddle, guitar and squeezebox, the three scoot side-by-side up to microphones and let 'er rip. The boot-scuffed linoleum vibrates under their tapping feet. Several Talkeetnans confess KTNA has become the soundtrack to their lives. Nancy Trump, manager of Latitude 62, a lodge just outside town, keeps the station on all day in her office. When it comes to finding out what's going on in a town this small, she says, it's either the radio or the post office bulletin board. Even early critics of KTNA now sing the station's praises. ''I was skeptical this small community could manage a station like this,'' says Jim Okonek, owner of K-2 Aviation. ''But the station has matured quite nicely.'' ''I'm not much of a joiner,'' Okonek adds. Yet in the last three years, he has served on KTNA's finance committee, has become a member of its board of directors and, as a businessman, has underwritten weather reports and news from the Mount McKinley base camp.Talkeetna is usually divided equally on every issue, he says. Except for the radio station. ''I didn't think they could do it, and I didn't think I would like it,'' says Alan Kingsbury, an area farmer. ''But I'd say it's a pretty positive development here in the community.'' A self-described old fogy, Kingsbury hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with the station's management, but he enjoys their enthusiasm. Kingsbury and his wife, Leilani, live 12 miles round-trip from their own mailbox. Like other rural dwellers in the area, their home is television- and newspaper-free. KTNA has become their primary link to the outside world. A while ago, some people from a certain big television show about Alaska stopped by the station to take a few notes, according to McGuinness. But some Talkeetnans would just as soon not draw the connection to any mythical television towns, she says. Nobody wants tour buses creeping down First, er, Second Street. So ''Granny'' will probably never be famous except here, where the first time Spires heard her taped voice on the radio, she waltzed through town, shouting to neighbors: ''Hey! I'm on the radio!'' People listened. And they're listening still, some strolling down the street in their pajamas this very week, McGuinness notes, to pay their pledges. They're hooked on ''City Lights;'' metaphysics, poetry and philosophy. On ''Denali Echoes;'' personal messages to rural dwellers. And until the host moved out of town, on ''Getting to Know You;'' impromptu, Barbara Walters-type interviews with innocent bystanders. At one time, the station shied away from controversy, McGuinness says. Now, with more experience, it's bolder. ''Upper Susitna Valley In The Know'' provides a call-in format on hot issues like development and borough government. Because so many Talkeetnans have a sense of ownership regarding KTNA, policy differences about the station itself culminated in a heated public meeting last year in which one gentleman stood up and wept, pleading with opposing factions to find resolution. ''I love this station,'' Spires recalls him saying. You want polish, look someplace else.Talkeetna area listeners apparently feel there is plenty in the world that is polished. This is real, like them. So next time you're in town, look for a glowing bare bulb on the cabin wall here that can only mean one thing --Talkeetna is live. And please don't slam the door on your way out. It makes the records skip.      

Cutline         MICHAEL VAUGHAN, SARAH STEARNS , ROBERT AMBROSE