Underground Good: Lili Dubois

Ed Note: This Opinion piece is part of our Underground Good series, which focuses on providing a window into the mindsets of ordinary people doing good work in their community. It’s written by sociologist, coach and evaluation consultant Sharon Brisolara. You can find the rest of our Underground Good series here. Want to nominate someone? You can do that here.

Lili Dubois has been a broadcaster and professional musician since 1973. I first met her when I began hosting a radio show on KKRN in early 2022. She helped me learn how to use the equipment and was always ready to answer questions and help me troubleshoot problems, often the same problems again and again.  Although Lili might initially say that she “doesn’t do that much,” a few further questions will reveal the depth of her service and commitment. She is currently part of the program committee for Shasta County’s community radio station KKRN and operates the station’s computer broadcasting system part-time, and has been volunteering as producer, playwright and director of Scratched Up Radio Theater. She’s also quite funny. You can listen to archived copies of the show on KKRN.org by clicking here.

You’re a volunteer who works to keep KKRN operational. What is it like to be part of an all-volunteer organization? 

Well, nobody gets paid. Even our manager, Ellen Sugg, who has been doing this for over ten years, doesn’t get paid. We don’t run commercials, and we don’t get money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or any other larger organization. We exist totally on memberships, which we call donations, and underwriting. That is how we pay all of our bills. In the past, rent has been a problem, because we are a pretty lean organization.

What’s underwriting?

Underwriting is a great way for businesses to let local people know that they’re here in the community and support community radio.

Underwriting is not the same thing as commercials. With underwriting, we can describe the business, but there are three things that we can’t do because of Federal Communications Commission regulations. For one thing, if it’s a commercial business, we cannot announce the price of a ticket or sale item or that there is a special deal coming. The other thing we can’t say is that something is “the best,” as in “These are the best tires in town.” We can’t say that. And we can’t offer imperative statements like, “Come down, now” or issue a call to action. We also try not to put on the commercial announcer schtick that you hear on a lot of commercial radio stations.

There are quite a few operational costs for community radio. What are some of the big-ticket items that people don’t usually think about? 

There’s the license. We have to pay for the use of music so that composers/writers get paid something every time their songs are played.  Unless somebody creates all of their own songs. The other thing is, we have to pay for some of our national shows. We don’t broadcast National Public Radio, for example, because of the cost. That’s an expensive thing for nonprofit stations like ours.

We also have to pay rent at the Round Mountain station. Until recently, we had a studio in Redding on Bechelli and that was a real problem because not only did we have rent, but we also had electrical fees, air conditioning, and heating. We’re lucky right now to be co-located at the Arts Council, and we don’t have to pay for those things. For the Round Mountain studio, we have those facility costs and internet fees. 

In your view, what’s important about having a local community radio station?

For one thing, we promote local events, and we have local announcers, broadcasting from local places. When people go to broadcasting school, one thing they’re taught is to not necessarily talk fast, but just keep things going. On community radio our people haven’t been to broadcasting school and they speak like normal people. They also conduct more long-form interviews because we have the time.

It’s really great to have local news and information. Lately, Shasta County has been in the national news, but normally we’re not. During the COVID pandemic, for example, our manager, Ellen, was making daily updates on local progress. That was helpful. One of the things that I’d like to see are updates from CalFire entities about what is happening during fire season. It would be a bit of a chore, but it’s one of my hopes that we might be able to do that someday. I think there are programmers who would cover it.

There are differences in opinions about whether an all-volunteer organization is sustainable, and strong opinions about the benefits of being all-volunteer. What are the pros and cons of having at least the big positions, like the manager, paid?

If we were a commercial radio station, we would have full-time employees. We might have a news department and a staff engineer who would actually do the work of going up and working on the transmitter. Right now, to find someone to work on a transmitter takes a while and who knows how much an hour that would cost. If a station has a staff engineer, they could be up there that evening.

Commercial radio stations also have salespeople. Some public radio stations have a development director who seeks out underwriters and tries to bring in money in other ways, at least to pay for their salary. Commercial radio stations are generally affiliated with a national network. If they’re doing sports, for example, they might be connected with the major networks, like NBC or CBS.

Those stations have a lot of other things that we wouldn’t even dream of having, like a news van, fancy studio buildings, or a receptionist. They make public appearances. Of course, we do that as volunteers. We go out and have a table during events like the Earth Day celebration. 

You have a number of different roles. What are some of the things you typically do? 

I’m not really in charge of anything officially here at the station, but I do probably put in a lot of hours here, and I’ve gotten to know the equipment fairly well over the past seven years. Over time, I’ve certainly learned how to plug in cables! We’ve had to move about three times in the last six years. Somebody’s got to plug in all the cables into the control board, all the speakers, the computer . . .  It’s not an easy thing. I’m not averse to working underneath the control board, plugging in wires, and there are a lot of wires and cables. 

In terms of the radio station, there are about four of us who do the heavy-duty work. We have had to do sheet rock and tear out a wall. It was a lot of work, but it was better than paying several thousand dollars for a carpentry crew.

The most recent thing I’ve done is to get on the program committee. They needed a programmer on the committee.  I was the only one who volunteered for that, and it was fun. I’ve always wanted to be involved in selecting radio shows, and that happens more often than you might expect. For example, some of the syndicated shows stop broadcasting, because they’re going on vacation, or they’re going belly up, or somebody’s in the hospital. Who knows? We don’t want to keep running reruns, so it’s a matter of checking to see what’s available.

I also help train people, and Jim Dowling does a lot of that as well. New programmers come in here, maybe they’ve never been on the radio before. Maybe they’ve never run a mixing board or a recording software application, so training is necessary.

Another thing I started doing about six months ago is more production. Several of our staff have retired. Our program director Bobby retired about a year ago, several years after she probably wanted to retire, because we couldn’t really find another person available to be the program director on a volunteer basis. As did Shane, the person who has acted as our Operations Director since before we went on the air.

They did a lot of the programming: actually acquiring shows off the Internet and downloading them onto the recording computer and then onto our schedule so that they will automatically play. Believe it or not, we don’t have a person sitting on a control board all the time. We pre-record our shows and send them online to the recording computer. After that, they’re on the production computer, the on-air computer, which is the one that actually runs the transmitter. So there’s a lot of work involved. 

You are in charge of a couple of days of programming, aren’t you? 

Yes, I do Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Dickie Magdoff does three days and then Gary Orwig picks up the last day. We also have a computer guru named Andy Dadmun who can solve almost any problem that we’ve come up against. He’s invaluable. 

The logging of shows takes about three hours a day, on average, so that’s nine hours a week, logging the shows including public service announcements and underwriting statements. 

About how many hours do you think you spend in a typical week on other duties?

It depends on what week it is. The second part of the month is busier for me because of the radio show, Scratched Up Radio Theater, that Jim Dowling and I do. We have a monthly show, and I produce it. We spend the last half of the month recording the show, and then I go in and edit it, adding music and sound effects, which takes maybe 12 hours. Just the audio takes a couple of hours. I want to make it sound as good as anything else that’s out there.

We get it on the air the first week of the month and, generally, we’re done by the last day of the month. After that, I’ve got a week or so off before we have to start casting the actors for our next play. It’s a whole different thing than regular theater. You can’t rely on any visuals, but you don’t have stage blocking, makeup and costumes, lighting, or lighting. You don’t have to memorize the script.  Actors come in here and within two hours, we’ve got the play wrapped up. We do one read-through and then record. 

Where do you get the plays? 

We have one person out of Alameda, and he used to spend a fair amount of time up here. We’ve gotten at least a dozen plays from him. There are a few other playwrights whose plays we’ve used. I’ve written some out of necessity, when we didn’t have any, and we’d get worried. I’d say to Jim, do you have any ideas? Jim has written plays for years longer than I have. We’ll kick around ideas. 

We did one play about the two brothers who robbed a stagecoach here in town and were lynched: the Ruggles brothers. I got this crazy idea to write a song about it. Bob Christensen, one of our earlier partners, has been a professional musician for years. I wrote the lyrics, we borrowed the melody, and he brought his guitar and sang the song. Then I added some banjo afterward, so it sounded more rural. That was a lot of fun. 

What’s the most challenging part of what you do? 

I think the most challenging part has been moving studios. It’s just horrendous, from my perspective. We have to label all the cables and then make sure they get plugged into the right sockets. We take photos of the wiring so that we know which cable goes where; we’ve got dozens of cables that need to be plugged back in. That’s only if we have a ready space to move into. We have hung insulation to help with recording acoustics.

What’s most rewarding about what you do? 

The satisfaction of a job that’s completed, and the community work. This is the main thing that I do. As far as I’m concerned, entertainment, levity, and local information are invaluable. That is a community service.

I started in radio in 1971, during my first month of college, at the college station, an AM station funded by the university. That was more of a training thing. Since then, I’ve probably been with three non-commercial stations and three commercial stations. I never worked in radio full-time and I took about ten years away from radio at one point, but it’s in my blood.

I’ve always wanted to be an entertainer and I have found something that I really like: radio and producing a radio show. I’ve been doing radio theater for about fourteen years. I started at KPFA in Berkeley and we started doing radio theater here, and it has been a lot of fun. The actors seem to really like it. I never thought I would be doing that.

What would you say to people who are thinking about getting involved in community service but aren’t sure about what to do? 

It depends on their experience. For one thing, if you’re a good salesperson, you could be looking at underwriting for us. Our manager, Ellen Sugg, is looking to retire. She has been doing this for over ten years. If we could find somebody who is organized and could help us out with management, we could break up the duties. 

We also have events.  Once or twice a year we have a pancake breakfast up in Burney. Our cooks, servers, and entertainers at the events are all volunteers.  That’s a fairly decent moneymaker for us. 

What are some other ways that people can support the station?

Volunteering is helpful and a lot of fun. If you’d like to talk to people, you can help by tabling at an event and engaging them in conversation. Sometimes we really get into interesting conversations. We have station committees and a board of directors; we always need somebody to help out with those things.

They can also donate on the website or mail us a check. You can call us and leave your information if you’re interested in volunteering, and somebody will get back to you. Our local number for that is 530-337-1101. The big supporters of our station do it on a regular basis. Others support during the pledge drive and attend our events.  You can also become an underwriter.  

I would like to encourage people, if they have an interest in being on the air, to consider producing a show. People can volunteer and learn how to run their own radio show. If you’re really into exotic music, for example, you can have a show doing that, or a public affairs show. Locally produced shows by community members take precedence over syndicated shows.  If we started having too much local programming that we had to replace some of our syndicated shows off the air, we would do that, happily. 

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