Interview with Paul Jurgens
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Interview with Paul Jurgens Interviewed by Terry Shoptaugh July 24, 1997, at Moorhead State University TS: My name is Terry Shoptaugh. Today is the 24th of July, 1997. I'm interviewing Mr. Paul Jurgens, of KFGO Radio, about the flood of 1997. We are doing this project for the Northwest Historical Center and the Minnesota Historical Society. Paul, let's start with some background information--where you're from, when you started at KFGO, and so forth. Project PJ: I'm originally from Fergus Falls, and I started at KFGO in 1983; actually, March 15, 1983, so just over fourteen years. TS: When you started out, what were you doing with KFGO Historyat that time? PJ: I was a news reporter, started out as essentially theOral fifth person in a five-person news staff. Since then, over the last fourteen years, I've been a reporter.Society We also anchor newscasts. All of our reporters are required to present the news, as well as gather it. I guess it was about eight years ago, the news 1997directorship opened, and I applied for it, and was fortunate enough to be named the news director. of TS: Who was the news director when you started, just out of curiosity? Historical PJ: An individual by the name of Paul Newburgh hired me. Floods TS: What was the format of KFGO at that time? PJ: Essentially the Riversame as it is today, a country-music-based station, as far as the music, but the music is really secondary.Minnesota We refer to ourselves as a full service station, meaning a lot of weather, a lot of news, and a strong personality throughout all the parts of the day. Red TS: What's the normal mix, like today, between music and on-air broadcasting of news, weather,The sports, whatever? PJ: Depends on the time of the day, but we have a lot of weather, news, sports, essentially from 5 a.m. through 6 p.m., then there's syndicated programming as far as sports, Twins, Vikings, Minnesota Timberwolves basketball, depending on the season. So very little music during the day. TS: Do you normally take a lot of calls? I know you did during the flood, but do you normally take a lot of calls as part of your daily broadcast? 1 PJ: Primarily we do in the talk-show segments. There's a talk show hosted by Ed Schultz that runs from 9:00 to 10:30, Monday through Friday, and that's called "KFGO News and Views," and that's a talk show. Boyd Christenson hosts a separate talk show called "KFGO Live," from 1:30 to 3:00, on a Monday through Friday basis. And primarily that's where the personalities interact with the public, in those day parts. But as you indicated, during the flood, essentially, the phones were open all the time. TS: Can you tell me something about your broadcast range? You know, most of the technical details of your tower and the broadcast range approximately of the tower. PJ: I know some. I do have an engineering license, and basically I think I Projectgot that to help me get a job, when I was out searching, and it really hasn't benefited me much because I'm not an engineer at all. But the power range of KFGO is 5,000 watts, 790 AM is the frequency, and 5,000 watts nondirectional during the day. At night we have to make some changes, so it becomes 5,000 watts directional, so at night there are areas, particularly to the south and the east and the southeast, where it's difficult toHistory get KFGO, even twenty miles away. Whereas the signal will travel, at night, north and northwest quite strongly. The reason that's done is because other stations in theOral country at 790, at night with the atmosphere, we'll interfere with them. In emergency situations,Society and many times during the flood of '97, since we are the FCC, Federal Communication Commission, designated emergency broadcast station for this area, we1997 are allowed to stay on our daytime pattern, and that will give us a range of about 250 miles in all directions, and at night, in fact, further, because the signal will travel further.of We are allowed to stay on our daytime pattern, as we call it, but we have to sacrifice revenue for that. We're not allowed to play commercials. Historical TS: So essentially what you'reFloods saying then is at a time of an emergency, you can reach the entire valley. In fact, you can reach past Bismarck in the west, to the Twin Cities in the east and southeast, and as far as Manitoba, north. River PJ: Right. Manitoba, and Minnesotaprobably to St. Cloud. A little beyond St. Cloud, down Interstate 94, you'll start to lose the station, but, yes, a good 200-plus miles in all directions, andRed even beyond in some areas. TS: TheWas this why KFGO was designated as the emergency broadcast station for this area? PJ: I guess so. The station went on the air in 1948, and to the best of my knowledge, KFGO has always been the EBS station. Now the government has changed the system somewhat. It's now called Emergency Alert System. But essentially it's always been the EBS station. So when there's an emergency, we cue other stations in this market, essentially hit a button and make them aware of a natural disaster, a weather disaster. They monitor us, and then they have their own emergency broadcast procedures that they 2 go through. TS: So people up here were used to listening to KFGO in the event of bad weather, emergency problems. I imagine that makes KFGO very popular in the rural areas? PJ: Very much so, because many of the radio stations in this market are music-oriented, or talk-oriented, and talk-oriented isn't necessarily local. It's nationally syndicated programming. So really, twenty-four hours a day, it's the only place that many people can get news and weather information that is current. TS: And, of course, a lot of people out in the rural areas have to worry about electricity during winter storms, other things, so they need this kind of thing. They'veProject got to have battery-operated radios on hand for this purpose. PJ: Absolutely. I mean, they don't know when their power is coming on, they don't know what's caused the power outage, unless it's something obvious, like a windstorm or an ice storm. If the telephones are out, who are they going to call, whereHistory are they going to get the information? The radio is essentially it. Oral In this past flood winter season, one of our television stationsSociety lost its power, so that was no good. Many radio stations in the storm heading into the flood, many of them in Mayville, North Dakota; Grafton, North Dakota;1997 several other smaller stations, lost their broadcast facilities because of the ice, and we were the only, really the only source of information for many people. of TS: I know that particular storm that began Historicallike April the 5th, that was particularly tough. You've been there since 1983. You've covered some flood situations before this past spring. 1989, there was someFloods flooding in the valley, and there's always been some flooding in the valley practically every spring. But a normal year of flood broadcast wasn't a twenty-four-hour-a-day thing, was it? River PJ: No. I never experiencedMinnesota anything like this. '89 and the summer flood of '93, which was more of a heavy rain in '93, my own home was flooded in that particular event. Never been throughRed anything like that, honestly wouldn't want to go through anything like it again, as a resident or a journalist, because as we all know, people who were involved in it, evenThe not directly, found it very stressful. TS: This past winter, you had to make many broadcasts concerning winter storms. Insofar as radio journalism is concerned, was there already concern being expressed at the station or through the FCC or whatever, that this was going to be a particularly rough spring because of all this snow out here, that they are expecting a flood? Were they already talking about this, even before we went into the April situation? PJ: Well, October and November, if I recall, there were predictions of it--going into 3 winter, we had quite a bit of moisture on the ground, and predictions of, "If we get heavy snow," and that's always an "if," we're going to have serious spring flooding. As the snow continued to mount throughout the season, it really became apparent that we were going to have some flooding. Whether it would be rural flooding, or just people that lived along the river, or serious urban flooding, nobody knew. So we started to talk about it then, about what our plan would be. TS: Where do you normally, as news director, go for your information concerning these kinds of weather situations? You must have a group of people or organizations you've routinely established communications with. TS: Well, we have a number of systems. We have on staff four full-time newsProject reporters. We have four fully equipped mobile unit trucks with police scanners and cell phones and two-way radios. For weather events, particularly travel, winter travel, we have a system of what we call KFGO road and weather correspondents, that are essentially law enforcement agencies within 100, 200, and in fact up to 300-mile radius, and truck stops, because we find that a lot of truckers and a lot of travelers areHistory in these places.