MPR celebrates 40 years of broadcasting at Saint John's

Editor's Note: Saint John's was featured on the Friday, Jan. 19 Minnesota Public Radio Midday program titled  "Forty years of MPR"

Saint John's University Student Senate Resolution

It took about five extra hours to get radio station KSJR (90.1 FM) signed on the air Jan. 22, 1967.

But there shouldn’t be any delays on Jan. 22, 2007, when KSJR will celebrate 40 years being on the air with a reception and program at the Great Hall, Saint John’s University. The reception is from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., with the program starting at 5:30 p.m.

KSJR, a 24-hour-a-day service, became Minnesota Public Radio on Jan. 1, 1975.   MPR has become one of the largest and most successful public radio systems in America. KSJR, which broadcasts classical music, is joined on campus by KNSR (88.9 FM), which has a news and information format.

The event “will primarily be a celebration of (KSJR’s) beginning,” said Michael Olson, MPR district manager. It is also part of SJU’s sesquicentennial celebration.

The reception is open to members of the campus and monastic communities. Invitations have also been sent to select persons, including longtime MPR members who live in the area, and past/current members of the KSJR-KNSR community advisory committee.

The program will feature introductions by the Rev. Hilary Thimmesh, OSB, former president of SJU. Among the speakers will be MPR personalities Michael Barone,  host and executive producer of the Pipedreams program, who will speak on MPR’s musical component; Gary Eichten, host of the Midday program and an SJU graduate who will speak on MPR’s news component; and S. Colman O’Connell, OSB,   former president of the College of Saint Benedict, who will present a recognition award to Bill Kling, a 1964 SJU graduate who helped start KSJR.     

Kling, in writing about the debut of the station, recalled that “while (the Rev.) Colman (Barry, former SJU president) dined at the Germain Hotel in St. Cloud with supporters and a portable radio, unfortunately, the station didn’t manage to get on the air until about five hours after the publicized time.”

From its founding in Collegeville, MPR now operates as a 37-station network covering Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Michigan, Iowa, Idaho and even Canada. MPR has 90,000 members and over 780,000 listeners each week, and has the largest audience of any regional public radio network.