Creative Commons/Lisa Padilla

Inside the KUSF studios, Nov. 3, 2006

At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, KUSF Program Director Trista Bernasconi learned that she would have to do the unthinkable: silence her radio station.

After she was called into that meeting, where she was told that the station had been sold and the signal would have to be cut at 10 a.m., Bernasconi was under close supervision until the early evening, she told The Bay Citizen.

As a former University of San Francisco undergraduate and graduate student, Bernasconi had been with the station in various capacities since 1997.

"I asked, out of respect to the DJs and volunteers, that I be the one to tell them" about the sale, she said. "Now, that's painted me to be the worst person."

Bernasconi was the one to physically turn off the transmitter, which has an on/off switch.

When she went into the studio to notify the DJ who was on the air, "I couldn't make it through the sentence without crying," she said. "This has been the hardest week of my life," she said. 

It hasn't helped, of course, that USF has made it known that Bernasconi and KUSF founder Steve Runyon had some knowledge of the sale while the rest of the KUSF volunteer staff was in the dark. Bernasconi didn't want to say too much, but she did allow that reports that she had been briefed on the sale for months were not true. 

"I am so upset about it. I don't mind if that's on the record," she said. "I've been inaccurately portrayed, and volunteers have an inaccurate opinion about me."

KUSF Music Director Irwin Swirnoff admitted to a feeling of betrayal at the thought that Bernasconi and Runyon had kept this knowledge from the staff, but in an interview Friday, he seemed focused on the immediate future: KUSF has gotten on the agenda for Tuesday's San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting at 2 p.m., and he is helping organize a protest at City Hall for 1 p.m.

"We're also telling people to go to the Board of Trustees at USF and voice their outrage," Swirnoff said. He said the university's president, Rev. Stephen A. Privett, had acted in bad faith, and he urged letter-writers to ask for Privett's removal and to seek a stoppage of the sale. 

Options, though, are not manifold for angry KUSF volunteers and community members. Once papers on the sale are filed with FCC — and it's not clear whether that has happened yet — there is a period of for discussion. Those familiar with radio history, though, say it would be extremely unlikely that the FCC would block the deal. 

Which leaves people like Bernasconi in the unenviable position of trying to put the shattered KUSF schedule back together. She, like many who attended a Wednesday meeting about the sale, were struck by Privett's insistence that the new KUSF would be a student-run endeavor. Bernasconi said that his statements ran counter to what she had been told originally — that KUSF would be moving intact to an online format. Currently, the bulk of the station's volunteers are not students.

Serving both masters — the students whose tuition largely funds the station and long-time volunteers who contribute programming in nine different languages — is "a fine line," but one that Bernasconi felt is key to the station. 

"One of the things that makes KUSF great is a mix of students and community members," she said. 

And volunteers, hurt by this week's abrupt end to broadcast, don't seem too keen to return to the studio. 

"Since we weren't involved in any of this," Swirnoff said, "would I want to do a Web-only show right now? Do I trust certain members of the office staff to be acting in the best interests of KUSF? No."