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Pirate Radio 90.5 KGSP Kansas City

A

AnyHuman

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KGSP 90.5, the part time radio station in Kansas City MO that usually only spiratically comes on the air, is on and has been up for a couple of days playing a wide variety of music with no announcements at all.
The streaming is on 24/7, in case the FM shuts off by the time you readers see this post you can still hear it online.

I hope it lasts, it's musical choices are very diverse. Last night I heard it go from some obscure free jazz to Linkin Park. Now it's playing country, classic rock, and folk. Earlier it was classical. The other day I heard it playing Trey Songz and Nicki Minaj.
Pretty cool!
 
It’s been around for decades and is too low power to have much of any value to any potential broadcaster. So, it probably will stay around for a long time.

It also has turned out some good talent. Robert Moore, who hosts Sonic Spectrum on 90.9 The Bridge (and 96.5 The Buzz before it was regionalized by Entercom), managed it during the mid-90’s. Nick McCabe, who you might still occasionally hear on 810, was my boss during the brief time I was on KGSP in 1997-98.
 
When I lived to the northeast on the Kansas side in the mid-80s I was surprised to hear KGSP regularly in its 10-watt days. (It might have been my Uniden CR-2021 bought at MoComm.) A cool campus, then-Park College was known for extension classes at military bases, especially nearby Fort Leavenworth. I am not sure how the school is doing in these days of ubiquitous online-universities. (The campus with its small student body almost seemed like an afterthought - still some great stone buildings.)
 
I actually had a Parkville address 20 years ago, though I lived off of Missouri 45 northwest of town a few miles. I couldn’t pick up KGSP at my place back then! If you continue up the hill where Park is, you’ll eventually go to the other side, and you'll encounter a food storage cavern. I always lost the station shortly after I started descending the hill. You could hear it all over downtown and English Landing Park, but it was gone shortly after leaving the area. Heading into town on Hwy 9, you'd start picking it up when you got to the Conoco station right before the city limit sign.

When you lived in KC, was KGSP at 92.3 or 90.3? It was 90.3 when I was there, and I was told it had moved off of 92.3 to 90.3 when KCCV signed on its FM licensed to Olathe. I believe that was around 1991. That might also explain the differences in our experiences listening to it. When I was there, it was right next to KKFI, which would stomp all over it quickly. There was a lot less in the lower part of the commercial band at the time. KAYX 92.5 was about it, and it was mostly useful Independence and east. 92.1 from Butler didn’t do much north of Harrisonville.

Funny thing is my grandmother went to Park in the 1930’s. She passed a couple years after I worked at KGSP, and we talked about the school and the campus a few times. It had changed surprisingly little since she went there and when I was on KGSP 60+ years later. Despite her body pretty much being useless by that time, she was sharp as a tack and could tell me what was in Copley Hall before the radio station was there. I wish I could remember what she told me about which classes and departments were there, but, alas, I guess her memory was better than mine currently is!
 
To answer the KGSP frequency question the good coverage happened in the mid 80's so it was 90.3 back then.. Not a bad catch from the Lansing-Leavenworth area.
 
KGSP has been on-air in Kansas City 24/7 at 90.5 FM for at least 2 or 3 weeks... Nice variety of music, nonstop tunes. Seems they have their entire library on shuffle. I've heard classic country, classical, rock, classic rock, pop and hip-hop as well as folk and other things like jazz. Right now I'm hearing some classical, proceeded by some 80's/new wave and a few minutes ago I heard some oldschool R&B from the mid 90's.
KGSP Website

Streaming link
 
During my time there, KGSP went to holiday programming the week of Thanksgiving and signed off for the semester break right before Christmas. It would usually return mid-January.
 
KGSP is on most of the time, still, except for late night hours.

However I'd say they have a bit less variety in programming, now lots of classical with some country and the occasional jazz tune. But not as diverse as before, 50% classical I'd say. *yawn*

One of their liners had the ABC childrens song up to G, then a girl cut in and said "KGSP, blah". Funny hearing that in the middle of a classical set.
 
It's still on playing it's usual random music format. But they have no ID or announcement, not even a top-of-hour call letter ID. Pretty sure I heard the F-word too once a few weeks ago, haha.

You can listen online, but the streaming has an audio problem currently, it's too loud and distorted but will still play. The FM sounds much better.
 
These past couple weekends the music's been going silent, usually Saturday. When this happens the FM shuts off the air, and the streaming plays just silence.
It's always fixed Monday however, not sure about if they're open tomorrow, they may leave it off until Tuesday.
 
Got word that KGSP's previous overseer is no longer working for Park Uni...

That explains the lack of station legal IDs and the mediocre stream quality.


I suggested they maybe start working with KCUR. KGSP seems to need some help and KCUR knows exactly what they're doing with both 89.3 and 91.9.
 
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KGSP fixed the audio on their streaming. It sounds like the FM does in terms of processing now.
 
Park University got struck by lightning during the crazy thunderstorming yesterday.
www.kctv5.com

Lightning strike at Park University’s Mackay Hall takes down WiFi, phones for part of campus

Classes are being held as scheduled, but faculty in buildings affected by the outage may move their in-person classes to virtual.
www.kctv5.com www.kctv5.com

I'm not sure if KGSP's tower was involved but I suspect maybe that's what got struck, the station's been dark both on-air and online since, and for the past year or two it's been on most of the time.
But maybe not.
 
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