KSJU

Student radio at St. John's began in 1954[1] with the establishment of KSJU as a carrier-current radio station. In 1961, the station's music format eschewed rock and roll, opting for "adult college listening" and music for "study hours".[1] The station's operations began to involve students from the College of St. Benedict in 1965, when five girls organized a group to incorporate the associated women's college into the production and broadcast of programming and the provision of news stories from St. Benedict into KSJU newscasts.[2] 1970 brought KSJU a direct connection to United Press International teletype.[3]

St. John's applied for a construction permit for a new FM station in 1975.[4] After receiving the permit in 1976, the station began transmitting on 89.1 FM for the 1977–78 school year, with a transmitter on Nequette Hill near the St. John's campus. The move to FM brought with it a doubling of KSJU's hours of operation.[5] It marked the return of St. Johns to the FM dial, after having spun off public radio station KSJR-FM, which became the core of today's Minnesota Public Radio. (MPR celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1992 by broadcasting from the university's studios.[6]) In April 1979, the station held a 70-hour marathon to raise the money necessary to convert to stereo broadcasting.[7]

KSJU was, for its entire existence as an FM broadcast station, a Class D station. Broadcasting with 10 watts, this made it a secondary service to other, "full-service" radio stations. In the summer of 1984, KSJU relocated from 89.1 to 96.5 MHz, a move forced by the recent opening of applications for the 88.9 frequency, which became KNSR. The frequency change cost $7,000; at the same time, the station was displaced from its auditorium studios by renovations, settling in Mary Hall.[8]

The station operated on 96.5 for four years before another radio station bumped it off the dial: new station KKSR in Sartell, operating on 96.7 MHz. Though the university said it would look into the process of obtaining a new radio station license, this never occurred, with St. John's deciding to let the license lapse; instead, in an arrangement intended to be temporary, KSJU was placed as a cable FM channel on the local cable system, beginning December 1, 1988.[9] The arrangement, however, carried a major drawback: the station was no longer listenable at St. Benedict and remained so for years,[10] even though CSB students paid activity fees that supported its operations.[11] In 1993, KSJU became "KJNB" ("Johnnies and Blazers"), reflecting its return to St. Benedict and in preparation for an attempt to return to the air with MPR backing.[12] In 2000, another effort was made to return to the FM dial when the university filed for a low-power FM station. Low-power station applications were not initially required to protect stations on third-adjacent FM channels, but a law change in December 2000—after the original filing—required them to do so; after a remedial window, applicants for 484 proposed stations, including SJU, failed to modify their applications to address this deficiency, resulting in the dismissal of their applications in March 2003.[13]