Originally published September 26, 2014
By Daniel Perez
UTEP News Service
There is a price tag for the diverse menu of shows broadcast every week on KTEP-FM (88.5), and a lot of that responsibility falls on the shoulders of a Peabody Award-winning University of Texas at El Paso alumnus.
John Carrillo, the station’s development director, plans to launch KTEP’s weeklong fall pledge drive at 6 a.m. Monday, Sept. 29. The goal is to raise $75,000 before it ends at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3. The money helps offset the station’s $870,000 budget, which covers maintenance, equipment purchases, and the rights to broadcast popular shows from National Public Radio (NPR), American Public Media and Public Radio International.
Carrillo, who earned his bachelor’s in mass communication from UTEP in 1979 and his master’s in communication studies this past May, earned a prestigious Peabody Award in 1995 for his role as project engineer and technical producer of NPR’s “Making the Music with Wynton Marsalis.” The award is given for journalistic excellence in electronic media.
“Sam Donaldson (award-winning retired ABC News reporter and anchor) and I are the only UTEP graduates to earn this award. Sam has three. I’m happy with my one,” Carrillo said during an interview in his second floor office in Cotton Memorial.
Returning to UTEP – and KTEP – this past February was a dream come true for Carrillo, an El Paso native and first-generation college student who caught the broadcasting bug at Bel Air High School. He worked at commercial radio stations as a disc jockey while still a college freshman.
He said the skills he learned at UTEP, especially mastering multi-track audio equipment, took him around the world including the nine years he spent in Washington, D.C., working for NPR. He returned to El Paso in 1997 for family reasons and since then has taken leadership positions with a public radio station, a school district, and several local, regional and national government agencies.
He took the KTEP job as a new challenge and has spent his first few months learning about the station and developing innovative ways to market it to possible sponsors and the approximately 50,000 listeners per week within a 100-mile radius of the campus.
Among those listeners is Karen Schut Vigil, a Philadelphia transplant who moved to El Paso’s Upper Valley in 1979 and has been a KTEP enthusiast ever since. She annually pledges memberships for herself, her family and her pets. She also plans to add $10 to any student pledges of $15 or more.
Vigil started this challenge 11 years ago to honor her late husband, Jacob Schut, a licensed psychiatrist in private practice who was a clinical professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Her hope was to promote youth education and community involvement. The matching grant has added thousands of dollars into the 64-year-old station’s funds.
“I think KTEP offers so many positive programs, and they’re so informative,” Vigil said. “The hosts talk about things you wouldn’t have known otherwise. Listening makes me feel as if I’m part of the world. When I’m not 100 percent, I love to listen to it because I know it can change my mood in five minutes … and it’s calorie free.”
Carrillo has lined up more than 100 volunteers – UTEP faculty, students and staffers as well as avid listeners – to answer phones during the pledge drive and called on several sponsors to donate food during the breakfast, lunch and dinner sessions.
“We have a core group of listeners who are dedicated to this radio station,” Carrillo said. “They believe in the station and care about its programming. It’s quite impressive that they give of their time. It’s wonderful.”
The money earned through the pledge drives mostly pays for the programs. For example, the station pays $280,000 annually for its programs from NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” to the music lineups to the talk shows, said Patrick Piotrowski, KTEP’s general manager.
Another reason the pledge drive is important is that it gauges the level of community support, which is necessary to earn a $150,000 federal matching grant.
Piotrowski, KTEP’s leader since 1999, spoke with conviction as he talked about the level of news offered by NPR and the quality of the jazz and classical programs broadcast on a daily basis.
“We offer a unique service to the community,” he said. “We’re more than a radio station. We’re a news and arts organization. What we’re doing works. People like it.”