KCSB-FM 91.9 in Santa Barbara

In The KCSBeat this week, Colin Marshall begins an ongoing series about the development of Poodle Radio, the official radio program of the Santa Barbara Independent. The show, which began on KJUC a little over a year ago, is now in the middle of its second quarter on the AM station, aiming ultimately for graduation the KCSB schedule:

Though I host, produce, and organize the program, I didn’t start it. That credit goes to senior editor Matt Kettmann and reporter Ben Preston, who, from October through December 2008, put together no fewer than seven shows on topics like gang violence, the state water supply, Proposition 8, and O.J. Simpson. Listening to this first iteration of the show—”proto-Poodle,” I’ve come to call it—I was favorably impressed. Each broadcast brought a bunch of Indy contributors, live, right into the studio to chat about their areas of expertise and what was currently going on in them. But putting together the weekly broadcast, and completing the KJUC-to-KCSB transition, can be a time-consuming endeavor, especially when piled atop already heaping plates of fulltime journalistic employment.

I thus took up the hosting and organizational reins of the renewed, rebooted Poodle Radio as 2010 began. My goals for the show have so far been twofold. First: to live up to the liveliness of the proto-Poodle broadcasts that came before. And second: to feature as wide a variety of subject matter and as many personalities as possible in order to capture what we all know to be the veritably kaleidoscopic Santa Barbara experience. Thanks, props, ups, and the like go out to the paper’s contributors who have donated their time and voices this year: Elizabeth Schwyzer on dance, James Donelan on the symphonic scene, Chris Meagher on the news, Aly Comingore with music, D.J. Palladino on film, and Charles Donelan on Sundance skiing conditions, to name but a few.

Get all the details here.

This week on The Marketplace of Ideas, Colin Marshall talks to Jeremy Haladyna, director of UCSB’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music and composer of the sprawling 28-piece-and-counting Mayan Cycle. Drawing upon over twenty years of research and exploration, Haladyna has translated countless concepts from Mayan thought, art and architecture into music that counts strings, flutes, scratch turntables and even sampled paper towel dispensers among its sonic components. An album of selections from the Mayan Cycle is now available from Innova Recordings.

The Marketplace of Ideas airs every Thursday at noon.