4 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
A JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES
MUSIC TECHNICIAN FILLS A VOID
AT COAST COMMUNITY RADIO
Story and photos by
DWIGHT CASWELL
A
According to Graham
Nystrom, his new job is actual-
ly, “fi ve jobs in one: a mixture
of IT, fi le management,
audio engineering, electrical
engineering and maintenance.”
Nystrom has done all those
jobs at one time or another, in
one place or another, but he’s
never before combined them
into a single job like the one he
now has: operations manager
at Coast Community Radio.
If you’re a listener of
KMUN 91.9 FM, KTCB 89.5
FM or KCPB 90.9 FM, you
may have heard occasional
requests for additional support
to purchase new equipment, or
heard about a “major upgrade”
of “broadcast computer sys-
tems and software.” Nystrom
is the guy who takes it all apart
and puts it back together again.
He began volunteering for the
station a year ago, and it soon
became apparent that more
than a volunteer was needed;
Nystrom became a part-time
employee in April and was
working full time by June.
For the past 16 years or so
(“my whole working life”)
he’s made his living as an
independent contractor in what
he describes as, “the music
technology fi eld.” From a
foundation in studio and live
recording for bands and ven-
ues, Nystrom moved to radio,
becoming a technical director
for Live Wire Radio and Ore-
gon Public Broadcasting.
If you look for Nystrom
at work, which might mean
a remote antenna site but
usually means Coast Commu-
nity Radio’s Tillicum House
in Astoria, you might fi nd him
repairing something on a pro-
grammer’s board, but you’re
more likely to fi nd him in deep
in the bowels of the studio, in
the server room. “That’s where
the action is,” says Nystrom.
To the naked eye, though,
nothing much seems to be
going on. There are metal
shelves stacked with boxes
lit with small lights, and the
web of wires connecting the
boxes would confuse a spider.
A cheap work light clamped to
a shelf provides harsh lighting.
All the action is by electrons
zipping along those wires.
Servers (the boxes) receive sat-
ellite feeds from public radio
stations like NPR and BBC,
and fi le servers send Coast
Community Radio’s content to
automation computers in the
KMUN and KCPB studios.
Switches fl ip from one source
to another, and computers pro-
cess the sound before sending
it the Megler antenna.
Nystrom comments with
considerable understatement,
“It’s quite a matrix of wiring
and signal paths, all of which
require maintenance.”
If the server room wasn’t
enough to keep him busy,
Nystrom may be called on to
engineer and/or record a pro-
gram, or to produce a “spot”
for an underwriter. “In the
morning I think I have a full
day, and then I discover that
I have to fi x a turntable and a
microphone and record a spot,
and that has to be added to the
to-do list,” he says.
Not that Nystrom is some
kind of technology geek. He
has a broad range of interests,
from sailing to music. He
plays piano and guitar, and he
pursued a music composition
degree with the initial goal
of composing for fi lms. “But
my friends were playing rock
music,” he explains, “and I
spent some time playing in
bands.” He also discovered
“the consistent paycheck was
in the technical work rather
than the performing side.”
A few years ago, about the
time Nystrom was growing
tired of the independent
contractor lifestyle, he made
some friends in Astoria while
engineering a remote broad-
cast for OPB. “I thought, what
an amazing place to work. It
has history and charm, and I
love community radio.”
“When I was brought on,
it was understood that all the
computers had to be updated,”
he says. “There were a lot of
12- to 14-hour days and calls
in the middle of the night.”
Nonetheless, “things are be-
ginning to coalesce, and I love
what I do here, and the staff,
and the amazing volunteer
programmers who make it
possible.”
Above: You’ll often fi nd Graham Nystrom, the
new operations manager at Coast Communi-
ty Radio, in the server room of the radio sta-
tion’s homebase in Astoria. “That’s where the
action is,” says Nystrom.
Left: As Coast Community Radio’s new oper-
ations manager, Graham Nystrom maintains
the radio station’s servers and also engineers
or records programs.