Former KTSU Latin jazz DJ Juan Flores was waiting for his flight to board at George Bush Intercontinental Airport when a stranger approached him.
Troy Fields
In February 2010, longtime Jazz Latino host Juan Flores was terminated, but was brought back a week later following public outcry. Flores, who's trying to revive his show at KPFT, says that he later left for good when KTSU management changed his shift time while he was on a vacation.
The Concerned Legends allege that Franklin's October 2008 hiring came directly from the office of TSU President John Rudley. KTSU's recently fired engineer says Rudley, who replaced Priscilla Slade following a spending scandal, likes to bully campus employees.
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"Hey, whatever happened to Juan Flores?" the man asked, noting the Texas Southern University radio station insignia on Flores's jacket. "His show was great. I don't get why he's not on the air anymore."
Flores wonders the same thing himself.
Aside from the Sunday gospel programming, Flores's Jazz Latino show was arguably the most loved on "The Choice" FM 90.9. But in February 2010, KTSU Assistant General Manager Donna Franklin told Flores that his services weren't needed anymore "because [TSU President John Rudley] did not like Latin jazz," says Flores.
What followed, Flores explains, was a huge public uproar that included sponsors pulling money out of KTSU. Later, he was asked back by school officials because presumably Rudley's wishes had been lost in translation. Flores returned to the station, but later left for good.
He's not alone in his disgruntlement. Another former KTSU DJ, Chris Tucker, compared the current operations of the historic jazz station to a "concentration camp."
Several current and former employees allege that general manager Franklin and TSU president Rudley have ruined KTSU by usurping cutting-edge jazz, soul and blues for smooth jazz, a music that's normally associated with a dentist's office (and a genre that gave Kenny G his footing) and not a left-side-of-the-dial operation that will turn 40 years old in June.
In fact, the Franklin and Rudley reign has inspired an anonymously led uprising called the Concerned Legends of KTSU. The group has published and distributed six manifesto-style e-mails alleging a long list of injustices at "The Black Jewel" of American radio. Throughout KTSU's 39-year history, the station has been a measure of success for one of the nation's largest historically black institutions, which, amid other ups and downs, nearly lost its accreditation in 2007 following a spending scandal by its then-president.
The group's complaints are both large and petty, accusing the station of all sorts of mismanagement as well as misrepresentations to its listening audience — which at one time included jazz lovers throughout the Houston area.
Critics say the station's high-powered equipment has been jeopardized by a lack of maintenance. KTSU is putting new student DJs on the air without adequate training and often bumping veteran jocks from prime-time shifts to accomplish this, they charge.
And in what they say is a nasty bit of subterfuge, Juan Flores's replacement has been misrepresented as a Hispanic DJ when he's actually an African-American.
Problems at TSU and its radio station are nothing new, according to KTSU's former music director Aaron Cohen. But Cohen, who says that he was forced out in 2006 after a shoving match with a volunteer, believes that Franklin and Rudley have accelerated the dysfunction that he says was first put in place by longtime Operations Manager Charles Hudson and General Manager George Thomas.
As a longtime KTSU jock, Kyle Scott Jackson played 1920s- to 1980s-era jazz, or, in his words, "Music that formed the station to begin with." Shortly after Franklin was hired in October 2008, Jackson ditched the gig that he had held for 13 years.
"I left because I saw the wave of change coming to the station, such as the programming and the attitudes. I see what has developed since I left and there's only a smattering of traditional and straight-ahead jazz," says Jackson, who went on to establish the nonprofit Jazz Walk of Fame.
Station employees weren't the only ones who left.
A current KTSU employee, who spoke to Houston Press on condition of anonymity (we'll call him Albert), says listeners have left en masse since Franklin started at KTSU three years ago. In 2004, Arbitron figures show that the station had 244,700 listeners. By 2011, the Arbitron number had dropped to an all-time low 85,000 audience members. Says Albert: "We've been down before — once we had to buy a new transmitter and we lost some listeners that way — but we've never been that low."
Count Rick Mitchell, a Houston Chronicle music critic from 1989 to 1999, among the lost. When the West Coast transplant arrived in Houston in the late 1980s, he discovered KTSU kings Vince Kannady and Steve Crain. After Kannady and Crain left the planet at a young age, Mitchell kept the dial glued to 90.9 FM as then music directors Cohen and Jeff Kelley kept the torch — and the musical selections — burning. Nowadays, Mitchell rarely tunes in to KTSU's current incarnation. "I haven't listened in probably six months," he admits.
At the center of this latest storm is assistant general manager Franklin, a full-figured, lithe-voiced DJ who herself runs a smooth-jazz program called Jazz by Design that airs every Monday through Thursday afternoon.
During the initial stages of reporting for this story, Franklin explained to the Press that she was unaware of any internal strife at the station and that she was simply doing her job. She has since refused to answer our questions. KTSU general manager Thomas and operations manager Hudson did not respond to our inquiries and a request to speak with Rudley through TSU's media relations department was not granted.
