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Those tuning in to UC Irvine radio station KUCI around 11:30 a.m. Monday were greeted by some 25 minutes of clock-ticking sounds, more minutes of angry static and then the portentous tolling of a dozen bells followed by a wild cheer.
Anyone accustomed to listening to the station probably took it in stride, as it was scarcely the oddest array of sounds to have emerged from the unpredictable mix of techno, industrial, grunge, hip-hop, world beat and other non-mainstream musical styles championed by KUCI DJs.
The difference Monday was that from the bells onward, KUCI's potential audience grew by a couple of million. The eight minutes of static marked time when the station was off the air as a new, $95,000 transmitter and antenna were brought on-line, boosting power from 25 watts to 200. While that's not much power compared to 50,000-watt commercial stations-or even to other college stations such as Cal State Long Beach's 8,000-watt KLON-it is sufficient to take 23-year-old UCI out of the closet.
The joke used to be that DJs at KUCI would have a bigger broadcast range if they just stood at a window and shouted. Indeed, listeners more than a couple of miles from the campus generally had difficulty pulling in the weak monaural signal on 88.9 FM. But Monday, at the flick of a switch, the station was reaching most of Orange County.