CJSW welcomes Adam Kamis as new station manager
By Jason Herring, July 21 2017 —
Calgary’s favourite community radio station, CJSW 90.9 FM, has found itself a new station manager. Long-time CJSW volunteer and Calgary music scene mainstay Adam Kamis will take over as the station’s head honcho on July 31.
CJSW’s station manager is responsible for supervising staff and volunteers, overseeing day-to-day operations and running the annual funding drive, among other duties. Kamis is replacing Kai Sinclair, who resigned from the position in late May citing health and family concerns.
Kamis has been an active CJSW volunteer since 1997 and currently hosts the punk rock radio show “The Failed Pilot / Co-Pilot.” In that time he worked at the National Music Centre and managed Broken City, but he’s always maintained his station membership.
“CJSW’s always been a presence in my life — now actually for more than half my life, which makes me feel pretty old,” Kamis said. “I was very much a classic rock dude as a kid, and then CJSW blew my mind wide open.”
As a volunteer, Kamis was very involved with the station’s projects and events. He wants to encourage current volunteers to contribute to CJSW’s community events to maintain existing initiatives.
“Thinking of the volunteer experiences I’ve had over the years, I’ve helped plan events, execute events, DJ at an event. There’s tons of cool things that happen on a semi-regular basis that I think we could get our people to,” he said. “We have these cool projects, working with the McHugh House and stuff like that. Those are all great, but how are we executing them? We need to look at volunteers to do that instead of staff.”
CJSW receives much of its revenue through its annual funding drive, which takes place at the end of October. The station raised over $250,000 during the 2016 funding drive.
With only three months until this year’s funding drive, Kamis is focusing on keeping current projects running and investing in volunteers instead of pitching brand-new ideas.
“There’s been these flashy capital projects over the last couple of years. I don’t want to do that this year,” he said. “I don’t want to start all these projects that can be sustained. I want to send a message to our listenership and supporters: ‘Yeah, we don’t have a fancy thing this year but what we want to do is reinvest in our team.’ ”
The station manager isn’t the only position facing turnover at CJSW. The station’s news director, community development coordinator and volunteer coordinator have all changed faces in recent months. Despite this, Kamis says he’s not worried about the shake-up.
“These new people coming in will be good because it brings in some new energy, some new ideas. We get to illustrate to them how we do things but keep it flexible enough that people can leave their own mark,” Kamis said. “I’m fairly confident that we’ll have a staff that’s well-equipped to deal with the three- or four-hundred different personalities who come through our doors.”
Kamis is holding open office hours on July 22 from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and July 27 from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. at the CJSW offices in MacEwan Hall.