We at KZSM continue to serve the community with live News Specials broadcast at noon Mondays and Fridays. Given recent events, we have broadened our focus to cover the local and national response to the death of George Floyd and concerns about racism and law enforcement.
News specials are rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Mondays and 5 p.m. Fridays.
For the other hours of the twenty-four, KZSM.org offers a range of programming to inform, enlighten, and entertain. Many of our shows still broadcast live, either remotely from the host’s home or directly from our storefront studio, and we continue to introduce new shows.
Our newest offering seems perfectly suited for these often-stressful times. “The Big Sad,” broadcast 6-7 p.m. Wednesdays, “is a collaborative effort to try to make the idea of being sad, funny.” The premise is that hosts Jack Neil and Jason Johnson try to help their depressed friend Raymond Cabrera see the brighter side of life. As Cabrera describes it, “Raymond” is “the sad sack 23-year-old that doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life,” while Jack and Jason give Raymond advice on life from their different perspectives, Jack as a new father, and Jason with his ‘centuries worth of knowledge.’” The “centuries,” Johnson reports, are “the common joke about me. It’s a hazard of being forty-four and working with mostly under thirty stand-up comedians.”
“While it is a comedy show,” Cabrera acknowledges, we are hoping to help people out. Not that we're experts by any means, but hopefully our life experience resonates with the audience in some way.”
“The Big Sad” is grounded in friendship. “We originally got started doing this after me constantly claiming ‘I have the big sad.’” “We are great friends even with the generation gap,” Cabrera explains. “It shows that a lot of the divisions we place between us are just so detrimental and only when we come together as one can we truly be our best selves.”
Incorporating laughter, shared experience, and genuine concern for the well-being of everyone, “The Big Sad” offers a big helping of what we all need right now.
Like all our staff, Cabrera, Neil, and Johnson donate their time to the station. Volunteers sustain our programming, but space and equipment cost money, and KZSM.org is a self-supporting non-profit. To help sustain our programming, find the “donate” button on our website, KZSM.org. Tune in, stay in, help out.
