KDPS is a

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Iowa, most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is the county seat of Polk County, Iowa, Polk County with parts extending into Warren County, Iowa, Wa ...

. The station is owned by Des Moines Public Schools. The school district programs the station with a variety of rock music styles and staffs it with high school students who are learning radio.

Children's programming

Kids Radio Mania is the station's weekend radio programming format. Kids Radio Mania is produced by Professor Stephen Winzenburg at Grand View University and airs every Saturday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. central time and Sunday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. during summers and holidays, Sundays 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the school year. Kids Radio Mania started in 1992 as a four-hour Saturday morning kids music format. Originally produced on large one-hour reel-to-reel tapes, the format used the little amount of children's music that was available at the time. The Saturday morning format lasted for three years, until a national children's radio format came to the Des Moines market on an AM station (which only lasted for a year). The Kids Radio Mania format was revived as an all-weekend station on April 1, 2001. From a small collection of children's CDs the station has grown to a library of over 600 CDs and airs pre-teen pop music, such as

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, Raven, the

A-Teens A-Teens (stylized as A*Teens) is a Swedish pop music group from Stockholm. The group was formed by Niklas Berg in 1998 as an ABBA tribute group called ABBA-Teens, which was later renamed A-Teens. The band members are Marie Serneholt, Amit Seba ...

and

Jesse McCartney Jesse McCartney (born April 9, 1987) is an American actor and singer. He achieved fame in the late 1990s on the daytime drama ''All My Children'' as JR Chandler. He later joined the boy band Dream Street, and eventually branched out into a s ...

. It also plays many of the kids classics, such as

Raffi Raffi Cavoukian (, born July 8, 1948), known professionally by the mononym Raffi, is an Armenian-Canadian singer-lyricist and author born in Egypt best known for his children's music. In 1992, ''The Washington Post'' called him "the most p ...

, Barney,

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Fuller Olsen (born June 13, 1986), also known as the Olsen twins, are American fashion designers and former actresses. Mary-Kate Olsen, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Ashley made their acting debut as infants playing Mi ...

and Hampton the Hampster. Shortly after the all-weekend format was started, the station was approached by local public television host Dan Wardell to start a weekly live children's call-in show. ''Crazy Dave's Kid Show'' started the first weekend of August in 2001 and has aired every Saturday morning at 10:30 since. The show receives calls from all over the world, including Sweden, Australia, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and California. In 2006 KDPS started awarding the annual "Family Favorite Awards," given to children's recording artists for best album, best singer, best song and best album packaging. Winners are listed on the KDPS website under the "kids radio" link. Unlike the few other commercial children's radio stations in the United States, Kids Radio Mania is a non-commercial venture that does not air any inappropriate pop music. The station also does not focus on simplistic guitar-and-vocalist songs but offers a wide variety of upbeat music material that the entire family can enjoy. Each week about 30 songs are on the station's "hot" list of tunes played every three to four hours. Another 120 songs are mixed in throughout the weekend and a featured artist is played hourly in the rotation. Educational segments on Kids Radio Mania include hourly segments from past Crazy Dave's Kid Show, weekly historical information, "the thesaurus forest," "the name all of fame," "animal adventures," "the state of the week," "the birthday buddy" and "the presidential profile." Kids Radio Mania is a servicemark of Grand View University. The station now airs all night from Friday to Monday morning.

References

External links

* * {{Iowa college radio DPS DPS Radio stations established in 1953

Children's programming

See also

References

External links