Z107.7 celebrates 36 years on the air in the Morongo Basin

July 15 is a special date in the history of Z107.7, marking 36 years since the station went live on the air. Reporter Heather Clisby sat down with station owners Gary and Cindy Daigneault to reflect on the station’s early days and how they see it evolving.

You can listen to the full-length interview here:

HEATHER: First of all, I just want to say I’m super honored to have nabbed this opportunity. I sort of jumped on it very quickly, as I do. 

GARY: Well, we’re honored to have been nabbed. 

HEATHER: Because this place is a legacy and it’s hugely important to the community. Even if I didn’t work here, I would definitely still feel that way. What’s the date that you went on air? 

GARY: The date we went on the air was July 15th, 1989. 

HEATHER: Can you tell us a little bit about why the call letters were chosen? 

GARY: Well, the call letters were chosen because at the time, we were one of the first radio stations to use all CDs for our music. And the Z we wanted as a signature for the radio station. The K is required by the FCC for all radio stations west of the Mississippi River. 

CINDY: A lot of times what I get, because my name is Cindy Daigneault, ‘Oh, you named the radio station after yourself?’ And it’s like, no, we were all CDs at the time. And we had CD jukeboxes that each held 100 CDs. We had four of them. And that’s how the music was delivered. 

HEATHER: Isn’t that crazy? I feel like we’re pioneers talking about making butter on the prairie. 

CINDY: Well, we went from with our production, we went from reel-to-reel and splicing and splicing blocks to carts to now all fully digital editing. So yeah, in 36 years, there’s been a lot of changes in the technical side.

GARY: And when we first were on the air, yes, we were playing CDs. We also had 45 records, 45 RPM records, that we were playing. 

HEATHER: Take me back to the beginning. What was the original vision? 

GARY: The original vision is pretty much the station as it is now. We wanted to do a heavy local news presence, and we wanted to have a hyper-local presence. And we’ve been able to do that, and sustain it. I was a news person at the radio stations in Twentynine Palms and had been very active with the Associated Press and the Associated Press nonprofit organization. 

HEATHER: And you had to convince your bride that this was a great idea? 

GARY: Yeah, actually, I had worked on it kind of in the background for a while before I came to her. When I had to borrow some money is when I went and said, ‘I want to let you know what’s going on here.’ And she kind of went, ‘You’re what?!’ 

CINDY: Actually, my background has always been in broadcasting. I went to broadcasting school in Minnesota, and started working in Wisconsin, and then eventually made it to California. And I met Gary, we moved to the desert to work for what was then KDHI, KD-Hi Radio, an AM radio station. 

GARY: K-Queen! 

CINDY: And K-Queen. That was the other one named for the Desert Queen Ranch in the National Park. And when the opportunity came, the license was allocated to the Twentynine Palms area, Gary jumped on it and said, ‘Hey, let’s apply for that license.’

GARY: And we did. And we eventually got it. We applied in early 1988. We’re actually awarded the license in December of ’88. And then started construction to go on the air in July of ’89. When you apply for a radio station, you don’t just apply for a radio station, you have to locate a transmitter, which has to be approved by the FCC, the frequency has to match with other frequencies in the region, all of that kind of stuff. 

So when we applied, we originally planned to put our tower up on Copper Mountain, where there was already a cluster of radio towers in an old radar facility on Copper Mountain. When we went to the Marine Corps to get those permissions, they told us that they couldn’t put private commercial entities in their property. So we had to find our own.

So we ended up leasing the other side of Copper Mountain and developing the property ourselves, which is now a fairly sophisticated communications multi-use site. 

CINDY: Yes, and that lease is with the Bureau of Land Management so that was a whole ‘nother set of hoops to go through. But the biggest problem was it’s a mountain and there’s a lot of bedrock. 

GARY: And it’s a very rough road. We always had to have a very capable 4WD vehicle to get to our transmitter site on Copper Mountain. 

CINDY: We had to do a lot of the construction on Sundays. 

HEATHER: Yesterday, I went through all of that big binder of the Lander’s earthquake experience and the six days of not showering and having a command center here. That more than anything probably really cemented the station as a community pillar. 

GARY: Well, we were relatively new. People really hadn’t heard about us yet. I think the station was a little more than two years old. But when the earthquake hit, it turned out we were the only facility with backup generators. 

HEATHER: And the earthquake hit, just so we can reiterate, June …

CINDY: 1992, I think? 

GARY: Yeah. I think it was June 28th. 

HEATHER: So you automatically became a resource and you also threw out the music format for that time period. 

GARY: Yeah, we went wall-to-wall, all-news for about four or five days. 

HEATHER: And so you were the only communication … And again, children, this is before the internet. 

GARY: Yeah. This is before there were computers. 

CINDY: Even if there was an internet, I believe the cell sites would have been down and the internet would have been down, so …  

HEATHER: Which is another great reminder that sometimes the old technologies can be the most reliable in these situations, as we just saw, you know, in Texas, they didn’t have cell service, they didn’t have, you know what I mean? 

CINDY: Exactly. 

GARY: When there is a local disaster, it’s your local radio stations that shine. 

CINDY: And at that time, there was also not an active Red Cross in the area. So we became more than just a communication vehicle. We started the relief efforts. There were people who didn’t have milk and water and diapers and all these things. And then we got a local ham radio group and we got a local Jeep club. And we were actually coordinating relief efforts to people who lived out kind of in the boonies out there. 

GARY: So the corporations would make a donation of food or diapers or water. The 18 wheels would pull into our parking lot here and offload. We had piles of pallets in our parking lot. People would call us on their phone and say, ‘I’m stuck in Landers, I need diapers for my baby!’ and we’d get the address, give it to the local 4WD club who would take the diapers and drive them up to the home in Landers that needed them. So the local 4WD club was great. 

HEATHER: Just to have a center location, a control center until the Red Cross could get theirs up and running, you know. 

CINDY: Exactly. 

GARY: Remember the grade was closed too.

HEATHER: Yeah, the basin was locked in. 

GARY: Not for a long time, but you know, immediately after the earthquake. 

HEATHER: And even, you know, even in my experience here, I’ve been here seven years and there was a huge fire at one point and you went to go cover it.

GARY: The Sawtooth fire in Pioneertown. 

HEATHER: Yeah, the Sawtooth fire. And my DJ name unfortunately was Blaze, which was not ideal for covering the fire. And I remember you coming in from the location and reeking of smoke, just reeking of smoke. And we were doing updates like every 5-10 minutes, you know, and people were calling in. And so just even that example in my experience was just a window into that, how important that is. 

And as things get, oh, I don’t know, weirder out there, weather-wise, I’m sure the station’s going to come through in whatever fun challenge Mother Nature will throw at us.

GARY: Well, we started out with an idea of being hyper-local and we’re still doing that. 

HEATHER: What is it like to work with your family? 

CINDY: People ask that of us all the time.

GARY: Mostly, mostly they ask her how she puts up with me. 

CINDY: Yeah, that is true. That is true. But you have to understand that we met each other working at another radio station in Thousand Oaks, California. So we already had that ability to work with each other. Then we came out and worked at another station together for several years.

HEATHER: It’s in the blood. 

CINDY: So we were already doing that. And I’m not going to say we don’t ever bump heads, but we get along pretty well. And we know what lane we each are in and we know which lane to stay in. 

GARY: And our son, Cody, who also grew up in the station, is now running the nuts and bolts, the day-to-day as the program director. 

HEATHER: And I got to say, working with Cody is pretty delightful. Like he’s very confident, calm, supportive, you know. Like learning the board was intimidating and he was like, ‘Ah, it’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it.’ You know what I mean? 

CINDY: He’s been coming into the station since he was three years old, so. 

GARY: But when he went to get his college education, he took study that helped his career here. And he also took the ROP broadcasting class when he was in high school. So he did the work. It wasn’t just, ‘Oh, you’re my son. Here, take over.’ No, he did the hard work it took to be able to do a very difficult job. 

CINDY: One of the interesting things is sometimes when you’re working with someone who you’re related to, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re going to tell me what to do?’ but totally realized that he knows a lot more about digital editing than I do. And he has taught me a lot.

HEATHER: And that’s the key. He’s a good teacher. 

CINDY: Yes, he is a good teacher. 

HEATHER: How many staff members do you think you’ve had over the years? 

GARY: Well, when we first started out, I started teaching ROP broadcasting for the school district. And what I would do is I would take the best and brightest students and put them on the air as news or DJ. And so mostly high school kids. So they tended to stay about a year before they went off to college. So there was a large volume of turnover back in the early days. But I’d say we’ve probably had a couple of hundred staff members come and go here in the 36 years that we have been in business. 

HEATHER: And you were inducted into the AP Hall of Fame. Is that right? 

GARY: In 2010, because of what they called my ‘body of work.’ I was inducted into the Associated Press Hall of Fame. Probably the honor of my life. 

HEATHER: Yeah, that’s a huge honor. 

CINDY: It was for his body of work, not his body. (Laughter.) Sorry. Couldn’t resist. 

HEATHER: That’s a different award. It’s in a different room. 

GARY: Yeah. I didn’t win that one.

HEATHER: But I was noticing again in the Big Binder, there’s a small picture that’s like, you know, ‘We have some awards now.’ Well, there’s like six and I don’t know how many awards are on the wall and on the shelves right now. A lot! 

CINDY: Yes. 

GARY: Well, over the years, our news department has done a fantastic job. If you think about what’s happening in the news business, having a small market radio station do that level of local news is really unusual. Most small towns are news deserts where the community doesn’t know what their city council is doing, what the water board’s doing. But we do that.

We’ve won five Mark Twain’s, which are AP awards and five Golden Mike’s, which are Radio Television News Director Association awards. As a matter of fact, you just got nominated for one. 

HEATHER: Like, recently? 

GARY: Yeah. 

HEATHER: Really? Yeah. Oh, that’s nice. It’s nice to be nominated, but it’s very inspiring. And it was great to see Tammy Roloff here today because she was the news director when I first got here. 

GARY: Tammy was here for seven years. 

HEATHER: Now we have Jef Harmatz, who’s so great at being a leader, and Robert as well. I think there is a tremendous amount of pride because the media landscape out there is scary and weird and not super trustworthy. And yet we have this magical thing that you guys have carefully built and people rely on it so heavily. It’s become this mainstay where it’s the first place that people go.

GARY: We take that responsibility very seriously. 

CINDY: And one of the other things that we’ve done is we’ve always kept just one step ahead. We’ve tried to keep ahead of the curve. And we’ve had a website for like 30 years, but that website now has really grown to where we have 11,000 people looking at the news almost every day. 

HEATHER: Yes, and I understand a big chunk are in Los Angeles?

GARY: Yes!

CINDY: That’s true. About 50% of the people who read the news online are from LA, and I believe they’re probably people who vacation out here or who have second homes. 

HEATHER: But again, we have this big reach that’s just beyond broadcast, it’s online as well. 

CINDY: Yes, it’s a complement. The online portion of our business has really grown, and Robert Haydon has done a wonderful job as our online news editor, and he’s really grown that website incredibly. And we’re constantly updating it. It seems like every six months we’re pushing out a new update. 

And by the way, we are starting News Digest emails. So go to our website, and you can check that out, and you can get a recap of the weekly news. 

HEATHER: I do appreciate how much there’s an open dog policy here. 

GARY: Yes, as Sunday is scratching at the door right now.

HEATHER: Sunday is scratching at the door. Sweetpea is here pretending everything’s fine. Tammy would bring her dogs. I think Cassidy brought her dogs. Of course, I remember Jessica with the Chihuahua sitting on her chest sitting right there.

CINDY: Well, it’s an open dog and an open child policy because we’ve had a lot of staff who have children who might have something come up or their child is sick or whatever. And we’ve always been open. We’re very family-oriented, family and dog-oriented.

GARY: Staff bring their pets and kids. 

CINDY: We’ve had a few people bring their cats, but that’s not usually as… 

HEATHER: Are you serious? 

CINDY: Yeah.

GARY: And one time we had a guy ride a horse through the radio station. 

HEATHER: Of course. 

CINDY: And we had somebody who brought a snake in.

HEATHER: Yeah. Okay, so all animals are welcome. I remember one time, Gary, there’s a bunch of dogs and you’re like, ‘We should rename this place KDOG!’ 

GARY: (sings) K-D-O-G! 

HEATHER: And also I have to say, sitting here in this beautiful news recording space, I’ve seen the evolution of this actual physical space. I remember the tiny little kitchen with the sad couch – it had tears and Hot Pockets embedded in it. And it’s really, it shows the progress on the face of it. It’s really beautiful. 

CINDY: Like I said, we try to always keep evolving. 

HEATHER: What do you think about the future of the station? I know you’re talking about Cody, but I guess I’m thinking more in terms of the media landscape and technology and where do you see it going? 

GARY: Well, as far as technology, as the technology changes, we try to keep up with it as best we can. We’ve been able to do that so far. And we see what’s coming on the horizon technologically and try to keep in touch with it. As far as the actual operation of the radio station, I don’t see it changing much. We’re going to continue to have the same values, hyper-locality. I believe it’s really, really important for this area to have the level of news that we have. 

We work very well with the Hi Desert Star So we’ve got two news media up here. The people who live up here should be very happy to have two working media. Again, small towns all over the country don’t have that at all. So I see us continuing with the same values and the same practices that we’re doing now. 

CINDY: And one of the things that, I don’t know, I feel the need to mention right now is we have a ‘No AI’ policy here. It’s been an edict coming down from the top news department that none of our reporters or our people who write ad copy, et cetera, et cetera, are allowed to use AI. It’s all created by humans. And I think that’s really important because AI doesn’t always get it right. 

HEATHER: Yes, and I remember when Robert even sent out a note about, ‘Don’t let Google write your emails!’ And he was very huffed about it, right? ‘We are news people. We think with our brains!’

CINDY: I mean, we’re not burying our heads in the sand. AI is out there and it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, but it’s not going to overtake the human element. 

HEATHER: Yeah, because at the end of the day, what is news? It’s a witness.

CINDY: Right. 

HEATHER: When I go to the meetings or Adeline or Gabe, we are being a witness to the people that can’t be there or whatever. And you take that very seriously, especially in light of everything that’s going on in this country and in the world. Witnessing is a big part of democracy. And I feel like stations like this are very important. 

GARY: And we’ve also been very careful from Day One to stay out of partisan politics. We talk about what’s happening locally. We’re not particularly worried about what’s happening on a big national basis, unless it affects the people who live here. 

HEATHER: I’m very proud to be working with a mom-and-pop – literally, Mom and Pop! -privately-owned radio station. It’s become a dying breed. And so congrats to both of you.

GARY: Yeah, we’re dinosaurs in the radio industry. When we first applied for our license, you put together a package and it’s judged by an administrative law judge who takes a look at whether or not they think you could run the station, whether you have the financial wherewithal, the knowledge, all those things. And then based on who had the strongest application, they would award the license. We won our license out of eight other applicants. Nowadays? It’s an auction. 

CINDY: It’s whoever has the most money. 

GARY: Whoever has the most money, so mom and pop, privately-owned radio stations are a thing of the past. Now it’s lawyers and corporations and hedge funds. 

HEATHER: Any other highlights that you want to mention over the year, over the 36 years? 

CINDY: Well, there’s one highlight that I remember not very fondly. And that’s when my husband came home and said, ‘I’m going to Somalia!’ 

GARY: In 1992, I accompanied the Marines to Operation Restore Hope in Somalia. Turned out I was the only American reporter in that country. I was sending reports out to all the major networks and newspapers through the Associated Press twice a day from Somalia. 

HEATHER: Wow! How exciting! 

GARY: It was very exciting. 

CINDY: Exciting for him, but not for mom at home with two small children at the time. Luckily he couldn’t really communicate so I didn’t know much of what was going on. 

HEATHER: And how long were you there? 

GARY: 18 days. And the state department made me a civilian on temporary assigned duty to the United States Marine Corps with the rank of lieutenant. So I was an officer in the Marine Corps for 18 days. Actually, second lieutenant, but let me get that right.   

HEATHER: Yeah, second lieutenant. Those things matter. 

GARY: So I was a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps for 18 days. 

CINDY: But you know, the interesting thing about that is that it was like over 30 years ago? 

GARY: It was ’92. 

CINDY: And I still run into former Marines in Twentynine Palms who will say, come up to me and say, ‘I was with your husband in Somalia. I covered his back.’ 

GARY: I learned more about the Marine Corps in 18 days of being deployed with them than I have in 30 years of living here. They are a remarkable group of people. 

HEATHER: It’s notable that we, Morongo Basin here, is so wedged in between these giant federal entities. The National Park, one of the most popular national parks, and the world’s largest marine base. 

CINDY: Exactly. 

HEATHER: I mean, it creates a unique environment. 

GARY: And here we are! 

HEATHER: And here we are. Is there anything else you want to say, especially to the listeners? 

GARY: Well, thank you for your support over the years. It has been remarkable. We hear from people all the time. We understand that we affect lives and we have a responsibility to do that in a positive way. So I think it’s the way we’ve been accepted by our community. That is the most remarkable thing. 

CINDY: And it’s always extra special when you hear somebody who has moved or left the area and they’re still listening to us because we stream live and they can listen on their phone, on their computer or whatever. And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I heard such and such the other day on the morning show.’ And you’re like, ‘What?’ 

GARY: Well, when you do a morning show in a small market for 44 years, your name gets known. 

HEATHER: I think you and Pat were still doing the morning show when I started. 

CINDY: Yes. 

HEATHER: Seven years ago, Pat Michaels. And I saw a picture of him when he first started. He was a little baby. 

CINDY: He was a baby. I think he was 18 when he started. 

GARY: A little fresh faced baby boy. 

HEATHER: Yeah. And he left here a man. 

GARY: Well, Pat and I, Les and I did the morning show for years and then Pat came in and then Les came back. Then I had Jessica Jean for about a year. She did a great job. And then Cassidy Taylor did a wonderful job. And then we, then Jef came on board and now he’s the guy in charge. 

HEATHER: And what do you think about the Cody and Jef Morning Show? 

CINDY: Sometimes I shake my head, but most of the time I laugh. 

GARY: Yeah, no, they have a nice mix. I kind of like it that they sometimes sound like an old bickering married couple. 

HEATHER: There is sometimes trouble in the bromance, but it’s entertaining for all of us. 

CINDY: It is a bromance. 

HEATHER: I do love the strange foods. Well, thank you guys so much for the station and my job and everything in the community. We love you. 

GARY: Thanks!

CINDY: Thanks Heather.