Public radio station 88.9 KUSP eyes change; here’s hoping it works.

At 3pm every weekday, you can tune the radio dial to 88.9 KUSP and listen to NPR’s All Things Considered, followed by Fresh Air with Terry Gross. If you’re prepping brunch on a Sunday morning, you can tune in to Best of Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and This American Life too.

Or at 2pm every weekday, you can tune the radio dial to 90.3 KAZU and listen to Fresh Air, followed by All Things Considered from 3pm to 5:30pm. And as for Sunday brunch prep, there’s A Prairie Home Companion, followed by Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Ted Radio Hour, America’s Test Kitchen and then the dulcet tones of Ira Glass and TAL at 3pm.

See the problem? Many of the same shows targeting much the same audience. And the content that comes from NPR doesn’t come cheap.

Many question why NPR would license the same programming to two small stations in one small market, knowing that inevitably, they might cannibalize each other.

The cannibalization point is here. The 43-year-old, much-beloved KUSP – the only station, in fact, that reaches into Palo Colorado Canyon and down the Big Sur Coast – is about $450,000 in debt to NPR, and $850,000 in debt altogether. They’ve been in deficit-spending mode for a few years now, waiting for any one of a number of deals to come through. According to some sources, there was a hopeful plan for KUSP’s license to be bought by CSUMB. There was also talk this past spring of KUSP selling to L.A.-based KCRW, or to classical music syndicator Classical Public Radio Network.

None of those deals happened.

KUSP is in the middle of a membership campaign that runs through Oct. 23. Then just about a week later, at midnight on Oct. 31, the station will switch its format from NPR and news to what in the radio business is called Triple A – adult album alternative.

The change comes on the recommendation of Boulder-based Public Media Co., tasked with conducting an assessment report of KUSP.

Lee Ferraro took over as interim general manager of KUSP three weeks – “wait, make that three-and-a-half weeks” – ago. The board laid off longtime general manager Terry Green in September, and two board members resigned as a result.

I asked Ferraro if he knew what he was getting into and what the board told him during the wooing process.

“They said I’d find a station that was, to put it bluntly, failing,” Ferraro says. “There would be a need for a big change, and a framework for that change.

“News is expensive to do, and because NPR is so heavily branded, there’s not much opportunity to distinguish yourself,” he says. “The choices were to go all music or sell the station, and the clear answer was to go all music.”

Ferraro describes what’s to come as “eclectic music.” Songs from emerging artists – think Norah Jones or Mumford and Sons before either went huge – or deep cuts you might not normally hear from artists like Bob Dylan or the Beatles.

So far, the membership drive has raised about $53,000 from about 500 donors; that’s definitely not enough to keep the station afloat, or make much of a dent in the debt. Ferraro says he believes some of what’s owed to NPR can be negotiated down; the rest will have to come from driving hard to get local businesses to buy into the new format.

Longtime KUSP volunteer and journalist Rachel Goodman leads a group called KUSP Forward. They have a few hundred people on their mailing list, and about 55 active members who want to see KUSP remain, even just a little bit, community minded and community driven. Goodman ran a number of grant-funded programs for KUSP, including a youth radio project and two documentary series.

Nobody’s sure how the new music format will function.

“I want to hear my elected officials on the air and I want to hear issues discussed and I’m not alone in that,” Goodman says. “If this new format ends up creating a resurgence in the local music community, it could be a good thing. Part of the success of this will be connecting it to the local community.”

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com

[Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated that because CSU Monterey Bay owns KAZU's license, the station receives an educational discount on NPR content. Station General Manager Mik Benedek says the station's NPR pricing is based in part on the size of its audience, and it does not receive an educational discount.]