San Francisco: The somewhat convoluted steps that have gone into making commercial classical KDFC into a public station in the crammed Bay area market is starting to resolve with a new ruling by the FCC.
Commercial KDFC’s powerful signal was sold 17 months ago, and to keep classical music on the air, the Classical Public Radio Network in LA acquired a group of smaller stations that would cover the Bay area. KUSF at the University of San Francisco was one of them. But the students and community listeners of eclectic KUSF were not pleased and they mounted a p.r. offensive against the University, filed a number of requests to deny the deal, and issued a challenge to the FCC questioning the legality of the dealmaking.
The ruling this week from the FCC consented to the sale, refused to deny the deal, but said the Operating Agreement that allowed the station to begin airing classical music immediately had some irregularities, including selling air time on a public station for a profit.
KUSF is paying a $50,000 fine, which they are calling a “voluntary contribution,” and the case is closed as far as the FCC is concerned. You can read about it at radio-info.com.
Nashville: Radio-info.com also reports that Nashville’s old WRVU listeners are still making noise a year later about Vanderbilt University selling their eclectic station to Nashville Public Radio which took it classical. Nashville Public Radio has until the end of the year to raise the funds and close the sale.
…that affords protesters plenty of time to make noise… Yesterday’s consent decree in the case of KUSF, San Francisco may quiet them down, because the Commission firmly repeated its “well-settled policy” about not considering formats or programming when processing station sales. Meanwhile, the Nashville Scene says some fans miss the “engaging, erratic mishmash of everything from punk rock to country classics, jump blues and hip-hop” that WRVU used to feature. Over at LMA operator Nashville Public Radio, classical is going well and gaining listeners. President Rob Gordon says they’ve secured bridge financing from SunTrust that guarantees they’ll be able to close. Until then – they’re fundraising like crazy. Gordon says “we’ve learned a lot about capital campaigns” in the year since announcing the deal to add 91.1 to non-commercial news/talk WPLN-AM (1430) and WPLN-FM (90.3).
Fort Myers FL: Classical South Florida completed the purchase of its new Ft. Myers station, 88.7 WNPS, so listeners in Fort Myers and Naples will now get to hear classical music instead of contemporary Christian.
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When a local voice, operated by local people, mainly student volunteers is displaced by an out of town interest like in the case of KUSF, we have a serious problem. This deal was 150% about greed (on both the part of USF and USC). You can not dispute that those who underwrite classical music radio are more likely to be in the category of much more affluent than the many different minority and underprivileged audiences that college stations try to reach out to. I am sure that a classical music format would work just as well on a HD2 signal in a market. Many classical music listeners, who are also avid audiophiles are more likely to own a receiver capable of picking up HD Radio where minorities and the poor are more likely to not have that capability. They Bay Area lost a great radio station out of the greed of a local private university and an out of town private university. We might as well as give all of our non-commercial radio stations to Clear Channel and mega-ministries.
Michi,
I hear your pain. I worked for a station that got sold twice because of greed and consolidation. They jerked us around, stole our tower, moved us to a worse frequency, moved our studio into a closet, either fired or chased out all the old-timers, made hash out of the programming, and just generally ruined the station.
Huge money is buying up bandwidth like mad these days, but the folks at KUSC are really good people who are trying to preserve the classical format and in no way should they be compared to Clear Channel. They are improving the classical music environment in SF.
I’ve been tracking the steady decline of classical music on the radio all over the country for many years now, and I think classical listeners are just as much victims of a lousy media environment as college station listeners are.
I’m sorry you lost your format. I can think of a dozen top 40 stations all playing the same music that are more expendable.
There are two errors in this post that I am aware of. There was no sale in January, 2011 of the 33 KW ERP signal on 102.1 Mhz in San Francisco, despite what Wikipedia says. The FCC says the sale from Bonneville to Entercom was consumated March 14th, 2008. Entercom still owns it. The call sign was changed from KDFC to KUZX on January 28th, 2011, however. As the consent decree posted on the FCC website and the radio-info site both indicate, the fine will jointly be paid by USF and 90% USF-owned CPRN. It is clear CPRN does not want their contributors to know some of their pledges are going to pay off a fine.
Whoops, that is 90% USC-owned CPRN.