Back in the 1950s, after World War 2 was settled and the nation’s minds went back to things like FM radio, a battle resumed that was started in the 1920s for AM radio – should radio be dominated by commercial interests for profit, or should it be run by labor unions, socialist activists and left wing fellow traveler religious groups?
The compromise reached was a setaside program – 88-92Mhz would be set aside for only non-commercial stations – colleges, schools, religious groups, community broadcasters. 92-108Mhz would be where the rich evil corporations could spew their capitalist hatred of the poor and minorities and women – essentially a 20% setaside to protect the weak and most vulnerable among us.
February 1st, 2011, an amazing thing happened – the non-commercial invasion of the commercial band. This is not the first non-commercial station to own a frequency in the commercial part of the band, but certainly the most strident.
Northern Kentucky University is across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Being a college station, it is modest power – 9,900 watts. Since the stations in Ohio have the NPR/PRI territory rights, WNKU-FM is relegated to carrying jazz, blues, folk, alternative rock and various eclectic music programming. Of course, they are dependent entirely on user contributions (and the State University system!) for funding, since they aren’t part of the Public Radio Establishment (CPB/NPR), they are on their own.
So they came up with a brilliant idea – instead of the State of Kentucky subsidizing the station to the tune of $300k/year for a station with few listeners, let’s sell 20 year bonds to cover the $6 million purchase price (aka Debt) backed by the University, and use that money to buy two commercial FM stations – WPFB-FM (34 kw) and WPAY-FM (100 kw) so that more than 3 million people could have the ability to not listen to the station. Xavier University and Miami University in the area have already gone out of the College Radio business.
Both stations had been Country music stations. Other than the artsy-fartsy folks who write for the local papers, the public’s reaction to this has been underwhelming. The University says “not one cent of taxpayer money” is involved – until the inevitable default, of course (and the fact that the bonds are tax exempt for Federal income tax purposes).
