As AM radio stations fall into the “There is no way to keep this thing running” financial condition, there is a temptation to “donate” the station to a good cause.
Doug (aka Dudley) Stephan did this a few years ago, planning to donate a failing AM radio station (WTTF-AM) in Tifton Ohio to his college – Heidelburg University. He bought the station for $500,000 from the people who bought the station cluster from Clear Channel, but they didn’t want the AM station. The station is still in his name.
Giving an AM station to a non-commercial entity is a land mine of problems. The AM band does not have the same non-commercial section of the band protected for schools and community groups. An AM license puts an obligation on the owner to actually operate the station according to the rules and face very large fines if they don’t follow the rules. A non-commercial entity like a college can interestingly own a commercial radio station. What the IRS and what the FCC consider the rules to be are two different sets of rules. A non-commercial entity owning a commercial radio station can “rent” (LMA) the station out to a for-profit company that runs commercials – or they can run the station themselves and run commercials, so along as they stay within the IRS guidelines.
So back in 1996, just as the media consolidation was in full swing, the Johnstown School District got talked into taking ownership of WCRO-AM. The station had been acquired by someone that only wanted the other stations, and as was typical of AM stations in the rust belt, the station was in poor condition and extremely limited prospects for generating revenue. The FCC doesn’t have the details of the transaction – it probably was donated. Sometimes old radio stations are found to have toxic waste issues that make the “net value” of a station actually less than zero, so “giving away” a radio station is a way to try to run away from a legal liability.
So the School District moved the “station” onto their grounds, and have apparently been droning on “Music of your Life” for the past 15 years. According to Wikipedia, an old-timer from Pittsburgh tried to sell ads to help pay the costs of running it, but gave up.
This really isn’t what school districts should be getting involved with.
For those who enjoy streetcar trivia, Johnstown was the smallest city to order PCC streetcars and run them after world war two, and outlasted many larger cities – with the service ending in 1960, and switching to a mix of trolley buses and diesel buses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMHwo9iuMCA
There are a ton of nuances in that youTube video.