• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Duquesne orders radio affiliate to pull Planned Parenthood ads

C

Cornflake the Destroyer

I'll bet someone far up the food chain in the University heard the spot by accident and hit the ceiling. I'm am not surprised the ad was pulled but surprised that the school higher ups caught on as quickly.

Interesting conumdrum here--fairly well run liberal NPR station owned by badly organized Catholic University. School has been looking the other way for years because it needed programing and $$ to keep station going but everyone higher up knew that it was a deal with the devil they would have to make.

Does this go away quietly (most likely) or does this start to unravel the ball of string??
 
I guess the question for me is a complicated yet simple one as well. Is WDUQ a non commercial (public) station or is it a college radio station? I know the university holds the license on it as well as provides the broadcast facilities, but the operations by and large are not funded by the university (according to their website, they pay for 6% of the costs outside of facilities). If they are a college radio station, fine, I can see where the university can and maybe should pull underwriting that they deem opposite of their Catholic mission. But if they are going the college station route, then they have no justification for coming to the public at large and asking them to pay for the programming, the students and university should be paying for it, whether it be from almuni donations, student activity fees, or what not.

Likewise, if they are going to parade as a public radio station and solicit donations from the public at large, I fail to see how the university's Catholic mission should have any say in the underwriting whatsoever. The list of underwriters for DUQ reads as a who's who of corporate Pittsburgh, yet I fail to see the same scrutiny applied to them. Prime example would be Carnegie Mellon University (yes it is an underwiter for DUQ, much as is the University of Pittsburgh), yet I fail to see the magnifying glass shone upon them, even though their Software Engineering Institute helps create weapons of war which kill people, hardly in line with the Catholic sanctity of life argument. In the end though, the university needs to make a choice whether they are running a college station or a public one, but they can't do both.
 
fromtheinsideout said:
Prime example would be Carnegie Mellon University (yes it is an underwiter for DUQ, much as is the University of Pittsburgh), yet I fail to see the magnifying glass shone upon them, even though their Software Engineering Institute helps create weapons of war which kill people, hardly in line with the Catholic sanctity of life argument. In the end though, the university needs to make a choice whether they are running a college station or a public one, but they can't do both.
Click to expand...

Reproductive Health Services also is an underwriter, even though the RCC isn't too down with the whole in vitro thing.

And this isn't a response to anything here, just something I have to say - just because you listen to and enjoy NPR or public radio in general does not automatically make you pro-choice. Everyone talking about this everywhere seems to be assuming that, and it's not true.
 
I am not assuming that all listeners of NPR are pro choice. I am simply stating that if Duquense wants to run the radio station as a public radio station, then they should leave the underwriting decisions up to the station, not the university and if they wish to run it as a college radio station, then they need to stop with the pledge breaks and actually pay for its operation, much the same way Pitt does with WPTS and CMU does with WRCT. There is no excuse for a college radio station to come cap in hand to the public at large to pay for its operations and if they are going to come cap in hand to the public for its operational expenses, then the decisions about its underwriters should be made by the DUQ staff and its members, not the university.
 
Once upon a time WDUQ was a student station, but that changed somewhere in the 80s when the school decided to take the station out of the hands of its School of Communications and make it an NPR affiliate. Duquesne University is still the license holder, so in that respect what they did was well within their power. They have, however, set a dangerous precedent to some degree in that they have imposed themselves on the operation of the station in a way that could lead to future editorial interference and a loss of trust by the station's listenership. Some of the later has already occurred.

Duquesne owes an explanation to WDUQ's listeners as to how it will prevent that from coming to pass in the future, but knowing the present administration they will simply allow that question to hang in the air and possibly over the heads of those trying to run the station for some time to come.
 
I would agree from a technical standpoint, being the license holder the university can do what they want. From a practical standpoint, they pay for 6% of the operations of the station (according to the DUQ website) outside of holding the licesne and providing the studio space (which is a one time cost, presumably upgrades to the equipment and studio would be paid by member donations), so the university's contribution to the station is at best minimal from a financial standpoint, which further complicates their assuming editorial control over the station. Then again, with the number of subscribers that have said they will no longer be members of the station, maybe now they will pay their own way rather than relying on everyone else to pay the bills for them.
 
There is a great bit of the "We're the Catholic Church. We'll do it our way and you'll like it" mentality on the Bluff these days. I would suspect that some of those involved in the decision can't imagine why anyone would be upset with what they did and the remainder think this will all go away because they said it would. It might blow over, but some of the chatter that I am hearing indicates that the station is going to lose a serious chunk of $$ this quarter and that some underwriters are now asking questions about contract language they never have before.
 
fromtheinsideout said:
I am not assuming that all listeners of NPR are pro choice.
Click to expand...

I didn't say you were. That's why I said it wasn't in response to anything here. :) I just had to vent that from reading about it everywhere else online and this seemed like the place I would be least likely to get raked over the coals for even bringing up the issue.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom