The motivations have yet to be explained.
But KRTY was a commercial station. KDHX wasn't, and was based in community organizing. My own impression is that the move into the expensive Grand Center space was what triggered the subsequent events.
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St. Louis Public Radio: How KDHX fell apart
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
- Start date
In both cases they felt like they were better served by taking the cash and going online. We may see more of this.
FM values are not going up.
Again, we don't know what Double Helix is going to do with the money. We don't even know if they still have an executive in charge. The board isn't talking. What we know: Double Helix has rights to an HD channel on 88.1 and could stream. The volunteers are well-organized, have some money banked, and have beaten Double Helix to the punch on streaming. What is likely: anything associated with the board will be viewed as tainted, and, as a result, will have a lot of trouble getting traction for the community support that will be needed to have any kind of programming to put on a stream that would even remotely resemble what KDHX was. They've traded money issues for trust issues. People in St. Louis have long memories.
Then it sounds like WCSB where the licensee does one thing and the staff does another. The licensee is the only one who controls the license.
It might behove you to read and/or listen to the report on KWMU-FM's website about the situation. Yes, I think the situation has similarities to the WCSB situation but a college isn't involved and the Board changed the rules for the volunteers very late in the game so that no real challenges could be raised to what it was doing.
I side with @fybush on the WCSB-FM situation, and if he gets a chance to view/listen to the story on the KWMU website, he might side with me here.
Look! In a noncommercial situation, the #1 rule of management should be to never, *never treat your volunteers like chattel slaves. And it really doesn't matter that you hold the station license if the volunteers leave but badmouth you behind your back to any potential volunteers, listeners, or sponsors. The correct word for that is self-destruction.
I agree with all of that if the licensee intends to continue as it had going forward. If they have decided to dissolve, then it’s different.
When you listen to the KWMU report, you'll notice that the board members considered resigning in 2019 during the accusations of racism and harassment. There were people who were willing to take their place. A couple of them later were on the board briefly. So, if the board members wanted to be done with the station, there were others available who could step in. Instead, they chose to stay on. If it had been such a trial for them to deal with the station, you have to ask yourself why they kept on with it.
I hope STLPR (KWMU) makes a transcript available. I haven't found one. Even if there is (or will be) a transcript, there are numerous audio clips that might not fully translate to the written word. That said, 100 minutes of listening is a pretty big time commitment. The subject matter definitely deserved it, because there was a lot of complexity to unpack, and the series is excellent, but it's still quite a bit of time.
Bring up Stan Kroenke and you might get an earful here.
Another station that has put on an HD with an intent to add subchannels is WSIE on 88.7. Tom 'Papa' Ray found a home with WSIE after his firing from KDHX. I do not have any information on what that station intends to do, but that may be a possibility.
I'm aware of another non-profit community station (not affiliated with a university) that went through a similar thing around the same time. Fortunately, the board was able to bring in an outside manager who stabilized the situation, at least in terms of the personnel problems. I don't think the finances have been straightened, but they have been to the point where they can at least continue on the air. It can be devastating, but the right board can make a difference.
The problem I see is that a lot of these stations were established in the 60s or 70s, and the original founders are no longer around. They've lost sight of their original mission. They allowed the finances to get weak. Then personnel problems happen and they're not strong enough to fix them. My sense is that may be what happened in St. Louis. In any case, it's too late to fix the situation. The station was sold, attempts were made to stop the sale, and they were unsuccessful. I agree that whatever happens next, it won't be as it was before. It will be harder to operate as an online station. But it had been hard to operate when it was on the air. If they couldn't fix the underlying issues then, then the sale might have been the only answer.
He was name-checked in the STLPR story, too.
How is the signal to the west of Edwardsville? It has been directional away from the Missouri side for a long time. In the 1970s, I could get it in O'Fallon (Mo.), at a good location, but it was always noisy, even in mono. Obviously, things might have changed since then. WSIE's probably OK in St. Louis City.
WSIE's signal is adequate in downtown St. Louis, but once you get into west county its not great.
Right. Probably what one should do (and most community service organizations don't even *think about doing this) is to set up a contract with the college whose station you wish to utilize as a community radio station. Get the lawyers involved and make it a legally binding contract for a fixed period of time. In such a case, the college, even if it held the license, could incur a lot of legal costs if the contract were breached before its end date by the college.
I appreciate you posting this. It was an interesting and, frankly, sobering listen.
From my perspective, there are enough governance failures in this story without expanding it into broader political or religious commentary. If there were questionable actions, they appear centered on board leadership and governance decisions. Board composition changes, terminations that affected voting rights, and overall process transparency raise legitimate questions. More should be made of the fact that these same people still control ~$6.0mm.
Regarding the $550k effort to save the station — it was admirable, but in a bankruptcy context the court’s obligation is to maximize value for creditors. Without the ability to compete at market levels, there was never a realistic path forward for that group, however well intentioned.
As for Gateway, the financials are fairly straightforward. They indicate that Gateway carries debt. Note the jump in liabilities the year they purchased KXBS. Their total assets in the $20+ million range represent licenses and equipment and possibly real estate. A small piece will also be operating cash and reserves. That’s how most expanding broadcasters operate — debt secured by assets. They are a successful non-profit radio group that happens to be Christian. These same techniques are also available to non-profit broadcasters with different world views.
The increase in investment income in 2024 suggests they were retaining more liquidity heading into 2025. At prevailing interest rates, that likely reflects $2-$3 million dollars in money market funds or other short-term instruments. Combined with additional fundraising and financing capacity, assembling $8.75M is not surprising for an organization of their size. Hope that was helpful.
Keep in mind that's what K-Love does too. They approach a college to see how active the students are in the station, and if it costs more to the school than it's worth. Then they make an offer. The core mission of WSIE, as stated on their website, is to offer practical experience to their students. Operating as a community station freezes out the students. So unless the community group can provide money, it likely won't be successful. I suspect K-Love has already reached out to them.
I went back to my collection of old FM Atlases to see if I could figure out what in Missouri that WSIE is trying to protect especially with the null at 241 degrees. (See history card.) Best as I can figure, the limiting factors were on adjacent channels: KUMR (now KMST) at 88.5 in Rolla and KLUM (now KJLU) at 88.9 in Jefferson City. In those days, according to the FM Atlas, KUMR had 100 kw at 480 feet (KMST still does); KLUM 40 kw at 510 feet (KJLU now 29.5 kw at apx 603 feet). While there were quite a few lower-power stations on the non-commercial part of the band in St. Louis, none of them was on or adjacent to 88.7. There had been the ten-watt Clayton high-school station at 88.1, KHRU. That seems to have fizzled out sometime around 1979; an application to transfer it to the St. Louis Community College district was rejected by the FCC in 1981. I've seen references to a Double Helix petition arguing that KHRU was underutilized and not meeting minimum schedule requirements, thus getting the FCC to award the allocation to them, but information online is fragmentary at best.
That justification was used several times by community groups to get the FCC to award them a license. I think one example was WBOE in Cleveland.
Yeah, pretty sure it is KMST/Rolla. It happens that Rolla is on a vector of 240 degrees from Edwardsville.
But today the null is also protecting KDMC, which serves Poplar Bluff. KDMC signed on many years after WSIE, but would still need to be protected even if KMST disappeared or reduced its class.
I found confirmation of that in a Post-Dispatch article from 1988 (May 9) featuring the various public radio stations in the St. Louis area:
WSIE has a following in St. Louis and as far west as Interstate 270, according to Gerritsen {Roy Gerritsen, WSIE general manager at the time}, but listeners in some suburbs complain of poor reception.
"That's unavoidable," the GM said, "because we aim our transmitter so that it will not conflict with the public station in Rolla, which is close to us on the FM dial. We are at 88.8 {WHAT?} and Rolla is 88.5."
{end quote}
I'm assuming that "88.8" whopper is an editing error.