In a recent article in the San Francisco Examiner, Pacifica Executive Director Pat Scott admitted that she had received numerous offers to buy both KPFA ($60 million) and WBAI ($90 million). She denied any intention to sell...this is the same Executive Director who claimed she only paid The American Consulting Group $1000 for one year's work, declared Board minutes confidential, developed a strategic plan in "retreats" and hired a spin doctor to write "cheat sheets"...It can't happen here, right?

It happened in Seattle in 1984...

Date sent: Mon, 7 Apr 1997
From: Larry or Lynn Tunstall <beedleum@netcom.com>
Subject: The sale of KRAB's frequency

I forwarded Jeff B's message about the KPFA local board meeting to Jef Jaisun, folksinger and Berkeley Barb writer/editor in the late 60s, now living in Washington state. He was a programmer at KRAB in the late 1970s and early 1980s when their frequency was sold out from under them. First, volunteers and community were cut out of the governing process for the station and its owning foundation. Then the frequency was put up for sale. The sale was carried through despite legal attempts to block it, with the State Assistant Attorney General joining the newly constituted foundation board in supporting the sale. Even Lorenzo Milam showed up to support the deal!

Perhaps Jef will pass along more information about the KRAB story to the list. Here's his note to me (reproduced here with his permission).

Beedle Um Bum Larry beedleum@netcom.com
http://members.aol.com/BeedleBum/
=============================================

From: Jef Jaisun <eljefe@halcyon.com>
To: Larry or Lynn Tunstall <beedleum@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: KPFA local board meeting

This is almost EXACTLY what the illegally-constituted board of KRAB pulled in Seattle 13 years ago. After, in effect, electing itself and violating most of the station's by-laws, it voted to sell KRAB's highly-coveted commercial FM frequency to Sun Belt Broadcasting of Colorado. Sun Belt paid approximately $3.5 million. Of that money, a substantial fee was paid to attorney Ernie Nash for handling the deal. Ernie Nash *was a board member!*

The Jack Straw Memorial Foundation, the organization that supposedly was KRAB, took its money, its board members and its equipment, and went home. Eventually, Jack Straw opened a rarely-used recording studio in Seattle's University District, and obtained a new FM frequency on the low end of the dial -- commonly known as the "college" area. The firm hired and paid to secure that frequency was Hatfield and Dawson. Ben Dawson was a Jack Straw board member.

KRAB was based in Central Seattle and had an effective ERP of over 40,000 watts; it was heard from the Oregon Coast all the way up to Vancouver Island. The new station, KSER, is about 5000 watts, located in Lynnwood, WA (15 miles north of Seattle), and can barely be heard anywhere in Seattle. The areas previously served by KRAB, many of them largely populated by minority communities, now have NO community access radio source.

The Jack Straws continue to operate KSER as if it were some treasured resource. The reality is that it's nothing more than a play toy for a handful of greedy, self-serving yuppified weasels. Despite all assurances from Jack Straw prior to the KRAB sale, KSER does NOT serve the Seattle community with anything even remotely resembling KRAB's former service. For all practical purposes, KSER is completely inaccessible. From the standpoint of Greater Seattle/Tacoma and Pacific Northwest listeners, the station might as well not exist.

KRAB was a long-standing community resource that was co-opted by greed and avarice. There is no mistaking the trend. If KPFA goes the way of KRAB, the entire Bay Area --not just Berkeley-- will feel its loss. Once and for all, it's time to throw the bastards out.

Sincerely yours,

Jef Jaisun eljefe@halcyon.com

June 1997...University of DC Station Sold to Religious Broadcasters

TO: All Stations
FM: Craig Curtis, WETA,
Washington, DC
RE: Sale of WDCU DT: 6-18-97

Today's Washington Post reports that the board of the University of the District of Columbia has approved, by a vote of 9-1, the sale of WDCU for $10.1M. If you'd like to read the text of the article, you can go to <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-06/18/156L-061897-idx.html> or go to <http://www.washingtonpost.com/> and enter "WDCU" in the search engine for the article in today's issue. It will be easily accessible from the web site for two weeks.

Financial problems in the city of Washington, DC and the accompanying budget crisis at the University of the District of Columbia led UDC to the decision to sell some of its assets, including WDCU. The university engaged a commercial radio broker to sell the station, hoping to receive bids in the $5-6M range. First round bids ranged from $1.5M to $8M. The broker requested bids of $10M or more for the second round. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that WETA was among the bidders for WDCU. And for those of you not familiar with the Washington market, WDCU operates at 90.1 FM and is primarily a jazz station.

Although the identity of the buyer has not been confirmed, it is widely believed to be a non-profit organization associated with Salem Communications, a commercial religious broadcaster operating 42 stations nationwide, including WAVA here in Washington. The Post speculates that Salem plans to move its WAVA service to the WDCU frequency, then sell WAVA, a full-power commercial license that in the current marketplace should be worth $60-80M. We also know that before WDCU went to market, Salem attempted to purchase both WDCU and WJHU in Baltimore, where they also own a commercial license. Johns Hopkins University quickly declined to sell WJHU. Salem also operates commercial stations in the following markets: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Oxnard/Ventura, CA, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Portland, Pueblo, CO, Riverside, CA, Rosamond, CA, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle/Tacoma, and Winston-Salem, NC.

Heretofore, public and non-commercial licenses were considered to have minimal real market value. In preparing our own bid for WDCU it was difficult to find precedent-setting prices anywhere--remember that license purchases in recent years by Minnesota Public Radio and WNYC involved commercial frequencies--but there was no reasonable financial model that could have supported a competitive bid from WETA. This sale, therefore, dramatically changes life below 92 FM. It represents the loss of a major frequency to NPR and public radio in a large and important market, allows a commercial business to operate de facto in the non-commercial band, and it establishes a benchmark price that may tempt other non-commercial license holders, regardless of type or market size, especially in times of financial crisis.

I would encourage you to learn what you can about the sale of WDCU and consider its ramifications for your station and all of public radio. This is a significant event that warrants careful analysis and strategic planning for individual stations and the system as a whole.