I'm serious..looks like we are getting OUR station back.

Outstanding article. Keep up the fine work.

The big papers are going to get a hold of this pretty soon. It is too interesting a story. I would also suspect the perspiration is flowing more profusely up on the hill. It should. This has been very damaging to the school.

Meanwhile, I tuned in to the Current yesterday, and they are holding a fund drive. Good luck getting any money out of listeners like my
18 year old daughter, who loves the station but is struggling to find some spare change for Noodles & Company.

My off the cuff view is that the 89.3 audience is a demographic that will have a tough time with philanthrophy. You don't need an MBA to figure that out.

MPR has bitten off more then they can chew with this, and just might be willing to let her go without a fight. At this point it looks like a loss leader that won't return much value for a long time to come.

Usually when you sell Coke for $3.99, the buyer purchases a lot more items. At 89.3 the buyer is leaving the store with the free goods, and all the station gets is thanks.

I told my daughter yesterday, that the station might leave the air. She said that sucked, but my retort was: "Why don't you send the station a contribution to help it stay on the air?" I am waiting for her to ask me for the money and usually I am too liberal with complying. Not this time.

Woo! I cannot wait to see the letters on this one.

Bravo. You are a model for all of us to follow. You have my deepest admiration.

Just a thought. If St. Olaf Regents start to resign (I can only hope), are there people that SaveWCAL would endorse for those positions? Maybe you need to start making a list.

I'll be thawing out the lutefisk, downstreaming "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" and garnishing the vanilla ice cream with fresh-frozen lingonberries in celebration this evening.

This time around can we make sure that the new people don't sit on the board of MPR TOO!!!

I really wish St. Olaf realized that this court case is handing them a perfect "out" to their problem! Have them do something to encourage the judge to void the sale or start that process... Blame it all on us radical alumni who fought them (where we can shoulder the blame for about a femtosecond before letting it drop off). Sure, it will take a long time to rebuild what has been disassembled, but here's where they would find the alumni rallying for the cause with time and money.

I liked the blog comment which suggested that if St. Olaf did a 180 and supported the reversal of the sale, they could probably make things right - and you better believe that folks on the Hill are reading your weblog...

It's not too soon to be thinking reconciliation. The new St. Olaf president would be wise to offer the olive branch, and SAVE WCAL and its supporters need to be quick to respond. Finger pointing should end and let the face saving begin.

We need to find a way to keep WCAL home and pay for the additional costs of upgrading technology and other infrastructure.

If St. Olaf wants to discard WCAL, it will find a way. It would seem logical that we must all work together and find ways to put golden handcuffs on this jewel, and keep it up on the hill, organ a blazin.

Since 2004, SaveWCAL has consistently offered to be of assistance to St. Olaf to help them get out of this mess.

It's time for St. Olaf to stop circling the wagons and stonewalling their community -- hoping that this will go away. They need to open the doors to dialog.

When there wasn't much money, I re-upped my basic membership to WCAL, but not to MPR. Why feed more of my small dollars into their big pockets? They'd survive. But I never believed WCAL would fail to survive. Its sudden end was like a funeral for a beloved. Now...it might be back, and I will once again give my small dollars to the donation plate with others' contributions to return this marvelous station to its rightful place in Minnesota public radio history: ON THE AIR!

Thank you Ruth for keeping us up to date. St. Olaf has to be sweating now over this black-eye.
Did everybody click on TheCurrent and see the Washington Post article about the FM station that changed their format to classical music and is now thriving?!! Meanwhile the current 89.3 and it's format are sinking in the ratings.

Good piece. Congrats on your work on this. Hope it
works out. Robert Stein is a good voice to have added to yours.

While I understand the disappointment in the way WCAL was liquidated, this notion that The Current is failing and on the verge of closure is absurd. I find it disturbing that posters on this board are putting a lot of value in Arbitron ratings. What were the Arbitrons prior to 2004? Did anyone care? Cast Bill Kling as a terrible industry titan if you'd like. The fact remains that a lot of people who used to give sporadically to MPR (me, for instance) now give regularly because of the addition of the Current to their already excellent news station. The success of their fund drives is disproving the theory that indie-music fans won't open their wallets. If there is anger to be directed here, take it to the FCC and allocation of the FM spectrum. Take it to those on the wrong side of the DRM debate who are stifling internet radio into an early death. But blaming the Current, and pretending that this new station is a failure based on a ratings system skewed to amplify the silliest listening habits? Sorry, that's lame. I've no doubt WCAL will rise again, but I think you'd be better off trying an entirely different route. Otherwise, City Pages will be back in a few years, writing another sloppy article with WCAL as the villain.

SaveWCAL has made ONE journal entry about The Current 89.3's publicly available Arbitron ratings information covering a limited period during 2005-2006:
http://savewcal.livejournal.com/24671.html

One journal entry of interesting, factual information can hardly be construed as "putting a lot of value" on Arbitron ratings or asserting that The Current "is failing", neither of which SaveWCAL has done.

To SaveWCAL's knowledge, none of the primary SaveWCAL sources who agreed to be interviewed for the City Pages story discussed The Current's Arbitron ratings with Jonathan Kaminsky. While Kaminsky may have read the brief entry on the SaveWCAL site, he may also have gotten information from other sources.

SaveWCAL encourages readers to be careful about their assumptions...

We deal in facts here.
Prove to us that Current fans are sending in money. And please just the facts, let's not get side tracked, it does no good. Great entertainment, but little else.

http://northfield.org/node/3249

Northfield.org covered the CityPages story also.

Kudos to Northfield.org for plugging this site. Yes, this site is most assuredly going strong while other sites seem to slow down during the summer months.

As for the person who wrote the "Be Careful what you wish for" comment. Who in the world on this site ever said The Current was failing and was on the verge of closing? It seems to me we might have a troll on this site. You must have read that somewhere else or made that up because I don't ever recall seeing anyone say they "are on the verge of closing." As someone who has experience in the radio business I can also tell you that radio stations do not "close" They either make a format change or they get sold to a different company. Now back to our regular blog while I play "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" on my CD player. :) Can we make that our official battle cry? :)